Website Grader runs a quick analysis of your blog, its content, and how it is optimized for the search engines and social media. For starters, it tells you what your blog’s score is, so you have an idea where you are and where you need to get to. It also shows you the links and mentions that you are getting from top social networking websites (as well as the number of backlinks based on Google’s numbers).

While this tool does not give you detailed steps to optimize your website for the search engines, it does give you some high level information about ways you can improve the structure of your blog. For instance, it tells you if you have too many images on your blog or when you are missing alt tags or header tags.

I also like the fact that the service gives recommendations on how to get started with social media. It tells you your Twitter grade, Google Buzz count, and delicious bookmarks. If you have not taken time to promote your blog with those services, now’s the time.

Website Grader (the free version) is not designed to give you a complete overview of what you need to do to take your blog to the next level. But it does give you some starting place. The rest is up to you. Of course, you can always sign up for the paid version of HubSpot software to get even more information on how to optimize your blog. You can’t do it all overnight, but everybody has to start somewhere.

There are plenty of ways to get a logo for your blog. You can always design one for yourself though I wouldn’t recommend it if you are not a designer. You can use a DIY logo service to design a generic logo for your blog. Or you can use a custom-designed logo to set yourself apart from everyone else. Your budget may dictate the option that works for your business, but you should never think of your logo costs as expenses but rather as a long-term investment. With that in mind, here are 3 cool blog logo design services that make things easy:

LogoYes: an innovative service that lets you design your own logo from generic images. It’s so easy to get a handle on, and you’d be surprised how many professional looking logos you can come up with this service. You also get the files you need to make further changes, if that’s what you prefer.

LogoMaker: another innovative do it yourself logo service that makes it easy to design a logo for your blog fast. You can choose symbols, letters, or images to base your logo on. You can always download your files and customize them later.

LogoWorks: if you are not too content with DIY logo services out there, LogoWorks is a great place to get your logo designed by professional designers. These are a bit more pricey, but the quality is top notch. You are in control as you can go through concepts provided to you to choose the logo that works the best for your business. Great investment for your business.

There are plenty of other services out there that you can try. I have used the above three services for my own blogs, and I couldn’t be happier for them. The service I use really depends on my goals for the blog I intend to use the logo on. If it’s just a hobby blog, I probably use a cheaper logo whereas if I have grand plans for a blog, I don’t hesitate to spend more money up-front. So your choice will depend on your situation. But the above companies do deliver a good service and don’t cost too much money. Who says the logo design process can’t be smooth?

Whether you are a beginner blogger or a professional blogger looking to gain more exposure on the web, you need a place to shine. There are literally hundreds of communities that bloggers can take advantage of to practice their skills and gain more exposure. BloggersBase is a cool Web 2.0 community that is helping many bloggers take their game to the next level. BloggersBase is an online magazine that gives bloggers an equal and fair chance to be a contributing and influencing member. You can join the community for free and get started with blogging fast.

BloggersBase is like a blogging challenge. You write posts and nuggets for a chance to write for the main blog. Your blogs are shown to influential community members and are going to get ranked based on various factors. You start as a newbie and have to work your way towards gaining Scholar status. Here is the order:

• Newbie
  
• Scribe
  
• Penman
  
• Composer
  
• Essayist
  
• Columnist
  
• Author
• Wordsmith
  
• Scholar

You can also gain a lot of influence in the community by participating and reading others’ works. Your goal is to become an Oracle in the community. You can do that by providing unbiased feedback on comments and posts.

Once you join BloggersBase, you are going to see the above page. You can find your reader and writer ranking on this very page. You have a few options here. You can add a regular posts by clicking on the add a post link. You may also want to import your RSS feed from your external blog. The community tab allows you to keep track of the latest development in the community. The personal info page makes it easy to add your bio information and even include your personal blog.

The preferences tab is where you can import your external blogs into the system. You can also set the number of comments, posts in blog, and comment threshold.

So what’s in it for you?

You can win cool prizes each and every week by becoming a top writer for BloggersBase. But more importantly, you can share your work with top readers in the community and drive traffic to your external website. And you are going to get a lot of practice and have to up your game to make it as the top blogger in your category. Overall, BloggersBase is the ultimate testing ground for aspiring bloggers and journalists. If you want to be a top blogger, what better way to achieve your goals than going ahead to ahead against other top bloggers!

Good luck!

If you haven’t heard of HitTail before, it is a graphical analytics tool that is made for people who are not necessarily into crunching numbers but would like to track how searchers get to their sites. But what people miss about this excellent service is the fact that you can use it to find ideas for your future blog posts. Take the example below for instance:

This is what HitTail shows me for a tech blog that I have been running for quite some time. It tell me that tech deals or western digital hard drives are the main area of interest for my readers. So if I am a smart blogger, I try to stay on topics that interest my readers. This is very useful if you are stuck and don’t know what to blog about. By knowing exactly what you need to go after, you can save yourself time and spend more of it on research and development.

Another very useful feature that HitTail has is graphs that you can get for your longtail keywords and top ten keywords. You can get the graphical representations for all search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN (see below).

These graphs not only show you what the hottest keywords are on your blog, they can also give you an idea how to use longtailing more effectively. Longtailing SEO is very underrated these days but with the low level of competition out there, you should definitely take advantage.

HitTail is very affordable and does cost about $99.95 a year for their introductory service. If you want to get really deep within your data, you can pay them about $300 a year to get features such as “organic vs. paid” searches and adwords integration. But this service has been so useful in generating ideas for me that even at $300 a year, it is a steal.

A few weeks ago, I heard about the start of the highly popular 30 day challenge program by Ed Dale and co. If you are not familiar with the 30 day challenge, Ed Dale and his colleagues try to teach you how to make money online in less than 30 days. You won’t be making a million, but the goal is to make your first 10 bucks. I thought the program started on a high. The training material about Google Reader and Twitter is great, and I still recommend you looking at them here. You simply get familiar with a few must know marketing concepts such as SEO, Web 2.0 services, and social bookmarking. So I do give the initial few days of the challenge two thumbs up.

But in the last few days, I have been disturbed by how the emphasis has become on trying to use blogging and the social media to push “waste content.” I am sure many marketers make money on the web by running automated WordPress blogs and SEOptimized Squidoo pages. But I personally don’t see any benefit in rehashing content and pushing them on to the Web just to make a quick bucks. I know Ed may have made decent money on the web, but I am not too sure he is made it with the approach he is suggesting in his videos. At the same time, rehashing content is pretty much the same as creating waste content, and that is not good for the Web. Just like with the nature, you can ruin the Web by introducing toxic wastes to it, and that’s how I feel about rehashed content.

Think about it. You go to the Web, searching for the word ‘Vintage Electric Guitar,” hoping to find a useful article on the topic. What you get is a bunch of sites that are search engine optimized but provide absolutely no value whatsoever. That’s what I call waste content. I think the program has a huge potential, and I am sure there are many of you other there who feel Ed’s approach is absolutely acceptable as long as you are making money. I personally don’t feel that way (and I have nothing against Ed as I barely know the gentleman).

The moral of story is, creating true value for your readers is a tactic that will absolutely work no matter what Google is doing with its algorithm. If you write content that others want to consume, there is a good chance that you won’t be slapped by Google. At the same time, you can develop a group of loyal readers that will come to you no matter what Google does. It really comes down to what you want to do with your online business: would you rather make a few bucks in a short time or build a long-term profitable business? I’d rather do the latter.