Here are seven of the plugins I consider essential for any WordPress website I setup.  These can help your WordPress site be more secure, more search engine friendly, easier to deal with, and more engaging for your visitors.

Akismet: Blog spam is out of control and can be overwhelming if you have to delete it all yourself.  Let Akismet deal with it for you instead.

All in One SEO Pack: This is a great plugin to help make WordPress more search engine friendly.  It gives you more control over various elements on your pages.

TinyMCE Advanced: The default editor in WordPress has an extremely annoying habit of removing line breaks and spaces.  It also doesn’t allow an easy way to change the font.  This plugin fixes those problems.

WP Security Scan: Make your WordPress site more secure with this plugin.  It scans for common vulnerabilities and things you can change to keep your site safer from hackers.

Subscribe to Comments: Encourage your visitors who comment to come back and stay engaged in the discussion by giving them an option to receive an email when a new comment is posted after theirs.

Similar Posts: Help your readers find more information they’re interested in so they’ll stick around longer with this plugin.  It will add a list of similar posts at the end of each of your blog posts.  You can see how it works below (it’ll list 5 posts that are related to this one in case you want to read more of what I have to say about WordPress or plugins).

Social Bookmarking Plugin: There are lots to choose from, just be sure you’ve got one!  You can use Sociable, Sexy Bookmarks, Share This, or others.  Make it easy for your visitors to share your posts with their networks online.

What plugins do you consider essential?  What’s missing from my list?  Leave me a comment below and let me know.