If you write content
for various online blogs and publications, be sure to use your Google+
profile to claim authorship of each piece of content you write. Also,
regardless of whether you own a website or not, sign up for Google
Webmaster Tools using the same Google account as your Google+ profile.
This will allow you to see analytics data for the posts linked to
your Google+ profile, including impressions in search, click through
rates, and more. Just look under the Labs menu for
Author Stats!
Since you generally can’t get analytics
data for the content you write on sites other than your own, this can
give you a little insight on the popularity of your content in search.