I run and manage a handful of WordPress blogs that use a ton of different plugins. Of all those plugins, the one that is consistently used on all of the blogs is the Google XML Sitemaps plugin by Arne Brachhold.

This plugin automatically generates a valid XML sitemap of your blog every time you add or edit a post or page. The advantage to having a current sitemap is that search engines like Google and Yahoo have a much easier time crawling and then indexing your site. The faster and easier it is for search engine to do their jobs the faster and easier it will be for your blog to start appearing on search engine results.

This plugin is a no-brainer for me and is usually the first one I install and configure when I’m starting a new blog. There are other Sitemap plugins available out there but in my experience this one is the best.