Blogging can become easier if you use the right tools. In this post, you will discover the best blogging tools for beginners. Some of them are helpful daily, while others can be used occasionally.
These tools cover the most important tasks for beginner bloggers like writing, planning, keyword research, and SEO optimization. Your work will become more effective and productive just by letting them help with your tasks.
1. Grammarly
If you are a blogger, you will create a lot of content for your readers. When you write articles, it’s possible to have grammar issues. You may mistype some words, make small mistakes on spelling, use big sentences, and other major or minor mistakes that will affect the readability of your content.
Grammarly is a digital writing tool and writing app that you can add to your browser to check for any grammar issues. When it finds a mistake, you will see a red line on the text with a suggested alternative. Also, you can use Grammarly to test your content for plagiarism.
In my opinion, it is the best tool in this category, and every blogger or writer must have it. I use it daily for every type of content. When you are focused on producing good content, you need tools that save time and suggest constructive improvements in your job. This is what you can get with Grammarly. It is like hiring a proofreader that is available 24/7.
If you create content for business or write to communicate with other people online, it’s the best tool you can get and my top suggestion. There is a free and a paid version that you can get depending on your needs.
2. Yoast SEO
It is one of the best SEO plugins that you can download on your WordPress website. If you don’t have a WordPress site, this tool is not available for you.
SEO is the main traffic source for many bloggers. Quality blog posts have many chances to get ranked on the first page of Google for relevant keywords and generate a lot of traffic for your blog. Before you get these results, you must optimize your blog for SEO, and this is what you can achieve with Yoast SEO.
Once you download the free plugin on your website, you will get step-by-step instructions on how to set up everything. First, you will add a meta title and a meta description for your blog, connect it to Google Search Control, and choose some basic options.
Then, you can optimize every blog post. When you edit your post on your dashboard, you can see the options of the plugin below the content. It has many features, but the most important ones are SEO analysis and readability analysis.
There are several suggested rules that you must follow for the best possible results. For example, you need to include your keyword on the title. When you follow this rule, you see a green light next to this suggestion. If you don’t follow a rule, you see a red light. You follow the same process for all the rules. Then, it calculates a score based on the overall performance.
These rules help you to improve your chances for better rankings on Google that is the goal of the plugin. It is free to download the plugin, and there is a paid version as well. However, the free version is good enough for most beginner bloggers.
3. Quora
It is not a tool but a social media network. Quora is a website that people can ask questions, and other users answer them. There are many ways to use this amazing platform, whether you write content or not.
First, it’s a website that you can use for your research. If we assume that you have chosen your niche, you can search for questions that could become content ideas for your blog. Also, you can read the opinion of other people for a specific topic. By reading answers in your niche regularly, you can learn new things about your target audience.
Second, you can create a nice profile and answer a few questions. It allows you to link your blog both from your answers and profile when you mention something relevant. Quora has strict rules about spamming, so avoid links that are not relevant to the content. This process will help you to get more readers, traffic, and backlinks.
Many writers use Quora alone for building an audience and promotion products, so you can consider using it as a place that you can publish content as well. As a blogger, you will need both practice and readers.
4. Mailchimp
If you want to build a list, Mailchimp is an email marketing service that will help you to get emails and create email series for your subscribers. Building a list of readers has value because you can send them your new posts or promote any affiliate marketing offers to earn more money.
Many beginners prefer it from other alternatives because you can start for free. It is free up to 2000 subscribers in total, and then you can choose the package that you want. Based on the package, you will get features that you can use in your email marketing strategy.
5. Trello
There are many tools and apps that help you to organize your tasks. But I think Trello is the best of them because it is very easy to use. Trello can help you create to-do lists and add your available tasks into categories.
Every blog has many tasks that need to be done. You must find keywords, do research, write content, find images, and more. A digital tool that allows you to create multiple to-do lists with all these tasks is a simple solution that can save a lot of time.
If your blog gets bigger and you decide to outsource some of the tasks or just work with other people, it is super important to have control and know what you must do next. You can use Trello to create to-do lists for people that work for you as well.
Trello is a free and paid tool that you can join with your email address. Then, you can create boards, lists, and cards. A board has many lists, and one list has many cards. Also, you can add colors and stickers for extra notes. The free version gives you access to many features, so you don’t have to buy the premium.
6. Stock Image Websites
You will need images for your blogs. Images improve the design of a website and can trigger feelings to the visitors. However, you need quality images to get good results. For this reason, you can use image stock websites. They have free and paid images that are uploaded by other users.
When you use a free image on your blog from these sites, there are many changes to find the same image on other sites or social media profiles. The paid images are rarer, but they cost some money. Most bloggers and internet marketers use stock images for their content.
For two great websites to get started, you can check Pexels and Pixabay. They have millions of images that you can download in different sizes.
7. Answer The Public
Many people type questions on search engines. They want to get answers to their problems or are curious to learn new things. In every niche, there are hundreds of questions that people ask regularly.
Answer The Public is a keyword tool that finds these questions. If you visit this website, you can type the broad term of your niche and generate questions that you can use as keywords to target with your content. For every question, you can create a new blog post. Of course, some of the questions are similar because it is a tool and not a real person with content suggestions, so you must choose the best options.
Answer The Public has three available searches per day that are more than enough if you can consider that each search gives you multiple content ideas. Lastly, you can combine this tool with Google autocomplete and Jaaxy, which is the keyword tool of Wealthy Affiliate. These are the only tools that I use for keyword research and are available for free.
8. Canva
I have already mentioned that you can find free images on free stock websites. Canva is the place that you can edit these images, add text, create designs, and much more. Many bloggers use Canva for their social media profiles, blog posts, logos, and banners.
There are pre-maid templates that you can use to save time and create professional designs, even if you are a beginner. Also, you have the option to create a design from scratch if you are confident with your skills.
Canva is a free tool that you can join with your email address or Facebook account. The user experience is great, and everyone can use it fast. However, there are some paid features, templates, and images if you want to create more fancy designs.
9. Google Trends
Google has created many helpful tools for marketing and research. Google Trends can help every business to understand the trends of a niche and the tendencies of the target audience through the years. As a blogger, your target audience is your readers because they will click your ads or buy your suggestions.
Before you choose your niche, you can check on Google Trends if the interest has increased or declined in the last years. The tool use data from the search engine. You can see the interest in a keyword from 2004 until today.
If the interest in your niche declines each year, you may consider avoiding it. When the interest goes up, it can be a new trend. If the interest is stable through the years, it is probably an evergreen niche. For example, the keyword health has almost the same interest every year.
You can check the metrics of Google Trends for every new decision about your blog. You may consider adding a new category of topics, create or promote a product, or just start a new blog in the future.
10. Google Alerts
Another tool by Google but different than the previous one. Google Trends shows you data from the past to understand the tendencies of an audience. Google Alerts shows you what happens right now.
It is a free tool that you can use to create notifications based on keywords. If you type the keyword blogging, it will show you suggested content that includes this keyword in the title. Google Alerts will show you only new content. Then, there are options based on the country, language, sources, and frequency of notifications.
Once you create an alert, you will receive emails with suggested content based on your preferences. If you choose to get alerts from every possible source, it will suggest you content from news, blogs, videos, books, and more.
Google Alert is an important tool because you can always be ahead of your competitors and get the latest news in your niche. Then, you will be able to find content ideas from the alerts. For example, you will be able to create content about a new trend fast or use a new tool in your blog that improves user experience.
11. Keyword.io
This is a tool that creates massive lists of keywords based on a specific keyword that you type on the search bar. The best way to use is by typing a broad term, and then the keyword will generate hundreds of long-tail keywords. All these keywords can be your next content ideas.
If you repeat the process for 3-4 broad terms relevant to your niche, you create a list of thousands of keywords. Also, you can search for keywords on different websites like YouTube, Amazon, and eBay or keywords from different countries. It is a helpful tool because you can spend a few minutes searching and get keywords that you can use for months.
Keyword.io is a free tool, but it has a paid version as well. All the benefits that are mentioned above are available with the free version. It is super simple to use. Once you visit the site, you can type a keyword and get suggestions.
12. Google Search Control
This tool by Google helps you check technical parts and your website’s performance on the search results. I use almost every day to check my rankings, impressions, and keywords that work well for my blogs.
You can set up Google Search Control in a few steps. First, the users sign up with a Google account and add their websites. There is a process to verify your site, and then it’s available to use the platform. You can get started by submitting your sitemap, check for any technical errors, and ask from Google to crawl any page that is not indexed yet. I submit every new post on Google Search Control when I publish it.
Most bloggers already have an account on Google Search Control. It is a tool that helps you to keep everything in control. If something goes wrong, you get an email to check and fix it as soon as possible.
13. StayFocusd
It is a simple extension that can boost your focus and productivity. You can download it for free and get started right now. StayFocusd can block any website that you want.
If there are any websites that waste your time daily, you can add it to the blocked sites list. Then, you can set a maximum amount of time that you can spend on your blocked sites. Once you spend the available time, they will not be available for the rest of the day. The next day, you can revisit them again for the same amount of time.
Those who don’t want to waste time on any website can use the nuclear option. It blocks every website, and you can create a list of allowed sites for exceptions.
Many bloggers procrastinate for hours on social media or other places instead of creating content. By eliminating this option, they have more chances to do the work.
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Conclusion
These were my best blogging tools for beginners. I use most of these tools every single day for my blogging tasks. Most bloggers will use all of them sooner or later, but I highly suggest you get started with them right now. They are free and can make miracles with your performance and productivity.