Any blogger wants to know: am I reaching people?  Who am I reaching?  These are especially important statistics once you decide to optimize your site for search engines.  You want to know who your visitors are and how they are getting to your site.

There are several different tracking tools that you can use for your blog.

• Google Analytics – very comprehensive and free
• Stat Counter – has free features and advanced features you can pay for
• MyBlogLog – free; a Yahoo! service

Tracking your blog’s statistics is a great strategy.  You can tell how effective (or ineffective) your SEO is, and you can fine tune your keywords.

Some of these resources also help you see what browser your visitors are using.  This information can help you design your layout.  A layout can look different from browser to browser (some browsers don’t support certain features).

And you can see your visitors’ bounce rate.  You’ll be able to see how long visitors are staying on your page and whether they are clicking through the rest of your website, or leaving really quickly.

These are only some of the features that a statistics tracker can provide you with.  Check out some of the trackers listed and see which one works best for you.  Personally, I use Google Analytics and the information it provides for free is incredibly thorough.  But check out some of the other websites to decide what fits best for you.