Few days back, one of my blog readers asks me about the kind of tools I use to perform my day-to-day blogging activities. And I decided to reply to this question in the form of today post, where I’ll be sharing 10 blogging tools I use on daily basis as part of my blogging efforts for SFM blog. I’m not going to cover any big websites like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, just will be focusing on tools specially designed for bloggerrs and SEO community.
1. Google Analytics
I’m a fig fan of Google Analytics (GA) and use it a lot like other seo’s and bloggers to track traffic trends for my blog. Some of key metrices that I check via GA are: Overall traffic stats, referring traffic sources, top landing pages, top performing keywords, bounce rate, page views, Average time on site, traffic by location and browsers type etc. Click here to know more in detail about using Google Analytics for website traffic monitoring
2. Google AdWords Keyword Tool
Although I use lots of keyword research tools, but I use Google Adwords Keyword tools a lot for doing keyword research. Best thing about keyword research tool from Google is that I allow us the flexibility to find additional keywords for a search term as per the geographical location you want to target through your website or blog. Click here to know more in detail about using Google Adwords Keywords tool for keyword search and discovery purpose.
3. Google Webmasters Tool
Google Webmasters Tools(GWT) is becoming more and powerful with the addition of new features like Site Performance, Malware data, search queries impressions, clicks and CTR etc. I generally use GWT to submit Sitemap, checking crawling errors, HTML suggestions, links to my website and for analyzing kind of impressions and clicks I’m getting for various keywords as per their position shown by GWT data. Click here to know more benefits of using Google Webmasters Tool.
4. FeedBurner Service
FeedBurner is another service powered by Google that website owners and bloggegrs use to manage their RSS Subscribers. One can use Feedburner to monetize their Feeds with Google Adsense Ads and to get more insights about their subscribers.
5. Google Reader
I use Google Reader to keep track of new content coming on some of my favorite and blogs that are someway in competition with me. I would have been a big headache to keep yourself updated with new content coming on 100′s blogs of your interest without Google Reader. I get lots of new post ideas while going through the titles and details of new posts published on my favorite blogs. I even use Google reader for sharing interesting stories on social networks and for commenting on latest posts. Click here to start using Google Reader.
6. MS Paint
I use MS paint for taking screenshots, images resizing, editing kind of activities to make my blog posts more interesting. MS paint is widely used by all SEO’s and Bloggers for image editing kind of requirements. I find using MS Paint quite easy for doing some basic image editing related tasks. Recently I used MS Paint for creating landing page image for my Facebook Fan Page.
7. Social Sharing Buttons
I’m a big fan of Social sharing buttons, icons and links placed on my blog and other blogs of my interest. I used to submit lots of interesting stories from my blog and other blogs in my niche on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Google Buzz etc kind of social media networks.
8. Some Add-ons from Mozilla Firefox
Although, there are thousands of Add-ons available in Mozilla Firefox Directory for performing different kind of activities, but here are some Ad-Ons that are my favorite and help me with my blogging:
Broken Link Checker, Search Status, Google Toolbar for Firefox, Fire FTP, ColorZilla, Measureit, SEO for Firefox, Rank Checker and Page Speed Ad-on for Firefox.
9. URL Shortening
Use http://bit.ly/ website for URL shortening purpose that I use as part of my tweets on Twitter and on some occasions for shortening my affiliate links that I use across multiple websites. By using URL shortening services like Bit.ly, I got the freedom of adding few more words to my messages especially on Twitter.
10. RoboForm
I use RoboForm for Automatic form fill ups on lots of directories, websites, forums and blogs where I need to fill in the same information quite often like Name, Email Address, First and Last Name, Password etc.
These were my top 10 blogging tools I use quite often in my daily routine. I would like you guys as well share your top 10 blogging tools that you use while doing blogging (or in general) in the comments section below.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Great list Anil!
I use:
Google Analytics
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
Google Reader
Aweber
Kindest,
Nabeel
The only problem with MS Paint is that it will ruin the quality of the image once it does the conversion or when you save the file. I personally use Irfanview, very easy to use, and it is free
I highly recommend it when you go to save a photo.
Till then,
Jean
I use Google Analytics, Adwords, and SEO for Firefox. I’ve heard of most of the others, but don’t use them all the time.
I use some of these, but have not heard of some of the others. Thanks for this post. I will look into the methods I am not currently using.
I am addicted to Firefox add ons so this post is going to be very time consuming for me, haha. I am def checking out the Fastest Fox Firefox add-on.
If you listed Visual SVN as “free”, then why not Re Sharper? Jet Brains also offers free licenses to open source projects and Microsoft MVP I believe.
not a big fan of Ms Paint but the others are great!
I’m glad you pointed out that having all the features going isn’t necessarily a good idea Darren as I’ve seen many that have done so and it has been to their disadvantage.
I’m addicted to Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Feedburner the most.
Ohh,, jee… MS Paint is quite old but try looking for some alternative with it.
Hmph, well nothing new here, but a solid list of reliable tools for any blogger.
On a different note, lol @ MS Paint. I was a Comp Sci. major in school and it always stuck me as funny that people not so inclined with computer use severely underestimated the value of MS Paint. Meanwhile, all us CS majors loved it for its powerful simplicity and tended to look down on a lot of the fancier programs, lol.
–Alden