Blog Tools and Services That Bloggers Need To Use

Posted on Aug 31, 2007 by Sly Guy

All bloggers, new or experienced, need to be able to use many blog tools and services. Without some of these tools, it would almost be impossible to have a successful blog. Here are a few blog tools that will help with your blogging success.

Technorati

Every blogger needs to have a Technorati account. It’s the search engine of the blogging world. For every blog that links to your blog will give you an authority. The higher your authority is, the higher your blog will rank in Technorati. So if you have started your blog a few weeks or months ago and haven’t claimed your blog on Technorati yet, go ahead and get one! You have already wasted a few links to your site that could have given your blog some authority ranking.

Technorati, home page

FeedBurner

Providing your readers with an available RSS feed is very important. It’s basically their daily newsletter that includes the latest articles in your blog. If you haven’t started with FeedBurner yet, chances are that you don’t know what RSS is. Visit my article here to learn more about RSS.

MyBlogLog

This blogging community and directory puts together all the claimed blogs together in one site. With MyBlogLog, you can visit other blog communities and discover new blogs that you have never been before. But most importantly MyBlogLog allows you to let your readers join your blog community. After you build up your community members, try to get in the top 50 communities that are shown in the Communities page. By the way, don’t forget to join the Slyvisions community!

BlogCatalog

BlogCatalog is very similar to MyBlogLog. You can also join comminities and add other bloggers as friends, but there is one thing that makes this blog directory stand out against all others: their discussion forum. In fact, I think this is the only blogging forum out there that has many active bloggers taking part in it. The forum is not like other forums that have sub-directories, but an easy to use forum that allows users to easily post and reply to threads. Check the screenshot below.

BlogCatalog, discussion, forum

Google Analytics

This Google service allows bloggers (and other site managers) to keep track of a website’s statistics. With Google Analytics, you can view referrals of where your visitors came from, what the most visited page is, the your visitors are in, and other important information. You can also use Analytics’ charts and graphs to show your advertisers or sponsors the statistics of your site. Other than this service, it’s also important to have live stat counter like Site Meter, Stat Counter, etc.

Keyword Tools

Keyword Tools are useful if you plan to incorporate SEO in your blog. Everyone knows that with search-engine optimized sites and articles, Google and other search engines will bring you more traffic to your site. That’s why keyword selector tools are there for you.

Crazy Egg

Remember my post on Crazy Egg? Well, it’s the cool heatmap service that lets you see what’s hot and what’s not on your site. You’ll be able to see a visual detail of the clicks on your site as well as a full summary of data. After you get your results, you can see what changes you can make on your site’s design, layout, or ad placements.

Crazy Egg, heatmap

Gmail Notifier

With all the bloggers out there that I know, many of them use Gmail. Even those that don’t use it for email use it because of Gmail Notifier, a service that alerts you with new emails when you get them that is as accurate as a single minute. Because Gmail allows users to accept forwarded emails, someone can forward the email that they regularly use to their Gmail account. Gmai Notifier will then do its work.

Gmail notifier, Lifehacker