Free Tools You Should Use for Your Blog

While you're having fun posting in your blogs you might want to consider using some free tools to track your visitors. There are plenty of free tools online to keep track of where your visitors are coming from and I will name some of the great ones I use.

Site Meter

Site Meter is a great free tool that I have been using since I started blogging about 5 months ago. This tool will not only let you know who has been to your website or blog but it will tell you the domain they came from, the location, the IP address and so much more. There is an upgrade option but the free version works just fine. All you have to do is place a code in your blog template and place the site meter icon on your blog and you're all set. If you do upgrade you won't have to have a visible site meter icon on your blog but I don't mind my visitors seeing the icon on my blog. It just tells them how I am tracking them.

Feedburner

Feedburner will also track your visitors and they will give you a url to post in ping services to let the blog directories know that you have wrote up a new post. Feedburner will tell you the top search engines used to get to your blog, the top domains and the top referring websites. They will also give you a button to place on your blog so people can subscribe to it! I have also been using feed burner since I started blogging.

MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog does the same things that Site Meter and Feedburner do. They also have an upgrade option available but I have been using the free version since I started blogging and it is great. The only difference between the free and paid version is that the paid version will show more than just the last 10 visitors to your site. They will also give you a widget to place on your blog to show your visitors who else has been visiting. This is an awesome tool and I have been getting great results from it.

Technorati

Technorati shows how many other bloggers have tagged you and linked back to you. They will also let you ping your blog either automatically by placing a code on your blog or by going to their website and clicking on ping. When you do this your new post will appear on the Technorati website for everyone to see and if someone is interested they will tag you. This gives you more visitors also. On Technorati you can also see who has tagged you and linked back to you and that way you can do the same for them. Technorati will also give you an icon to place on your blog so others can "favorite" you while they are visiting you.

Squidoo

I'm sure everyone knows about Squidoo but did you know that Squidoo will get you in the search engines faster? That is what I have been told by several people who use Squidoo. I decided to try Squidoo out for myself and I made a quick page all about making money with writing. Squidoo allows you to place your blog feed url on the page and this in turn shows your most recent blog posts. Then of course whenever anyone visits your Squidoo page they will then see your most recent blog posts and just might click on one of them to read more.

Hub Pages

I Haven't started using this yet but have heard a lot of good things about it. In fact I heard that it was better than Squidoo to promote your blog with. A friend of mine uses both and says she gets more visits to her blog from Hub Pages than she does with Squidoo and she said she doesn't even promote them that much. So both of these sites must be getting her visits by being indexed in the search engines. I am going to create my own Hub Page once I get the extra time and anyone who blogs should too. In fact if you are a die hard blogger like me and your not using any of these free blog tools then you should start as soon as possible. They are all great and free to use.

Pinging Your Blog

Every time you finish a new post you should also ping your blog immediately after. Doing this will tell the blog directories that you have new content and this will get the search engine spiders crawling your blog. There are several free pinging services and some people use different ones each time. I use automatic pingers like Ping-O-Matic, Auto Pinger and Ping Goat. They are all free to use and all you need to do is type in your blog name, blog url and your feed url, even though that is optional you should still type it in.

So go ahead and start using these free services so you can keep track of your visitors and keep blogging!