There are some really cool things you can do to really make a good blog work for you. Depending on what you are in the blogging business for, whether it be for money, recognition, news writing, journaling; there are a lot of features that can help you understand your blog and make it work for you. Some of the cool features I think are pretty cool are as follows:

Add Google Analytics to your blog. If you are wanting to track your visitors and to find your target audience this is a must. Andy Wibbels has a simple walk through to help you to understand how to add code to your blog for Google Analytics and to see if it works. Very simple.

Appearance, some have said, is everything. If you are going to want to get traffic to your blog it is important to have a good eye appeal. Though there are many websites out there for free blog templates , some of them want to add things to your blog that take away its appeal like their own adsense. Final Sense has a plethora of templates that are sure to fit into your lifestyle.

Some might argue against AdSense, but I think overall it depends on what you are trying to do with your blog. Do you want to generate money on themes that have to do with your topic or product. It can also bring some amount of credibility, if for instance you are a computer maintenance man and you have some ads by NewEgg and Tigerdirect, or Best Buy. Within blogger itself you can ad AdSense and it doesn't cost you a dime and if you are bringing in traffic, the money will come with the traffic.

Another tool that you can use to find out what will attract people to your website is to check out what they are searching for and put the kind of content that people are searching for onto your blog. Google Trends is one way to find out what people are searching for and to bring traffic to your blog.

One of the things that some people may not realize is how these search engines put you at the top of their search engine. By using keywords and key phrases throughout your blog that are relevant to a certain topic, this will put Google, or other search engines that work by the amount of keywords or key phrases that are put into your blog or website. Even when you change the name of an image that you upload to your blog by adding the same keyword or phrase to the image, this will cause you to stand out on a search engine. It is important to be specific here, because the more specific you become, the more of a unique slant that you have in these phrases the more traffic you will have. If you put a word in there like free downloads, you will only hit major sites, that have major downloads or those that have paid for that service. It's important to put something down about your specific subject. An example of this might be: free business software downloads Microsoft, or something along those lines.

Blogs are constantly being made and any tips and tricks that you can glean from any source can be valuable. An important key also I think is to check out as many blogs as you can and see what they are doing. Looking for ways to improve your blog will cause you to have a better blog and a blog to remember.