Blogs have become a crucial part of any marketing strategy. In fact, a blog can provide a whole range of benefits to your business. SEO-optimized blogs increase your visibility online, help build credibility, and can ultimately lead to higher conversions. Of course, you’ve got to do it right to get all the benefits, and choosing the best blog platform for your business is an important aspect.
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Why Your Choice of Blogging Platform Can Make All the Difference
When you start blogging, it’s important to choose the best blogging platform for your needs. Not all platforms are built equally, and down the line, having put a lot of time and effort into your blog, you could find yourself needing to migrate to another platform. Not only will this cost you money, but it also damages your SEO.
Most blogging platforms will have different limitations with their plans, and they certainly aren’t on equal footing when it comes to customization and design options. In any situation where the platform doesn’t meet your needs, you might end up having to hire a developer, which can seriously blow out your budget.
So, what do you need to scrutinize in a blogging platform before you settle on it? We’ll go through a few things to look for.
What to Look for in a Blogging Platform
All Things Content: Type and Amount
What type of content do you want to publish? Some blogging platforms restrict how often, how much content, and what type of content you can publish. If you expect to be publishing often and attracting high traffic, a blogging platform that has a bandwidth limit might be inconvenient. The same can be said for video content.
Design and Customization Options
At some point, you should ask yourself, “How important are design and customization options?” Well, if you're starting a business blog, that blog represents your brand. So if a platform's limitations don't let you paint a fulll picture of what your brand is all about, it’s not going to satisfy your requirements.
Templates are almost always available, but some platforms have more than others, and they may not always be mobile-responsive.
Some platforms leave a lot of room for creativity, and you can customize the available templates however you choose. Others will keep you trapped in a box – literally and figuratively. If your brand image relies on a large degree of design freedom, then the limitation you face will be a deciding factor.
Integrations and Extensibility
When you’re in the early stages of blogging, you might find it hard to visualize the growth potential of your blog. However, as your business grows, you need to be sure the blogging platform can handle the additional traffic and offers the necessary functionality to cope.
Can you integrate other apps and extend the functionality of your blog? Will it grow with you or leave you stuck, unable to access the features you need? These are important questions to consider. Integration possibilities don’t always have to be through a dedicated app store, as HTML embeds can also be effective.
Skill Level Required for Use
Similarly to the design options, if you can’t figure out how to do what you want or need to do, then the platform will be unsuitable. If you are unable to code, and the blogging platform you selected requires you to code in order to customize anything, this will be a problem and will add cost if you have to hire a developer.
Look for a blogging platform that suits your skill level. For example, it could have an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor but also allow HTML code for those that want greater freedom. A blogging platform that is easy to use yet powerful is going to be a winner.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO really is a must-have feature of a blogging platform today. Without the ability to easily optimize your content and your website, there would almost be no point in having created the blog. Ideally, you want SEO functionality that is built into the platform and assists you to improve your content for ranking on search engines. The SEO features offered by blogging platforms differ widely, as you can see in our SEO comparison of Shopify and WordPress blogs.
Moreover, pages that are slow to load are less likely to be indexed by search engines. A good blogging platform won’t be weighed down by widgets or bloated code and will prioritize page loading speed.
While page loading times are affected by the structure of your website, your hosting provider is also a critical factor.
Hosting and Security
Web hosting and the security of your blog are more important than you may realize. A study found that 73% of all WordPress sites had security vulnerabilities. If your blog gets hacked, you may lose trust and credibility, but it can also be a very costly problem.
Every blogging platform has a different system – some will require you to find your own hosting provider and maintain security updates yourself, while others will include hosting and security.
You should first consider how much time you have to spend managing your website and blog. If you want to be able to set it up and just focus on blogging, then you don’t want to be bothered with finding a hosting provider and managing security updates. A blogging platform that includes hosting and manages all security updates means you can focus on other things.
DropInBlog Presents the Best All-Encompassing Blogging Solution
DropInBlog provides a unique blogging solution. Built to resemble a WordPress CMS but much smoother, it allows you to efficiently publish SEO-friendly blogs. It’s easy to use, easy to integrate, and fully featured.
Time Saving Benefits
You don’t have to worry about time spent managing hosting and security updates because it doesn’t sit in a separate domain. DropInBlog slots straight into your existing website. It also automatically adopts your existing page style and theme.
This means that you can publish a blog post, and it will immediately be visible on your website – and formatted to match. A lot of the struggle with other blogging platforms is that you have to spend time reformatting and designing the blog pages to match your brand.
Content Creation Made Easy
DropInBlog features a WordPress-style text editor that most bloggers will be familiar with. It’s easy to use and allows you to add meta title tags, different authors, categories, and a variety of visual media.
A hugely popular feature available with DropInBlog is the SEO Analyzer. This SEO optimization tool updates as you write content to provide you with an overall SEO score. It provides prompts to improve the score and results in clean, optimized content that is ready to compete for visibility online.
Get Started With DropInBlog
Getting started with DropInBlog is super easy. You can make use of the free 14-day trial, and after that, there are two pricing options.
The Lite plan costs $19/month (billed annually) and gives you access to all the standard features like the SEO Analyzer, recent post widget, categories list, and social sharing buttons. This plan allows you to make as many posts as you want and include as many categories as you want.
The Standard plan includes everything the Lite plan does, with a few additional perks. You’ll get priority support from the DropInBlog team, and you’ll be able to schedule posts, include user levels, add additional post authors, and include a blog search function. You get the full suite of features for $39/month (billed annually).
Integration Options
DropInBlog integrates with your existing website either through a plugin or the embed method, and there is a whole range of integration tutorials for specific platforms. If you have a Shopify store, there’s a plugin built specifically for you and available on the Shopify App Store.
For other popular platforms, you can use the embed method to integrate DropInBlog. Here’s a list of some of the most popular platforms and the integration tutorials available:
When you've settled on a blogging platform for your business, definitely make use of a blog setup checklist. This will ensure you hit the ground running.
FAQs
Which are the most important criteria for a blogging platform for my business?
All criteria – content type, design options, integrations, ease-of-use, SEO, and security – are important. However, it might help to first establish your priorities.
For example, if you’re displaying a blog linked to your art store, then you’ll value design options quite highly. If you’re a busy person and want an easy-to-manage blog, then something with hosting and security included will make life easier.
Can I change my blog platform anytime?
In most cases, you’ll pay a subscription to a blogging platform and can leave anytime, depending on how long your billing cycle lasts. Be aware you also may not get a refund.
The problem arises when you want to migrate your content from one blogging platform to another. Some platforms provide assistance or a tool for easy migration, but others leave it up to you or a developer. If you have a lot of content, this can be a time-consuming activity.
Final Thoughts
It’s clear that there are quite a few factors to consider when choosing the best blog platform for your business. Getting it right can mean the difference between a lot of frustration and money spent or a thriving business venture.
As with making any big decision, it’s always important to first understand what your business priorities and needs are. Then you can work through and compare the top-ranking options. If you're still in need of some inspiration you can check out these successful business blogs.
DropInBlog offers you the ability to get a competitive edge over all the rest, and if it doesn’t land on your shortlist, we’ll be very surprised.
