Blogging is incomplete without using Google and its tools and services. Not only Google provides you organic searches for your blog, or used for searching your query and images, but there are many things which we don`t know about the Google. Even if you know about them, I am sure you would not have used it properly and effectively.Google tools and services for websites not only improve site performance but it also gives you better knowledge about your own site.

Do you use Technorati, alexa or yahoo answer to choose your next article`s title? Do you use various sites like Hitstats, Statpress etc. for keeping the record of the visitors on your site? Why to go for millions of the site when giant Google.com serves you all at one place. Yes, Google have full drum of services, easy to use and absolutely free. Let’s check it out

1. Google Alert:

Does it sounds new? Google alerts is a special tool for the blogger which allows getting the alert of the latest and popular mailed to your email address. It monitors the web according to your query and keeps you update about that particular topic/query. It’s a best way to keep an eye on your competitors on web related to your niche.

More Handy Features:

• Google Alert is flexible tool as you can manage the number of mails per day, number of results, type of results such as news, blogs, Videos, Discussions etc.
• It’s very easy to remove that alert.
• You can create multiple alerts for different queries.

How It Helps:

Suppose, you have just started blogging and chosen cars as your niche for the blog. Now you have to update yourself everyday because everyday a new car is launched. You may go for news paper, car companies sites and many other blogs. Why not just stick to Google alerts and get all done? Just write “Latest Cars” in Google Alert Search Query and forget about visiting hundred of blogs.

2. Google Trends

Internet is used worldwide and it’s quite possible what you are writing is not in trends and you get a mere response. Don’t blame your article, it’s all because you have not used Google Trends which keeps you update about what people are searching for and where it’s most searched.Ah! Google Trends, my day is incomplete until I use this tool.

Few handy Features:

• Easy To Use: Google Trends can be used by a newbie and actually this is made for the newbie users who find difficulties in choosing a topic.
• Hot Searches: You also get the hint of the top 10 queries of the day in the bottom of the Google trends which are fast rising and in trends.

How It Helps:

There are many uses of Google Trends; I use it mostly for getting an insight of the search queries. It helps me decide whether writing about it going to help me or not. Suppose, I choose “Samsung Galaxy S3” as a topic and I searched for it to know whether it is in trends or not? See the Image below showing me the graph of the searches related to that.

Google Trends Graph

The Graph has now cleared my all doubts of choosing this topic.Know More

3. Blog Search

Blog search is nothing new than searching, but it will show you the latest blogs related to your search queries. Blog search display a list of the latest post along with the time when it go live.

How It Helps:

If you have finally chosen a topic to write on from the above tools then the next task is to get some stuff related to that. It’s never good to right like a lame writer. You must get some updates from other blogs as your knowledge will increase and you will be able to write more easily.

Blog Search is a nice tool for those who write about the trending stuff and it gives you a hint of what to write and how to write. (Don`t worry its not copying, you are just getting few hints).I searched for the keyword “Mother`s Day Gifts”.

Blog Search Screenshot

4. Google Analytics:

This tool is made for keeping a hold on your site visitors and posts which are mostly viewed, organic searches, direct traffic, etc. In short it is the best tools access the stats of your website. If you are using blogger.com, then you can see the traffic of your blog within the dashboard but if you use wordpress, then analytics is must. This tool is free but I don`t think there is any paid tool better than this one. I have explored many things about the analytics like

• You can access the AdSense details for your particular site.
• You can even control the AdWords from the analytics.
•  You can check the Speed of your site.
• In case of E-commerce sites, you can check stats related to that e.g. number of affiliate clicks, number of transactions, time of purchase etc.

If you want to know more about that you can follow the official analytics blog and you can setup your own analytics for website.

How it helps:

I visit analytics after every two hours to check the number of views and most read content of the blog. The location of the visitors and duration of reading on the site gives me an idea about how much my content is liked by the reader.

5. Google Webmasters

This tool is also one of the essential tools. Unlike, analytics this Google tool is used to a record of the number of pages indexed in web searches, site health, malware detections, HTML problems, Crawler access to your site, keyword position in search results. The one thing that makes it unique is that it gives you, your site`s search impact due to Google+ button. You can even sync webmaster tool with analytics.

How it helps:

Webmaster gives me the report of the number of broken links and the number of URLs which are not found and already indexed. I get insight about the number of backlinks along with the site where it is generated.

6. Google FeedBurner

Feeds are important in terms of generating a handsome traffic and making site reader friendly. There are many sites which are generating most of the traffics from the feeds. Google FeedBurner is a tool that burns your feed and gives user an option to read in various readers online as well as offline. It also allows you to create an Email-Subscription for your site. According to this a user can get all the updates in his Inbox. You can manage your subscriptions and can see the stats related to the subscriptions, Feed counts etc.

How it helps you:

I have seen many bloggers, using feedburner but one mistake that most of the bloggers do is that, they never give importance to their subscribers and email-subscriptions. Email subscriptions are marked as an important element to increase the readers to the site. You must add a Subscription Form on your site (I recommend you to add that at the end of the post instead of the sidebar) and make some changes in the default form to make it attractive. You can manage the Email Subscriptions settings under “Publicize> Email Subscriptions” in the feedburner.

Another attractive thing about feedburner is that, you can show ads between the feeds to earn more from AdSense.See my feeds as an example.

At Last

This article though long but very useful for the bloggers who spend hours searching a tool for analytics, sitemap insight etc.I tried to add important tools in this post.I recommend you to use them because its given by Google and with it you are provided bulk of information at the official site of each tool.You can even ask your queries at Google forums.You can also check another tool- DFP small business for ad management.