In this article, I will provide some recommended blogging tools & resources you can use to stay ahead in terms of both innovation and optimization techniques.

The first item on this list of recommended blogging tools & resources is SEO Radio. While this tool isn't specifically for blogs, it is an excellent resource from search engine optimization expert Brad Fallon that will help you understand how to optimize your blog for search engines. You can find out more at http://www.seoradio.com/.

The second item on this list of recommended blogging tools & resources is CARP (http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/), which is not specifically for blogs, but can be used in conjunction with blogs to provide RSS feeds, which will increase your search engine rankings and provide visitors with useful links.

Another item from this list of recommended blogging tools & resources you can use to keep abreast with your competitors is Google's blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com/), which will allow you to find all of your competitors, so you can analyze their traffic generation methods. You will also want to see what new ideas they have implemented for retaining visitors.

Another resource you will want to consider from this list of recommended blogging tools & resources is http://www.vilesilencer.com which offers a list of blogging directories and RSS directories to which you can submit your blog. You will also want to check out searchengineworld.com and warriorforum.com/forum for marketing and optimization tips.

The last items you will want to consider on this list of recommended blogging tools & resources lists are actually blogging programs themselves. If you already own a site and want to integrate a blog, you should consider using a more complex, fully-functional program, such as Word Press (which you can use for free), rather than something like Blogger, which is easy to use, but will not offer a lot of frills. You can download Word Press here: http://wordpress.org/.