Blogging tools play a big part in your blogging success.
Are you after the best blogging tools to build or improve your blog?
A decade ago it was easy to choose your blog’s theme or plugin to solve a particular blogging problem because of the limited options available. However, the blogging industry has grown dramatically in the last few years so the option of blogging tools.
It is quite a daunting task now to pick any of the following blogging resources to get on with blogging instead keep figuring out the best resource or a tool.
- Best learning resources to improve your blogging
- Top tools to conduct keyword research
- Tried & tested blog building tools
I have recorded all the tools, which helped me to concentrate on blogging on this page. I hope these resources will save you a substantial amount of time in research and choose your blogging tools quickly to focus on creating content.
Let’s get started!
Learning
Lifelong learning is the fuel of your blogging. The better the fuel, the greater the output of your content will be. Following are my favourite sources for learning about blogging, which I have categorised in important blog learning sections.
Business ideas
- Seth Godin: Seth’s been blogging every day since 1995, You can learn a lot from a person with such massive experience in this industry. He should be your go-to if you are looking for inspiration or ideas.
- Brian Clark: Brian Clark is the founder of Copyblogger, he has built 3 successful businesses only through online marketing. If you are looking for some motivation to start blogging, Brain is the right person.
- Darren Rowse: Darren Rowse is another great blogger, speaker, entrepreneur and founder of several blogs including Problogger. He has been blogging since 2002, so there are a lot of things you can learn from his experience.
Copywriting
- Copyblogger: Copyblogger can be an immediate go-to if you want to learn copywriting. As the name suggests, they offer to teach you the basics of copywriting. It is one of our absolute favourites.
- Copyhackers: Copyhackers is primarily run by Joanna Wiebe. She offers amazing tips, articles, courses and books, all of which are focused on learning copywriting professionally.
- Awai: This blog offers detailed copywriting knowledge and experience. A few of the best copywriters of the time contribute to this blog which makes it very diverse in what it has to offer.
Promotion
SEO
- Neil Patel: Neil is a very well-known digital marketing guru. He has written some of the best and detailed guides about different SEO techniques and is a great source to learn SEO from.
- MOZ: Moz is another great source to learn SEO from. It is one of the most trusted sources and SEO beginner’s go-to. It has detailed and high-quality content with great tips to offer.
- Backlinko: Backlinko is run by the great Brian Dean. It offers a little more advanced SEO techniques and is basically focused on strategies used for earning backlinks for your blog/website. It is one of the most authoritative sites for learning SEO.
- Mail Chimp: Mail chimp is known as the leader in the email marketing world. They have great advice to master your email marketing game and they also offer a lot of tips and tools to help you with it.
- Campaign Monitor: Campaign Monitor is a fairly popular blog for email marketing. Apart from selling marketing solutions, they run a brilliant blog as well.
- GetResponse: They are firm believers of the fact that email marketing is not only for big brands but also a very effective strategy for small businesses. They offer great articles and advice on growing your business through email marketing.
Facebook ads
- Social Media Examiner: Social media examiner is focused on social media strategies used to promote your business. They offer a number of articles ranging from guides and how-tos. It is especially useful for learning Facebook marketing.
- HubSpot: Hubspot is another infamous blog in the world of digital marketing. You can learn a lot about how to utilize social media, especially Facebook to increase your traffic from this blog.
- Neil Patel: Again, Neil Patel is a marketing guru and he has written exclusive guides on how to use social media for marketing including best practices of Facebook marketing.
Collaborations
Internet is built on links and connections is the biggest power of the Internet. The true power of blogging also lies in connecting with fellow bloggers & growing together.
Here are the best ways to get the most out of your blogging using the power of blog collaborations.
- Submit a guest blog
- Interview an influencer or fellow blogger in your niche
- Site other blogger’s work to support your points
- Give shout-outs to other bloggers for their best work
- Find an accountability blogger
Research
Keyword research can make or break your blog. Following are our top three resources when it comes to doing keyword research before creating your blog content:
- Ahref: Ahrefs is a very popular tool for research. It is basically a tool for SEO analysis. It’s a free tool but if you’re interested in exploring even better features, there’s a premium version as well.
- SEMrush: SEMrush is a similar tool that will help you in keyword research and other SEO research purposes. You are entitled to limited functionality in its free version and you can always purchase the paid version.
- Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest was founded by Mike Kamo, but has been recently acquired by Neil Patel who has greatly increased its functionality. It is an SEO tool specialized in generating new keyword ideas.
All of these tools are used for similar purposes i-e research and SEO audit and they all come in both free and paid versions.
Building a blog
1. Domain name resource
Buying a domain is an important step and there are many good domain registrars out there but our top 3 picks would be:
- GoDaddy: Godaddy is one of the leading web hosting and domain registrar companies in the world at the moment and our personal favourite as well.
- Domain.com: Domain.com is another very popular and reliable domain registering company. It is an excellent alternative to Godaddy.
- Google domains: As the name suggests, Google Domains is a domain registrar operator by Google.
All of these domain resources are reliable and safe. They offer almost similar services and procedures to buy a domain name. However, they vary monetarily.
2. Hosting providers
There are different types of hosting but shared hosting is by far the most popular one. Following are the best hosting providers according to us:
- SiteGround: Siteground is not only the most well-known hosting provider but also officially recommended by WordPress. It comes with a lot of features especially an excellent speed.
- Blue Host: Blue host is currently hosting over 2 million websites and is also recommended by WordPress. It is extremely reliable and comes with a 24/7 customer support service.
- Dream Host: Dream host is another great hosting provider which has its own features along with a great technical support team.
3. WordPress
WordPress has emerged as one of the best Content Management Systems (CMS) but it started as a blogging platform and is still massively popular and used for that purpose.
It saves you from all the trouble of going through coding and technical skills to start a blog. Let’s take a look at the best features of WordPress that can be effectively used for blogging.
4. Best themes
Themes are used to customize or enhance the appearance of your blog. Your blog is just like a first impression so it’s very important that it leaves a good impression on the visitor and is visually appealing. Themes not only makes your website attractive but can also increase the functionality.
There is an ocean of themes out there and they come in various categories including free and premium themes. Out of all these themes, the following 3 are our personal favourites:
- Newspaper: Newspaper is an elegant theme for blogs. It is very much customizable, SEO friendly and easy to use.
- Genesis Framework: Genesis framework is the second most popular theme used worldwide. It gives you the option of choosing other themes called child themes. It is loved by developers as it is easy to use, and SEO and mobile-friendly.
- DIVI: DIVI is another great theme that can be used with blogs. It is completely customizable. It is a powerful theme with great graphics and page builders.
5. Best plugins
A plugin is very similar to a mobile application, it increases the functionality of your site or in other words, it can add more features and functions to your website.
There is a saying that there is nothing like too many plugins and there is a plugin for everything and we agree. Here’s a list of plugins that are a must-have for your blog.
- Yoast SEO: It is the most popular and one of the best SEO plugins at present. It is very flexible and offers a number of functions.
- Akismet: Akismet is an anti-spam plugin that is also a must-have for blogs as it blocks spam especially through comments, trackbacks and contact forms. It can save you a lot of time.
- Sucuri: The security of a website or blog can not be ignored. For that, Sucuri is a great plugin. It provides automatic security features. It also makes you sure that you receive legitimate traffic.
- WP Smush: WP Smush is used for optimizing images that you have on your blog. It serves the purpose of faster loading and better UX without compromising on the quality of the image.
- WP Forms: You often need a contact form on your blog and for that WP forms is the most friendly plugin available. It has built-in templates and is also very much customizable.
- Sassy Social Share: It is one of the best social media plugins With this, you can share your content over various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Instagram and so on with just one click.
Even though there is no limit to how many plugins you can or you should install, don’t overburden your blog with too many plugins. Choosing the right plugins is very important as they can make your blogging life very easy but make sure to uninstall the one’s no longer in use otherwise update them regularly to avoid security issues.
6. Best blog management solutions
Blogging is not only about writing and publishing your blog, managing and maintaining it is fairly an important step as well. Some of the best tools to manage your blog in the most efficient way possible are listed below:
- Google docs: There are many similar word processors available that can be used for writing purposes but Google docs is a personal favourite. It is extremely easy to use and offers a lot of features that make your work super easy. It allows you to access these documents from any device.
- Trello: Trello is another management and collaboration tool that can help you simplify your work. It’s like a whiteboard where everything can be displayed, shared and tracked for the record. You can add your blog post ideas to it.
- Loom: Loom is a screen recording tool. You can record your screen and share it with your team, it is an excellent alternative to long live/virtual meetings and emails.
- Lightshot: Lightshot is a screenshot tool for Mac and Windows. You can add it as an extension and take a screenshot of any selected area on the screen and share it immediately with the team by copy/pasting and sharing with a link.
- Grammarly: As the name suggests, it is a writing assistance tool. It greatly helps with reducing the chances of grammatical, spelling and other writing errors. It comes in both free and premium versions.
- Canva: Canva is an excellent tool that can be used for finding or creating custom images It is also very convenient to use as it comes with a lot of templates that you can customize according to your preference. It is free but has a paid version as well.
- Hemingway: Hemingway app is basically an editing tool that can greatly help you fine-tune your writing. It further helps you improve by pointing out and suggesting replacements for complicated sentence structures, repetitive words, weak phrases and so on.
- Headline analyzer: This is another great tool that will not only help you with writing but with SEO optimization as well. You can enter a title or head here and it gives you a score, anything above 20% is considered to be good enough.
- Google Calendar: Google calendar can easily be repurposed as an editorial calendar which is a must when creating and writing a blog.
- Google Analytics: It is a Google’s tool that helps you track and report your website traffic and measure your advertising ROI.
Happy blogging!
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