Due to the recent popularity of WordPress Plugins such as Nofollow Free or Top Commentators, more commentators are using keywords instead of their name in order to increase their Google ranking for the specified keywords. Do you find that annoying?

I must admit that I prefer answering “Alex” instead of “San Diego Real Estate”. But as I previously said, having the “Top Commentators” and the “Nofollow Free” plugins enabled are good for your traffic. So, is there a solution?

Happily, the answer is yes. Stephen Cronin have created the Keyword Luv plugin, which allow the commentator to specify both his name and his keywords. For example, my initials are “jbj” and related keywords to my blog should be “Web Development” or “WordPress”.  Instead of typing “Web development” as my name, I’ll type “jbj@Web Development”.

Here is the result:

Installing Keyword Luv

Nothing hard here: First, download the plugin, extract it and upload the directory on your server, under the wp-content/plugins directory.  Then, login to your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins and activate the plugin.

That’s all! Enjoy you “keywords free” comments!

Chances are you’ve probably noticed a number of Feedburner feed count chicklets scattered all over the blogosphere proudly displaying blog feed counts.   I’m sure many people look at this as a way to inflate their blogging ego, but I’ve always looked at this as a way to show visitors at a quick glance that your blog is liked.  Recently the popular Aweber newsletter service released a similar widget to display the number of newsletter subscribers you have, and now it looks like the chicklet has gone mainstream.

With this same idea in mind, it looks like Planet Ozh has released the Liz Strauss comment counter WordPress plugin.    This WordPress plugin was designed to display your blogs comment count proudly.    I think this plugin is a great way to show that your blog has a lot of conversations.

Ozh lists the following features:

• Performance: the plugin generates a static image every time a comment is left (or an admin moderates one). The benefit is that, when showing the badge, nothing dynamic is generated on the fly by the webserver.
• Failover: if for some reason your server was not able to generate a static image (write permissions or whatever) the plugin falls back to generating the badge on the fly, so you always have something to show.
• Minimal overhead: state of the art code that loads only when needed, and the plugin adds a grand total of zero extra database query.
• Compatibility: the admin interface either runs as a widget (with no extra “Settings” page created) or as a traditional plugin.
• Flexibility: just like your Feedburner badge, except there’s more options!
• Neat interface: one click color presets, killer Farbtastic color picker, and cute FamFamFam icons
• Ready for translation: polyglots, a .pot file is included. If you happen to translate the plugin, be sure to send me your work so I can include it in the archive! (Please send your .mo and .po files to ozh at planetozh dot com)
• Fun: well yes, it’s just fun to show how many comments you have

So basically it is widget ready and you can pick a color to match your blog.   You can download the plugin here.   Enjoy!