One of the most popular tools for hosting a blog is WordPress, an open-source project that is freely available for the downloading. There are at least a thousand tutorials available around the 'net for how to set up a WordPress blog, configuring a theme, uploading it to your own hosting account, and all the rest. I am not going to re-cover that ground; it has been done more than enough. This article is more about what you can do to improve your site and enhance it for visitors -- and for the search engines.

The good news is that there are any number of tools to help you improve the behavior of your website. WordPress is now such a popular framework for creating websites in general and blogs in particular, that an entire industry has grown up to create plugins for WordPress; using the top WordPress plugins can really enhance the utilization of WordPress. You should find all sorts of tools, from free plugins like HeadSpace2, All-in-One SEO, and Google XML Sitemaps to premium plugins like SEOPressor or My SEO Status.

Here is a short list of the best plugins you should investigate:

• SEOPressor - automates and simplifies on-site SEO; premium (i.e. paid) plugin

• Platinum SEO Pack - simplifies some aspects of on-site SEO; free plugin

• Google XML Sitemap - auto-generates XML formatted sitemap to speed up search engine indexing; free plugin

• Google Video Sitemap - auto-generates XML sitemap of all videos on your site; free plugin

• Google Image Sitemap - auto-generates XML sitemap of all images on your site; free plugin

• All-in-One SEO Pack - similar to Platinum SEO, but with a few less features; free plugin

• Automatic SEO Links - automatic on-site keyword-based crosslinking; free plugin

• HeadSpace2 - similar to Platinum or All-in-One, a lot of people swear by this one; free plugin

• Akismet - automatically blocks comment spam; free and now built-in to WordPress

• s2Member Pro - implements membership functionality; premium plugin, but an excellent free version is available

• PHPurchase - run an eCommerce site within your blog; premium plugin

Always remember, though: put good content on your site that will provide real value for your visitors. All the bells and whistles in the world are useless if you aren't giving your visitors value when they come to the site. Remember to treat your visitors well, and you will get your fair share of traffic; social bookmarking is a powerful tool that you leverage naturally when you have happy readers.