Getting your hands on the best blogging tools from Day 1 can make all the difference in your blogging journey…
To help you create the blog of your dreams, we’ve put together this list of the best blogging tools that every blogger needs to know about.
Let’s get into it!
1) BlueHost
Getting a quality host provider is massively important. The last thing you want is shoddy hosting and even worse customer support.
Our recommendation for most bloggers is BlueHost.
BlueHost is one of the big boys of host providing, so you know they’re doing something right! Their 24/7 customer service is amazing, you get a free SSL certificate, and it’s extremely affordable.
If you’re looking to start a blog (or migrate it to a new host) then you definitely want to look at BlueHost.
Check them out through our link here.
2) Divi
The look and feel of your site is crucial! You may have fantastic content but if your site looks like crap your visitors will bounce.
There are free blog design tools in WordPress but they’re notoriously limited. This is why paid themes are one of the blogger tools that every blogger needs.
Divi is an extremely popular theme that can help you create a gorgeous site.
But even better, when you purchase Divi from Elegant Themes, you get access to all of their themes. So, you can switch over to another theme without paying anything extra.
Check out what Elegant Themes has to offer here.
3) Courses
The right course can save you countless hours of frustration and help you achieve success much faster.
We’ve tried all of these popular courses below and highly recommend them all.
Launch Your Blog – learn everything you need to know to get your blog up and running in 1 month or less.
Make Money Blogging – this course gives you strategies to take your launched blog from $0 to $1,000 a month.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – if you’re not sure how to make money online, or you’ve been trying for a while with no success. This is the course for you.
Pinterest Traffic Avalanche – this course will give you strategies for driving thousands of traffic to your blog from Pinterest.
Writing Tools
4) Grammarly
If you want to take your writing to the next level, Grammarly is a great tool to help you do it.
There’s a free version that checks your grammar and spelling (so there’s really no reason not to use it).
But the premium version not only checks your grammar and spelling, but it checks:
- readability,
- makes suggestions to enhance your vocabulary,
- makes sure your style matches your genre,
- and also checks for plagiarism!
It’s an excellent resource to help you take the guesswork out of your writing.
Check out Grammarly here.
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5) Hemingway App
The Hemingway App is another free blogging tool that can improve the blog content you put out.
It clearly highlights areas for improvement and even calls you out for using passive voice! (Which, is great for SEO).
6) Readable
Does your writing sometimes come off as academic or hard to understand? If so, you definitely want to check out Readable!
Readable not only want to improve your writing but to improve your audience engagement.
Sure, it’ll check your text quality, but it’ll also tell you the grade level of your article and what percentage of your audience would find your content readable.
SEO Optimization & Keyword Analysis
7) SEMrush
They’ll give you insights into your competitors and everything you need for keyword research.
This type of blogging tool isn’t cheap, but not getting it can be even more expensive!
I highly recommend SEMrush. Check them out through our link here.
8) Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is another great blog publishing tool. This WordPress plugin will score your blog post on readability and SEO optimization.
There’s a free and premium version, but the free version will be good enough for most bloggers.
9) Soovle
You know that when you start typing a few words into Google’s search box, it tries to guess what you’re looking for by showing you the top related search phrases. The same is true for Wikipedia, Youtube, etc.
Well, Soovle brings all these guesses together and shows you the top related search phrases for multiple search engines in one place.
It’s definitely a blogging tool you want to check out for keyword research.
10) Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a browser add-on for Google Chrome and Firefox.
Once installed you’ll be able to view monthly search volume, cost per click info, and competition data on websites such as Google, Youtube, Bing, eBay, and more.
FYI: Keywords Everywhere used to be free, but starting October 1, 2019, it became a pay as you go service.
11) LSI Graph
Not only that, but it’ll show you how the related key phrases are trending, what their search volume is, and even the cost per click associated with them.
All in all, pretty cool!
12) Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the top blogging tool out there for traffic analysis.
It gives you insights into who’s coming to your site, how they found your site, and how they use it.
13) Google Trends
With this tool, you can find the popularity of a search term in Google. You can see whether a term is on the rise or declining and even see where the search term is most popular.
14) Ubersuggest
Ubsersuggest is one of Neil Patel’s free blog tools for websites that can help you get keyword and content ideas, and analyze your traffic.
It even has a site audit feature that will let you know where you’re doing good and where you need to improve.
This is definitely one to check out.
15) BuzzSumo
You may also like: How to Start Your Own Blog
Data Backups
16) Updraft Plus Backups
Things happen. Computers crash, sites are hacked, milk is spilled.
And if you don’t have your data backed up when that something happens…well, it’ll be a very bad day.
Updraft Plus Backups is a free WordPress plugin that’ll regularly back up your blog’s data. Get it now and have some peace of mind.
17) Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service that is useful for sharing files with your friends, but also for backing up your data in the cloud. If you don’t have an account with Dropbox, you should go ahead and sign up for one.
You get a limited amount of space with a free account, but you can link Updraft Plus Backups to Dropbox and your blog data will automatically be saved there!
Security
18) Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is one of the top security plugins for WordPress. Without getting into too much detail, it works by installing a local firewall to protect your site and by scanning all files on your site.
19) Sucuri Security
Sucuri Security is also another popular WordPress security plugin. Unlike Wordfence, Sucuri blocks traffic in the cloud, but can’t perform local scans.
Wordfence and Sucuri both have their pros and cons, and you’ll definitely want to check them out before making a decision either way.
20) Last Pass
Bloggers quickly find themselves drowning in usernames and passwords. One tool to help you keep track of all your login information is LastPass.
You may also like: How to Start Your Own Blog
Site speed
21) Page Speed Insights
The speed of your website has a direct impact on your bounce rate. So, it’s something you definitely want to stay on top of.
Google’s page speed insights analyze your website and scores it’s speed on mobile and on desktop. Not only do they score you, but they give you tips for improvement.
22) GTMetrix
GTMetrix is one of the best blogging tools out there for page speed analytics. It provides so much valuable information, but at the same time, it’s very technical.
It definitely lets you know why your site is as slow as it is, but knowing what to do with the information may be a challenge if you’re not a tech-savvy person.
However, if you’re interested, check out this video and learn step by step how to work with GTMetrix to speed up your site.
23) Pingdom Tools
This is another website speed test similar to GTMetrix. It gives more or less the same analytical info, but Pingdom Tools has multiple locations that it can test your speed from.
Another thing I can say about Pingdom Tools is that the data it shows you somehow feels a bit less overwhelming than GTMetrix’s.
All in all, they’re both great tools.
24) WordPress Rocket
WordPress Rocket is a plugin that’ll definitely speed up your WordPress blog!
We purchased it, installed it, and saw immediate improvement! They’re also available to answer questions and help you out as needed.
I highly recommend this one!
Headline Analyzers and Title Generators
25) Coschedule
Coschedule is actually one of my new favorite headline analyzers because it uses graphics to score your title.
It tells you which percentage of your words are common, uncommon, emotional or powerful. It even rates it by the character length and number of words.
The only thing is that you’ll have to give up some of your information before you can get access to the results. Overall, it’s pretty cool.
26) Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
This headline analyzer has been my go-to since I first started blogging.
Simply enter your headline, select a category and it will analyze it to determine how emotionally powerful your title is.
Keep in mind that most professional copywriters’ will have scores between 30% and 40%. And really gifted copywriters will get between 50% and 75%.
So don’t be discouraged if you don’t get that 100% you expected! 😊
27) Title Generator
I’ll be the first to admit it. Creating an irresistible title is hard. It’s hard, also but necessary to drive traffic to your content.
If you have literally no idea where to start with your title there are a few websites you can try out.
Simply visit one (or more) of these sites, enter your keywords, and watch as hundreds of titles are created.
28) Images
One of our favorite sites to find free stock images is Pixabay.
But there are plenty of sites out there for you to search through to find the image you want. Here are a few you can try out.
Free stock photos are obviously limited, but if you want the perfect photo every time then you may eventually want to consider paying. Popular options for paid images are:
29) Photo Editors
Sometimes it’s not enough to just grab a stock photo and slap it on your website. Sometimes you’ll want to edit it for a featured image or to create a pin for Pinterest.
Whatever your photo editing needs are, there are plenty of tools out there to help you get the job done.
Check them out:
30) Image Compression
Before you upload photos to your website, you’ll definitely want to compress them. Remember that a bunch of large photos will slow down your site, so optimize them with one of the following sites:
Marketing
Social media marketing is super important for driving traffic. After all, if noody knows your site exists, they’re not going to visit.
Email marketing is important as well, because it allows you to speak directly to your audience. These tools can dramatically increase the effectiveness of all your marketing campaigns.
31) Tailwind
32) ConvertKit
ConvertKit is my favorite email marketing service, and the one I currently use. The company was actually created by a blogger, so they know exactly what you need in an email marketing tool.
Use it to create forms, landing pages, sales funnels, and grow your email list!
It’s super intuitive and we couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Sign up for ConvertKit through our link here and get your first month free.
33) Mailerlite
Mailerlite is another email marketing service similar to ConvertKit. It lets you create email campaigns, surveys, pop-ups, and more.
The awesome thing about Mailerlite is that it’s free until you exceed 1,000 subscribers. And then the cost slowly increases as your subscriber increases.
Sign up for Mailerlite through our link here!
34) MailChimp
MailChimp is a free email marketing service that’s been given pretty good reviews by people who use it.
The main drawbacks with MailChimp are that it doesn’t allow affiliate marketing and that it limits the number of emails you can send.
It could be worth a look if you’re just starting your blog.
35) Sumo (SumoMe)
Sumo is another popular email marketing service. Like other services, it has a free and paid version.
You get a lot of features with the free version, but it does limit the number of emails you can send per month. And the amount of income you can earn through Sumo is limited to $500.
Cheers!
Oliver
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