Introduction
There are more than 600 million blogs on the internet with thousands of blogs published every day.
Starting a blogging website is a great idea to drive traffic, and better leads, and one of the top forms to implement content strategies. You can build a new customer base by reaching readers with fresh content about products or services. Content marketing aids in brand awareness and keeps you on top of mind, email marketing, and social media promotion drive genuine search traffic to the website.
Writers can start a blog page for general and technical niche-based industries. This can be about travelling, marketing strategies, crafts, mobile applications, and anything that interests you. As you can observe, unlike in former times you can add videos, images, audio, and animations to the blogs that provide clear information to readers.
For example
You can start a blog page explaining your products or your travel experiences around the world. Both these websites attract users from different sectors to learn more information.
Developing a blog website is a limitless process where you can experiment with new elements every time. It includes picking a niche, finding topics for blogs, website layouts, page design, and more. After good research and writing, you need to pick a blogging platform to publish your blogs which is an essential part of creating a blog website.
How Do I Choose a Platform for My Blog?
Choosing a blogging platform is an overwhelming process, particularly for newbies. Every blog website’s purpose is different as few writers give priority to visuals and others to text content. So, you need to choose the right blogging platform, and here are a few questions to ask yourself before picking one.
What is the Purpose of Your Blog Website?
Evaluate the purpose of your blog which can be a hobby, boost website traffic, improve quality leads, and more. Your blog website goals will help you define the functionalities checklist that you need to look out for while choosing a blogging platform.
What Will You Write In the Blog?
Decide your blog niche and the kind of topics you want to cover in your blog. It is advisable to start with the topics you are comfortable with and be specific about what you want to import into the article. With a huge blogging website, you find tough competition in both general and technical topics. So, try to create your own style of writing, speak with numbers, and have a sequence in sections to drive readers.
Who Are Your Target Audiences?
Do research on who are your target audiences? Are you providing specific information to attract them? Have a clear idea about your target audiences as the writing style, content types, and topics to cover depend on the intended audiences you want to reach. You can ask this question whenever you add a new product or service on a website or topic for the blog. Bloggers can market content with push notifications to reach targeted readers and have high website engagement.
How Frequently Should You Post On a Blog?
Websites can post blogs weekly, daily, or monthly. This completely depends upon the business niche.
For example, a news & entertainment blog site needs to publish posts daily to stay updated with the information. But whereas a product or service-based website can post two to four times weekly to attract audiences.
As a beginner with limited resources and time, posting twice a week is a very good start. Occasional postings with more quality content than frequently can also drive more audiences and attain stable rankings in search engines.
How Will You Promote Your Blog?
Everything is ready, now the question is what is the plan for taking your blog to the audience. Your content is great but it solely can’t bring readers to land directly on the page because of the competition. So, you need to have a plan to promote your blog and build a consistent readers base. In this digital era, you can find many ways to reach audiences using social networks, link building, reaching influencers, answering in forums, and many more.
Common Features You Need to Look in Blogging Platform
Check for every possible feature of a blogging platform as they impact website performance. Here is the list of features that you need to consider before choosing a blogging platform.
Themes & Templates
A reader’s first impression of a blogging website is very important in building a relationship. With themes and template features in your blogging platform, you can customize the website easily and quickly.
If you are planning for a content blogging website specifically then you need to have various themes and templates. The below list is for checking themes and template factors in blogging platforms.
- Whether the themes and templates are flexible to change.
- Does the platform update themes regularly?
- Do they have free and premium templates so you can maintain your budget?
- Check for the minimum price and features of premium themes.
- Can you edit the themes and customize your own layout for the blog?
Content Editor
Every website with content or visual representation should have an effective content editor. As a blogger, you are always updating old or adding new blogs. So, you need to check for all the necessary features of a content editor in a blogging platform.
Check for the basic functionalities like
- Easy image or video upload, move content, organize structure and text format.
- Automatically save the content of the blog.
- Drag and drop blocks to add in the content.
- Flexible in changing the typography and colour settings of a block.
Plugins Integration
The plugins extend and expand the functionality of your blogging platform. It helps in writing more effective content that attracts your readers. You can find thousands of plugins for every feature like SEO, content optimization, blog page navigation, and many more.
Choose blogging platforms that are flexible to install, update and configure plugins. Integration of plugins is strongly preferred because you can’t migrate to other platforms whenever you need a new feature.
SEO Features and Tools
Attracting readers without attaining good positions in the search engine results is a dead end. So, bloggers have to optimize the content for search engines. Check for the in-built SEO feature in the blogging platform.
If it’s not the case then check whether you can integrate third-party SEO tools or plugins that help you in optimizing content.
Scalability
It is beneficial to choose the platform that grows with your blog. We all start a blog website with a simple idea but our idea may change in the future with blog development. In this case, changing the blogging platform with new needs is a tedious task.
For example, you have started a blog and managed to bring good website traffic. In this case, changing the blogging platform that supports ads is challenging.
Cost of Blogging Platform
Cost can be a significant factor for beginner bloggers. There are quite a few blogging platforms that are free to use with all the necessary features. But if you can see a good flow of income to the business you can choose a premium blogging platform that provides advanced features.
Remember that just because you are buying a premium version doesn’t mean it is better than the free version and vice versa. Every blogging website has different requirements which may be available in free or paid versions. So, check for the features in both free and premium versions of a blogging platform and choose the best one.
Easy To Use
Choose a blogging platform that has a low learning curve and is easy to set up. Check your technical and coding skills and choose the platform that is right for you. If you are a newbie, you can’t invest much time in learning the platform rather than blog titles, audiences, and more.
Best Blogging Platforms 2023
Here are some of the best paid and free blogging platforms that can meet your needs and budget. Let’s check them out by observing both pros and cons.
WordPress is a free and easy open-source content management system (CMS) that helps you in building websites without any coding skills. You can build a powerful blogging website with a free version but can also access the premium for more updates. Bloggers can install, use and customize it in the future for free.
What are pros and cons of WordPress?
Advantages
- Less expensive blogging platform with all advanced features.
- Countless professional themes and templates for websites.
- Bloggers can find a simplified content creation.
- You can find a wide range of free plugins over 59,000.
- SEO-friendly blogging platform that helps you in reaching readers.
- With WordPress your blogging websites are mobile-friendly.
Disadvantages
- Bloggers should update plugins and themes regularly to avoid website crashes.
- Being an open-source there is a high chance of data breach.
- Updating the core code is quite a task for non-developers.
Wix
Wix is one of the best options to start your blogging website from scratch for free. The blogging platform includes drag and drops design features, SEO tools, analytics, and more. You just need to answer a quick questionnaire and your blog design is ready with editable themes, and images.
What is the pros and cons of Wix?
Advantages
- You can start the blog with over 800 templates from Wix.
- It provides high data security without reducing the blog site speed.
- The AI-based website makes building design and content creation easy.
- Wix has an easy interface and effective customer support.
- WixApp Market provides extra features to extend your blog website.
Disadvantages
- The free plan of Wix doesn’t remove ads from the website
- Only paid plans allow you to track and analyze blog performance.
- You can’t interchange the blog theme and the website is not SEO ready.
- There is no unlimited storage plan on Wix blogging platform.
Joomla
Joomla is the best alternative for the WordPress blogging platform but with high scalability. It saves time from building a blog from scratch and you can add code to customize it. Many world-leading companies use Joomla to maintain their online website. Joomla is available in both free and paid versions.
What are pros and cons of Joomla?
Advantages
- An easy and flexible blogging platform for professionals and beginners.
- It provides high data security for your blog website.
- You can get access to the effective Content Management System.
- The SEO of Joomla is a whole lot better than its competitor WordPress.
- This blogging website regularly updates its themes and templates.
Disadvantages
- The user interface of Joomla is more complex than other blogging platforms.
- Some of the good-looking templates are available only for premium users.
- You can’t edit images and videos because of fewer media management capabilities.
- It provides limited customization and content migration.
Squarespace
Bloggers can build a website easily irrespective of their technical ability. It is an image-rich blogging platform making it perfect for visual representation blogs. The latest version of Squarespace makes the site design changes flexible.
What are the Pros and Cons of Squarespace?
Advantages
- Squarespace is available in free and affordable paid versions.
- You don’t need any coding skills to maintain or upgrade the blog site.
- Your websites are mobile-optimized with Squarespace.
- It automatically creates and configures SSL security for your websites.
- Easy integration with other tools and plugins.
Disadvantages
- Bloggers can’t find advanced marketing tools and should depend on third parties.
- You can’t find effective customer support.
- It has a bit high learning curve and lacks autosave function.
Drupal
It is an open-source self-hosted blogging platform that is best suited for professionals. Drupal is an all-in-one solution for your blogging website needs. It provides scalability along with your website growth with a high speed of implementation.
What are pros and cons of Drupal?
Advantages
- Drupal prioritizes user experience to empower its users.
- It provides high-security features to your blogging websites.
- It has an efficient supportive community like no other blogging platform.
- Access to features like control tab order, mobile responsiveness, alt tag defaults, themes colors, and font sizes.
Disadvantages
- You can’t find high-quality themes and templates in the free version.
- Bloggers with no technical support find difficulty in the installation and updates of modules.
- The content management system in Drupal is a bit hard to customize.
Weebly
Weebly is a free and flexible blogging platform that brings everything you need to one place. It provides many features with high customization, website building tools, hosting, templates, and more. You can take your ideas from launch to growth effectively with the Weebly blogging platform.
What are pros and cons of Weebly?
Advantages
- Bloggers can easily integrate with other apps or plugins.
- Easy customization of content and user-friendly interface.
- Consistently adds new features, themes, templates, and more.
- Provides a high level of data security for your blog websites.
- Along with the free version, the paid version is also affordable.
Disadvantages
- You can only find limited blogging and image editing tools.
- Bloggers can only customize domains with paid plans.
- Customer support depends upon the plan you purchase.
Blogger
This is the best platform for hobby bloggers to express words about their passion like lifestyle, fashion, traveling, and more. Though it doesn’t have great CMS, it provides rich features than other free blogging platforms that help you start a site easily.
What are pros and cons of Blogger?
Advantages
- This blogging platform has a simple user interface.
- You don’t need to worry about the security, speed, or hosting of the website.
- Great community support about any inquiry of blogging platform.
Disadvantages
- The templates and themes are simple when compared with others.
- You can find effective SEO tools and content optimization tools.
- It supports limited third-party plugin integration.
Tumblr
This is the best website builder for personal bloggers with a simple interface and wide scope to reach the readers. It provides heavy customization for your web pages with a multi-media manager. You can use a free subdomain or buy a custom domain for your blogging website.
What are pros and cons of Tumblr?
Advantages
- You can find hundreds of free and premium themes and templates.
- To support your blog marketing you can add social sharing buttons, comment sections, etc.
- Bloggers can have unlimited storage for their blog content.
- Easily set up your blogging website within minutes.
- Get your free SSL certificate for your blog site.
Disadvantages
- You can only publish a limited number of posts per day.
- It doesn’t work great for professionals if you want to upgrade your blog in the future.
- You can upload multimedia under the size of 100 MB.
Which Blogging Platform Will You Choose?
There is no right or wrong blogging platform, it all depends upon the unique requirements of the blogger. So, it is advisable to take time and consider all the factors and move forward in choosing a blogging platform. Hope the above-discussed checklist will help you in finding the right platform as your first step into the blogging world.
