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Updated on April 10th, 2024 at 01:19 pm
The primary goal of blogging is to provide valuable content that helps to solve your readers’ problems.
However, blogging can be a complex endeavor involving many other aspects besides content creation.
By this, I’m speaking of things like marketing, search engine optimization, social media promotion, link building, and many other trades/practices that are all a part of the blogging journey.
Fortunately, there are lots of tools available to help you streamline all aspects of your blogging career and achieve your blogging goals.
In this post, we’ll talk about 10 of the most essential tools that I personally use to help me create and promote my content with ease.
But before we get started.
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Alright, let’s get to it.
10 Blogging Tools Every Blogger Needs To Know About
1. SEMRUSH
When it comes to blogging, keyword research is one of the most important things that will help you get more traffic to your blog.
This exercise helps you to find out exactly what information people are looking for on search engines.
With keyword research tools, you get access to search data that shows you how many people search for a particular keyword. You can then target that keyword with your own unique content and this way drive traffic to your blog.
If you really want to succeed as a blogger, you can’t afford to wing your content creation. You have to use actual search data to help you decide what content to create, how to create it, and what keywords to target.
This, in essence, is what keyword research is all about.
Luckily, there are lots of amazing tools that you can use to perform keyword research for your blog.
Personally, I absolutely love Semrush.
Semrush is hands down one of the best keyword research tools out there. Their interface is simply amazing and it gives you tons of information about a particular keyword.
This can include things like:
- The keyword search volume
- Keyword intent
- Keyword variations i.e. questions, related keywords e.t.c
The other amazing part about Semrush is that they have a free plan, so you don’t have to invest in their tool right away.
The free plan is of course limited but it is still sufficient to help you with performing excellent keyword research for your blog.
Aside from Semrush (which I love and personally use), there are also other amazing keyword-research tools that you can use for free.
Here they are:
- Ubbersuggest (free+paid plans)
- AnswerThePublic (free+paid plans)
- Google Keyword Planner (free)
- Ahrefs (free+paid plans)
Related: Rank Math VS All In One SEO – Which SEO Plugin Is Better For Your Blog?
2. Tailwind
Another absolutely crucial aspect of blogging is social media promotion.
If you want to see any success blogging, especially when you are starting out, you’ll need to invest some good time and effort into promoting your content on social media.
This is because it takes a while before your site can start ranking on Google search. In fact, it takes an average of up to 6 months before a webpage can rank on the first page of Google.
So, I’ll tell you right now, you can’t depend on Google for all your traffic as a beginner blogger.
You have to promote your content on social media and get people to visit your blog.
And one of the best platforms to do this is Pinterest. Despite popular belief, Pinterest is actually less of a social media platform and more of a search engine.
People go to Pinterest to search for ideas and information and you can easily leverage this to promote your brand and get them to read your content.
The only problem with using platforms like Pinterest to drive traffic is that it takes a lot of work to keep posting each and every day.
This is where Tailwind comes in.
Tailwind is an app that allows you to schedule your posts beforehand and never have to worry about spending too much time on social media.
Tailwind works not only with Pinterest, it also allows you to connect your Instagram account as well as your Facebook page.
From your Tailwind app dashboard, you’ll be able to schedule what posts you want to be posted at what times, and the app will do the posting for you.
It also helps you to manage all of your social media accounts together from one place, which significantly eases your social media marketing efforts.
I personally use Tailwind, mostly to schedule posts for my Pinterest profile and boards, and it is honestly such an amazing time-saver.
With the Tailwind app, I only have to sit down like once a week and schedule my social media posts and everything else gets done for me.
Getting started with Tailwind is easy, and you can get started for free with their free-forever plan.
3. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners manage their site’s appearance in search results.
If you are serious about attracting organic traffic to your blog, then I suggest that you familiarize yourself with this amazing tool.
Google Search Console helps me personally with so many things concerning my site and how it appears on search results.
The first and rather uncommon amazing thing you can do with GSC is to submit your site for indexing by Google. I say this is uncommon because I’ve seen many people start their blog and wait for months before Google can even find out that their site exists.
With GSC, you are allowed to submit what is called a sitemap. Once you submit your sitemap through GSC, Google crawlers will visit your site and crawl your pages.
Your pages will then get indexed by Google and they can then start appearing on search results.
I did this when I was just starting out and in less than a month my posts were already appearing on search results and getting clicks, something I hadn’t even considered was possible on the first month of blogging.
Aside from getting your blog discovered by Google, GSC also helps with other things like:
- Providing crucial stats about search appearance such as impressions, clicks, click-through rates (CTR), and average ranking positions
- Detecting and helping with any page indexing issues found on your site
- Providing insights into keywords and queries that you rank for
- Providing analytics data such as highest ranking pages, highest volume countries e.t.c
All of this information proves vital when it comes to optimizing your blog and making sure that it keeps ranking on Google to attract more organic traffic.
This is why I say Google Search Console is an invaluable blogging tool that every blogger should be using.
4. Cloudflare CDN
CDN is short for Content Delivery Network.
But what is a Content Delivery Network?
A content delivery network is essentially a service that uses geographically distributed servers to bring content closer to its end users.
What does this mean for blogging?
As a blogger, your website performance is one of the crucial things that determine user experience on your site. If your site is fast, users will have an amazing experience with it and therefore stay longer and potentially even come back.
This is why you need to make sure your site is as fast loading as possible. And one of the ways to make your site faster is to use a content delivery network.
As we’ve seen, a CDN pretty much brings your website closer to where the user is located by using a dedicated server in that location. This way, your website loads much faster and provides a much better experience for the user.
Personally, I use Cloudflare CDN for my website.
Cloudflare is one of the best CDN available for bloggers and pretty much any website owner. Cloudflare is easy to use and it has a free plan, allowing you to deliver content to your users much faster.
If your blog isn’t on a CDN yet, I suggest signing up for Cloudflare ASAP.
5. Canva
Another unavoidable aspect of blogging is graphic design.
Whether you are making designs for social media posts, Pinterest Pins, Infographics, logos, or appealing graphic illustrations to include in your blog posts, graphic design is something every blogger has to master.
Luckily, there is an amazing and super easy tool that makes all of this a walk in the park.
What am I talking about?
Drum roll, please… It’s Canva.
I use Canva for all my graphic design needs and it is simply amazing. If you are just starting out, you can use the free version of Canva to design any graphics that you need for your blogging.
However, I suggest going for the pro plan, which is only about $6 a month.
The Pro Plan unlocks so many more cool features, templates, and designs that you can use to create anything from Pinterest Pins to amazing infographics for your posts.
6. Pexels
If you are blogging, then you are definitely going to need a constant supply of free-to-use stock photos.
Photos not only improve the quality of your blog posts, but they also add a visual appeal that boards very well with readers. This translates to good UX, which is itself a ranking factor on Google.
Bottom line? You need to make use of images, photos, and illustrations in your posts.
You also need to be careful not to use copyrighted images as you can be sued for copyright infringement.
Which is where free stock photo websites come in.
These sites feature vast numbers of photos, images, and illustrations that you can use for free for any purpose without having to attribute them to the owner. More importantly, you won’t get sued for using these.
My favorite of these sites is Pexels. Well, to be honest, I kind of go in phases. I once had a Pixabay phase and now I’m in my Pexels phase.
Anyway, it’s a good thing there are so many available so you’ll have an endless supply of free-to-use stock photos for your website.
Here are some of the best:
7. PageSpeed Insights
As suggested by the name, PageSpeed Insights is a free online tool developed by Google to help website owners test the speed of their web pages.
As I mentioned earlier, the speed of your website is one of the most important things when it comes to ensuring a good user experience for your readers.
This is why you have to make good use of this tool and the resources that it offers.
The good thing that I’ve seen with this tool is that it doesn’t just tell you how fast or slow your site is, it gives you real actionable insights and suggestions as to what you can do to make your site better.
Aside from performance, PageSpeed Insights also runs checks on other aspects like Accessibility, Best practices, and SEO.
If you’re interested in checking out some PageSpeed Insights alternatives, you can check out these sites.
Website speed is definitely one of those things you want to keep a close eye on, that’s why I run frequent speed tests for my site and make sure to follow the insights and fix whatever issues may come up.
Related: How To Easily Speed Up Your Website Performance
8. ChatGPT
We are living in the era of AI.
Like it or not, AI is and already has started changing the way everything is done. The only option that anyone has at this point is to embrace AI and incorporate it into our daily activities.
This is especially for content creators and bloggers.
ChatGPT is an amazing tool for online content creators. Why?
ChatGPT is trained on data that comes from web pages, meaning it has a ton of information on web content and online content creation.
As a blogger, leveraging the extensive knowledge of this tool can be a great way to smoothen your blogging journey.
The best thing about ChatGPT is that you just have to ask what you want, and it generates in seconds. Check out what I asked it.
There you have it, straight from the horse’s own mouth.
In this era of AI, neglecting to use these amazing tools can only be detrimental to your blogging success.
9. Grammarly
Grammarly is another amazing free tool that can help keep your copy clean, or should I say Grammarly.
I use the free Chrome extension and it helps me write better and error-free content.
Grammarly instantaneously gives you suggestions on spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, capitalization mistakes, and pretty much everything else that has to do with writing good English.
For me, I’d say Grammarly is a must-have tool for every blogger and content creator.
To get the most out of Grammarly, I suggest you install their browser extension. This will help you clean up anything you ever write on any site quickly and easily.
10. Rank Math SEO
When it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, on-page optimization is one of the key things you need to stay on top of.
By on-page optimization, I mean making sure that your posts are optimized for specific keywords, including links (both internal and external), and adding rich media like images.
All these things can be quite complex to keep track of manually, which is where WordPress SEO plugins come in.
There are many amazing SEO plugins out there, but personally, I use and highly recommend Rank Math.
Rank Math is an amazing plugin that handles everything from on-page optimization to sitemaps, to site SEO audit to schema markup… the works.
This plugin has such cool features there is just no way to describe them all here.
The bottom line is that as a blogger, you’ll need to have an excellent WordPress SEO plugin to help optimize your site and according to what I’ve seen, Rank Math is the best of the best.
To get started with this amazing tool, follow this link to the Rank Math website and download the free plugin to get started right away.
Related: Rank Math Review – Here’s Why It’s The Best SEO Plugin
Final Thoughts
As we’ve seen, blogging is a multifaceted endeavor that involves many other aspects besides content creation.
But with the help of blogging tools such as the ones we’ve discussed here, you can easily streamline all of these processes and achieve your goals easier and faster.
My hope is that this post has helped you find an important content creation tool that you hadn’t put into use before.
Happy blogging.
