Cameron Olthuis

Google Trends launched today. You can compare the search volume of up to five different keyphrases. It also displays how frequently the term shows up in Google News stories and what regions search the most for the particular keyphrase.

I’ve been playing with Google Trends for much of the day and it’s amazing the wealth of information you can get from it. It’s very interesting to see which keyphrases are gaining popularity and which are losing it.

This is definitely a must have in the tool bag for any SEO or Marketer.

After posting some tips for increasing blog traffic I received quite a few emails asking for recommendations on blog specific tools.

So here’s a list of some tools that I’ve come across that are helpful when blogging. They range from tools that help increase traffic to tools that make life easier as a publisher.

1) Technorati – Blog search engine that keeps track of what’s going on in the blogsphere, currently tracking some 39 million blogs. Technorati also ranks blogs based on the number of incoming links from other blogs. Great for finding information and being found. Steve Rubel posted a great article awhile back, Ten Technorati Hacks .

2) FeedBurner – Feed management tool. Allow your users to easily subscribe to your feeds through FeedBurner. You can also keep track of your feed statistics, like how many readers are subscribed to your feed. You can also post a chicklet on your site that displays the current circulation of your feed.

3) Socializer – Instead of submitting to each social bookmarking site one at a time you can submit to them all with just one link. Big time saver.

4) Performancing for FireFox – FireFox plugin that allows you to write blog entries right from your FireFox browser. Find something you want to blog about? Do it right from that page, no need to login into your admin panel. Ecto is similar but instead of posting through your internet browser you can do it from your desktop. Lots of great tools to go with it.

5) Tracking Software – There’s a number of different website analytic software avilable, some are free and some aren’t. Analytics are important for tracking your visitors. You can see where they’re coming from, what pages they visit on your site, and much more. You can see what content is popular on your site and concentrate on optimizing that. I recommend Measure Map, Google Analytics, or Mint.

6) Ping-o-Matic – Update the blog search engines when your blog has been updated. You can update about 20 at once.

7) coComment – Keeps track of and let’s you follow your conversations across the internet. How often do you post a comment on a blog and never return to follow the conversation? coComment keeps track of these for you so you can see when someone replies to your comments.

FamFamFam – Really killer free icons that you can use for your blog or website.

9) Akismet – If you blog there’s a pretty good chance you get comment spam, if you don’t you soon will. Comment spam is a pain in the ass to deal with. Akismet makes it easy. It automatically catches spam for you. Just like regular comments you can manage them, take a quick look to see if it caught something that it isn’t spam then delete everything else. Akismet has been perfect for me since I installed it, it’s caught every single spam comment.

10) Chicklet Creator – Automatically create chicklets that you can easily add to your blog.

11) Social Bookmark Link Creator – Choose the social sites you want your reader to submit you to and automatically create the links to put on your site.

12) How Linkable – How linkable is your blog post? Answer a series of questions to find out. Take this with a grain of salt. I wouldn’t rely on it to be accurate 100% of the time, more of a novelty.

13) BlogBurst – BlogBurst is a brand new syndication service that allows your content on top tier destinations. This would be very helpful for increasing visibility and readership.

I don’t know or use every blog that’s out there, if I missed one (or many) that you like feel free to add them in the comments.

Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean anyone knows about it or reads it. Like any other website, you still need do some promotion to drive traffic. Otherwise you’re just a needle in the haystack. Here’s a few things you can do start bringing people to your blog.

1) Submit your blog to both traditonal and blog search engines, and ping them everytime you write a new post. For this I use Ping-o-Matic.

2) Post useful comments on other related blogs. This really does generate good traffic. I often click the links of others that have left comments on the blogs I read regularly. I also visit the sites of every single person who leaves a comment on this site, and have come across so many great blogs this way.

3) If you have a lot to say about another blog post try writing about it on your site instead of leaving a comment. But make sure you leave a trackback link. I also read all the trackbacks on my site and can guarantee every other blogger does too. Of course we want to know what others have to say about our posts. Do this everytime you quote or refer to a blog.

4) Make sure you have a RSS feed that people can subscribe to. This will help others keep track of your blog. Very important for repeat visitors. Don’t forget to subscribe to my feed.

5) Post often when you first start your blog. As time goes on you don’t have to post everyday but try not to ever go longer than a week without posting. Your blog will start looking like a ghost town and your visitors won’t want to come back if you don’t update it on a regular basis.

6) Write high-quality posts. They don’t have to be long but they need to be good. Give a unique view of your opinions. Try writing something that will create a buzz and get other bloggers to talk and link about your posts. Ever you ever write something good enough to get on Digg that alone will bring in 30,000 visitors and a few thousand links to your site.

Don’t give up. It’s hard to build an audience and takes a lot of time and effort. It won’t happen over night, unless you’re already somewhat of a celebrity. Stick with it, if you write unique content eventually you will build a good following.

Blogging, Blog