If you want a successful blog, you need traffic. If you want traffic you need to understand how search engines relate to you as well as your competitors.

Although many of these sites require that you have your own URL, e.g. blogwell.com instead of blogwell.wordpress.com, all of them offer lots of other useful information. Best of all – they are free.

Google Analytics ^[1]

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors find you and how they interact with your site.

Note: You need to add code to your blog for this to work. Some blogging platforms don’t allow you to add code e.g. Wordpress.com.

Domain Tools ^[2]

Domain Tools is a place for every type of diagnostic widget related to domain names. You need a basic understanding of technology, it has tons of information and you will learn a lot.

SE Spider ^[3]

Just type in your URL and SE Spider will show you how search engines see your site.

SE Inspector ^[4]

Type in your URL or a keyword and SE-Inspector will analyze them for you

SE Check ^[5]

SE Check shows you where you which pages are indexed on Google, Yahoo, WiseNut, Teoma, and MSN. It also allows you to submit your site to the search engines or directories where you are not showing up.

Webmaster Guidelines for the three major search engines:

Googles Webmaster Central

Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines

Live Guidelines for Successful Indexing

Tips for Wordpress Blogs:

Favorite Wordpress Tricks and Plugins ^[6] by Jeremy Schoemaker. ^[7]

Make Wordpress Search Engine Friendly ^[8] by Michael Gray ^[9]
Concise, four and a half minute video

The official Wordpress.org ^[10]blog

Tips for Blogger Blogs:

blogger tricks by Peter Chen ^[11]
The official Buzz Blogger ^[12] blog

Tips for TypePad Blogs:

How to build a better blog – Typepad tips ^[13] by The Blog Squad

The official Everything Typepad ^[14]weblog