All bloggers want to know where they rank in the blogosphere and in search engines. Is your blog growing? Are people reading your content? Are you getting natural backlinks? About once a week you should do a little research to find out, because there’s nothing worse than working hard on a blog or web site without knowing you’re consistently making progress.

5 Key Google Analytics to Watch for Blog Progress

Here’s installment #1 in the Tracking Your Blog’s Progress series. I’ll show you five specific things that you should be watching for in your google analytics web site statistics over the long haul. Tracking these items will help you follow blog growth in the best (and worst) areas.

AddThis has Bookmark Analytics

In Installment #2 of Tracking Your Blog’s Progress we’ll talk about how to figure out how many people are bookmarking your site using the AddThis service.

Tracking Sitemap Changes for SERP Pages

For installment #3 we’re going to talk about your blog XML Sitemap, including why you should have one, what they do, how to read yours, and making sure that your sitemap contains everything necessary to get your pages indexed right in search. If you’re not doing the right things your entire blog could be sent to google’s “supplemental index hell” without you even knowing about it. This installment is an essential regular part of “tracking your blog’s progress”!

Increase Traffic with MSN, Yahoo!, and Google!

In installment #4 I’m going to tell you what to do with your XML sitemap now that you have it ready to go, and we’re going to make sure that you are getting indexed in google, Yahoo!, and MSN Live Search every time you post or update your blog. Each of the the 3 major search engines has a “webmaster console” for you to register your url and xml sitemap with – make sure that your blog is setup for maximum indexing and traffic!