I'll be moving my blog from another engine to WordPress shortly. However, I am a complete noob to WordPress. So I am wanting to at least replicate the functionality my old blog used to have.
There are a dozen Adsense plugins, not sure how to choose. Recommendations?
I don't use one, so no opinion.
Likewise there a ton of Google Analytics plugins. Anything in particular I should look for?
Google Analytics by Yoast is good one.
Anything else I should look out for?
Don't go overboard with plugins from the start, take in account if they are maintained and tested with recent WP version. It takes some time to pick up who solid reputable developers are and much more time to recognize plugin quality by the code alone.
I've been using Google Analyticator, which also has a dashboard module. But, you may want to sign up for real-time analytics through GetClicky.com. There is a Clicky plug-in and dashboard widget. I prefer GetClicky over GA.
I also use Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold. This is a must have plug-in, which creates the xml document to register your site with Google Webmaster Tools, as well as Bing and Yahoo! services as well.
If you're using themes with built-in SEO, that's fine, but I tend to use All In One SEO, which allows me to keep my SEO separate from the theme, such that if I do away with the theme, I don't lose the SEO against all my posts.
