Tools and Resources You Should Use on Your Blog

What do you need to be a successful blogger? Besides the fact of always updating your blog with new information, you also want to find new ways to improve your blog to stay ahead of other competing blogs. Here are a few tools and resources you can use to stay ahead of all the other bloggers out there.

The first resource I recommend is SEO Radio. It’s not specifically a tool for blogs but a resource about search engine optimization that gives great information about how to optimize your blog for the search engines. You can read more about it at www.seoradio.com.

The second recommend tool for your blog is CARP which is not specifically made for blogs but can be used with your blog to provide RSS feeds. RSS feeds continuously keep your blog updated which increases your ranking in the search engines. Check it out at www.geckotribe.com/rss.

Another item I like to use on my blog is Google’s blog search at http://blogsearch.google.com. This is a great way to find your competition via a keyword search so you can analyze their methods of traffic generation.

An additional recommend tool and resource is a list of blogging and RSS directories you can submit your blog to. It’s located at www.vilesilencer.com. Also, don’t forget to check out www.searchengineworld.com and the warrior forum at www.warriorforum.com/forum for more great marketing and optimization tips to help you with your online business.

The last item to consider for your blog is the blogging platform itself. When you get serious about your blog and want to grow your readership, consider hosting for your blog and using Wordpress’s fully functional blog platform over the free one. You can download it at http://wordpress.org or even download it via your web host like Host Gator.

Of course this is just a small list of tools and resources you can use to stay ahead of your blogging competition but it’s a great list to start with. Make sure to always check back for more resources in future posts but also check out the forums and discussion boards for other great ideas.