Keeping track of your blog traffic

You might have noticed in my reviews that I criticize bloggers for not having some sort of way to track traffic to their blogs like a site meter or some other service. Depending on your reasons for blogging, it might not matter that much to you who is visiting your blog. You might just be blogging as an outlet for your creativity or a way to keep in touch with family or friends, maybe you use it for a true journal or open diary and you really don't care who reads it. In these cases it is fine not to bother with a sitemeter, but if you want to improve your blog traffic and search engine placements then you are going to want to subscribe to a service like www.sitemeter.com or www.mybloglog.com . These services offer you a ton of information about blog traffic that is coming into and out of your blog. It can tell you what words people are using in search engines to find your blog or who might be linking to you without your knowledge. I edit a pest control information blog called Pest Control Info and I use my site meter to see what my readers "googled" to find my blog and then I write an article about that topic. Chances are if one person is looking up "bees" then there are plenty of others who might want the same info. So I think these blog tools are important to add to you blog and they are easy to add. Nothing wrong with the bragging rights that goes along with having a popular blog either. Happy blogging!