Blogger's Toolbox

Ok so you have started your blog and you are up and running like a champ, but do you have the tools necessary to blog like a pro?  Here is a list of tools I use that can improve your reader experience, as well as your own productivity.

Essentials I can’t live without

Micro Niche Finder (MNF) is my favorite blogging tool.  I use this almost daily to choose keywords for my blogs, measure competition, determine potential CTR and pay rates for click ads, and so much more.

SEO Elite by Brad Callen.  I’ve used it across all of my sites and have developed my own MMO strategies using it.  I use it for  research, sizing up competition, and backlinking.  His sales site for this has recently changed and now offers a trial for $4.95 (yay) and $47 (boo- unless you only need it for a few months- then yay) each month thereafter.  I suggest the $4.95 trial first and then deciding which SEO Elite pricing structure suits you.

The $4.95 Trial and $47/month thereafter price:
http://www.seoelite.com/index2.htm

FeedBurner: If you are serious about your blogs then at some point you will become concerned in one way or another about your RSS subscription numbers; as well as, a few other nifty options which include monetization of your RSS feeds, feed reader statistics and types. The list is rather immense and needless to say this is the only real option for your RSS tracking and syndication needs.

FireFox Web Browser: This award-winning Web browser is fast, secure and fully customizable. Also the ability to add plug ins such as SEO firefox, alexa toolbar, the google toolbar and your favorite stumble upon bar will make this a bloggers easiest choice while preparing for success.

Plug-ins and other accesories

I tend to keep my list of active plug ins very small as to keep memory usage down and site-wide speed up. Depending on your hosting package or your need for more than the essentials these are definate must haves as far as plug ins go.

Adsense Deluxe – This plugin will make sure that your adsense stays true to your posted content instead of anything else. As some of my older viewers will know I had a problem with this until I installed this plug in. I highly recommend it either way as to maximize your adsense earnings.

Akismet - What can I say in the way of spam control this works perfectly and fits the bill for me. I will be honest I have not tried any others yet as I have had absolutely no need to. If you do not have an anti spam filter for your comments yet I say download this one.

Comment Luv – This is another essential for any blog which you wish to encourage commentation on. This in combination with another I will reveal shortly will help to produce an environment which people comment and share their thoughts while also in a backwards way promoting their own last blog post. Highly effective.

Random Posts – I use this under the Featured Post section as a way to display content from the archives which most new viewers or people who do not want to manually search my archives to get a taste of what Big Ben Patton’s Place is all about. It’s great to offer old content as well as your current posts as I have so people have the best idea of the content your offering with as little work as possible.

Top Commentators Widget – This is by far the most useful tool in the bloggers arsenal to raise blog commentation. For instance having a free back link to your blog because you participate in conversation helps you network with other bloggers and again promotes a 2 way discussion instead of just your posts on a page.

Word Press Database Backup- This is needed no matter what kind of blog you run you always want to hold your db as it is sacred. If lost you may lose valuable information which controls your blog and keeps it glued together at the seams. I have one saved on the server daily, mailed to my web host email and mailed to gmail as a precaution against anything undesirable happening to it.  All I can say is be prepared.

Blog Load Time Testing

http://tools.pingdom.com/ Use this handy tool to test your blog load times. With the posts I have already put into the archives for this and the super cache plugin you should be able to knock out 50% of your full page load times.

http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test This is also a great before and after test for load times.  A big thanks to JK Swopes for his submission of this link into the bloggers toolbox.

http://site24×7.com/web-page-analyzer.html And I thought that the site I discovered would be the end all be all to site load time testers. Between these three you will definitely know what is going on with your blog’s load times.

EntreCard and SiteHoppin

These two go together like pea’s and carrots. Ok maybe not and I apologize for the Forrest Gump reference. These two can be very powerful when used properly to drive in new traffic. Be forewarned though that your bounce rate will go up. An acceptable Bounce rate for a start up blog is generally 40-80% usually the more you promote yourself the higher it will go. I know that sounds strange but we will get in to that in the next section. Make sure you are cruising other peoples sites and dropping cards and rating the overall appeal of them. This will give you credits to spend on advertising for your favorite ec blogs or drive traffic to your site from the network itself. This will give back generally what you put into it. Some say its exit card time, but I will remain a firm believer as long as I see rss subs going up.

Social Networks, bookmarks and communities

Your best bets for making the social round, and trust me as a start up or veteran alike you will want to occasionally push your premier content to the masses. Understand that this means your page views and unique visitors will be inflated. But the benefit of this is you are bound to get exposure, network and retain a percentage depending on the quality of your content, interest of your readers and the general well being of your site.

Stumble Upon – I like stumblers they generally stay awhile poke around and see whats what. This is a great social network but be weary of submitting your own content and try to stumble as little as possible as their algorithm will detect this and put less weight to your post.

Digg – By far the most popular in the blogosphere at large; however not very blog advice, internet marketing friendly. While I hope they offer up categorizes for us soon this network is generally considered the big kid on the block. For me though It is more of a why not when including this than why I should. If you can gain one rss subscription for a year from this it was worth the thirty seconds it took to submit. I have heard and it generally makes sense that if you submit your own links you can eventually be banned although I am not 100% sure about this. I do know it can lower your power for front page ability.

Reddit – This is my second favorite social outlet as it has driven the most traffic per article for me compared to any other. I would limit its use to your very best stuff no matter what your niche. These readers are the cream for the most part that you will pickup from these types of ordeals. I have limited my posts for reddit to mostly my news coverage type posts.

Mixx – This is an upcoming network that is sort of a cross between all of the above. It allows you much more control in an intuitive way. It truly puts you in touch with people who really are interested in your category or sub category of content. Highly effective when used correctly; however, not very effective if used like digg to build friendship rings and trade diggs for front page time. This is a much more serious network at the moment.

Delicious – Yea I know that is missing the funky periods in it but you know what it is. This is the most powerful social bookmark site I have ever used, and really seems to be the leader as far as that goes. I will say though that this is more effective for searches than bringing you live traffic as the previous others. A good thing to make use of for every post to gain you long tail keywords

Technorati – This seems to be the premier way to see how you mesh up against many other blogs. By no means is it the definitive rank for your blog. It also doubles as a way to search for blogs by content , keywords etc. You definitely do not want to neglect your site in regards to Technorati rank and content submission. Having people favorite you also does not hurt.

Analytics

Along with all the other blog metrics available you will want to keep tabs at the very least occasionally on what type of traffic you are bringing in and where it is coming from and where it might be going to. These are the only two analytics programs I would ever concern yourself with as at the moment both are free and very powerful.

Google Analytics – This is an easy straightforward analytics program which anyone can easily maximize its potential to report. Loading this to your site is as easy a pasting a line of code with a java script in it. This is argue to be the best of the best. I still run this just for the fact that it is free and powerful.

Woopra – I was lucky enough to get into the beta for this and have loved it ever since.  This is definitely something you should stop by and take a look at. If you find yourself still wondering why this might be better or even just different than Google Analytics then check out my review of it.