Blogging Tools That I Use

To help one build traffic there are lots of FREE tools available to help. I am amazed at what is provided for bloggers to use. Here are the tools I use.

Google Analytics - This provides the ability to find out how many readers are coming to your site, from where, how often they are coming and which articles there are reading. This is a great tool to find out who is your audience. Other services such as Sitemeter, Feedburner and Crazy Egg provide similar services. For perspective, I started with Google Analytics and have not used the other applications.

FeedBurner - This provide your readers an easy way to get feeds from your blog, via what ever feed reader they would like to use. I use Feedburner and highly recommend using this tool.

Technorati - This tool lets you know which blogs are linking to to yours. It helps you find who is interested in your content. It will also help you find out if a blog is copying your content. I have not registered in Technocrati yet.

Alexa - Helps you find out your traffic rank in the worldwide Internet. Not surprisingly Yahoo!, MSN and Google are the top 3. My Wealth Builder is currently 626,012 after 6 1/2 months, as of February 25, 2007.

Google Page Rank - This let's you find out how Google ranks your blog for search. Check Page Rank is the tool I use to track page rank. Page Rank ranges from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest). My Wealth Builder has a page rank of 3 as fo February 25, 2007.

These are the main tools I use for getting data on blog traffic. The best part is that they are currently available to everyone for free.

My Google Traffic Disappeared

Last week, traffic from Google on My Wealth Builder declined to virtually zero by mid-week. This was concerning since about 25% of My Wealth Builder's reader traffic was coming from Google search. And I believe almost all the the advertising revenue was coming from Google directed traffic. Therefore, this change was a major disappointment.

Had I done something in my blog to cause this change? The only new activity was introducing members of a new network and hosting the Cavalcade of Risk carnival. I thought that the multiple links to other blogs might be penalized by Google.

However, after checking with a few resources, I learned that traffic reduction from Google was a common occurrence as Google periodically updates their search algorithms. ProBlogger had these articles about the issue:

What to Do when Your Google Traffic Disappears?

What to do when your Google Rank Falls and you lose all your traffic?

Coincidentally, November, the month of both posts, is when My Wealth Builder's traffic began to increase. So My Wealth Builder likely benefited from the initial Google changes.

I plan to take this change in stride:

1. I have done more reading on the issue and reacquainted myself with submitting blogs to different search engines.
   
2. I have re-evaluated my post content and blog design. I had become overly concerned with posting every day to maintain my Google Page rank.
   
3. I have taken some time to reconnect with the personal finance blog community by increasing my reading an commenting on other's blogs.
   
4. I will invest less time in monitoring Adsense and Site Visit results. I was monitoring these statistics mulitiple times each day, almost an obsession:-)

Over time, I expect that Google search traffic will return, especially if the initial ratings were correct.

My Sources of Information on Getting Started in Blogging

As I was getting started, I checked out a few reference sites to understand more about blogging. For your use and enjoyment, here are the sites I found most useful.

ProBlogger - Darren Rowse's blog provides comprehensive, relevant and timely information about blogging and monetizing one's blog. I found A-Z of Professional Blogging to be one of the more useful posts. Also, the Adsense Tips for Bloggers series was helpful.

Steve-Olsen.com - How This Blog Attracted 100,000 Visitors in the First 30 Days is a great post on what Steve did and also provides a list of his references for more tips.

Steve Pavlina.com - How to Make Money From Your Blog provides a detailed guide on how to monetize your blog and grown your revenue.

SEO Elite - Creating Your Own Blog For Search Engine Optimizations provided a good set of tips on how to get started.

There, you have it. The four primary references I used when starting My Wealth Builder. I hope others find these four blogs as useful as I did.

Conversion to New Blogger

My January,2007 conversion to New Blogger went very well. Much better than I had expected based on issues others had shared.

In December, 2006, I was extremely worried. Right after I received the notice to change, I tested the My Wealth Builder template on New Blogger and it crashed, due to an XML error. Panic. I believed that my hacks, while acceptable on Blogger, were not sufficiently error free for New Blogger. I spent the next two evenings searching for solutions, ideas, and help. And I found them. First, after more experimentation, I found out that New Blogger allowed reverting to the "classic template," which would accept My Wealth Builder's current format. Now I was feeling better. Second, I found a blog, Beta Blogger for Dummies, that has excellent tips, techniques and hacks for New Blogger. These guys are good! Using their template, I was able to recreate my current three column template in New Blogger.

Success is where preparation meets opportunity. For the past month, I had been preparing for today. Based on migration recommendations by Beta Blogger for Dummies, I backed up the blog template, the blog posts, and created a test template in New Blogger. I even had plans to create a replica of My Wealth Builder if the migration crashed. As it turned out, I didn't need to do use any of the backup plans. So readers got uninterrupted service and will get a better My Wealth Builder in the future :-)