One of the more challenging facets of blogging is deciding which tools, resources, and apps to use to aid in the development of your blog. The breadth of available choices is staggering.
This article will cover the following:
- Best productivity tools for bloggers
- Best research and inspiration tools
- Best writing tools
- Best SEO tool
- Best visual blogging tools
- Best stock image websites
- Best website analysis tools
Best Productivity Tools for Bloggers
Given the potential length of time spent on the research and planning phases of writing a blog post, you may wonder if there is any way to boost productivity. Consider my top two recommendations for useful smartphone software.
Google Docs
To ensure the highest level of productivity, I require all guest bloggers to send me their posts in Google Docs.
Google Docs is a huge help in writing for several vital reasons. Google Docs is a helpful word processor due to its in-text suggestions and grammatical corrections.
In this respect, it is equivalent to other widely used word processors, such as Microsoft Word. Compared to these processors, the fact that you can access it from any internet-connected computer makes it the clear winner.
Many thanks to its compatibility with a wide selection of plug-ins and applications, Google Docs allows you to add various extra features to your documents, both after you’ve written them and while you’re still working on them.
These add-ons are activated directly within the document as you write to offer suggestions, corrections, and ideas in real time. Because of Google’s popularity, finding similar programs is straightforward.
Trello
Trello’s use fosters teamwork and communication. It’s a visual aid for monitoring progress and assigning tasks. Using this blogging tool, you can organise your tasks more efficiently by creating “cards” for each and assigning them to different board sections depending on their completion status and priority.
You can create as many boards and lists as you need for group collaboration in Trello. Detailed information, such as attachments, comments, due dates, and so on, can be added to Trello cards, making it visible at a glance what needs to be done.
The software has a built-in function for automating workflows (Butler). Using Butler’s built-in calendar, due date, custom card/board button, and rule-based triggers, you can have tedious tasks removed from your to-do list on their own.
All sorts of teams can benefit from the features and flexibility of Trello. If you’re having difficulty getting your team to work together, check out the Trello Team Playbook.
The platform for maximising efficiency makes it easy and efficient to incorporate your team’s preferred software into the process. With Trello’s ability to sync across your devices, you and your team can collaborate from anywhere.
If you’re working on a blog post or anything else with a team of writers, use Trello to have an eye on your progress and determine the next steps.
Evernote
Evernote’s ability to record thoughts and ideas and quickly retrieve them makes it a practical tool for boosting efficiency. Make lists, take notes, and brainstorm as a team in record time. Evernote allows you to store any idea you have.
May it be a picture, a note on a specific topic, audio, a scan, a document, a PDF, a link to a website, or anything else, and then quickly retrieve it later by filing it away under the appropriate tag. Whether by project, topic, date, or some other category, you can organise your notes however you see fit.
Since Evernote is synchronised across all of your devices, you can get things done regardless of where you happen to be currently.
It’s an efficient tool for keeping track of information in any way you see fit. Instantaneous search results make it easy to find precisely what you need when you need it. Further, it can work in tandem with your preferred methods and tools.
Best Research and Inspiration Tools
Before publishing, take the time to research how to optimise your content for search engines’ best. Competitors’ keywords and topical specifics are equally important.
It is crucial to understand the specific informational requirements of your intended audience. With these resources, you can analyse keywords in great detail.
Google Trends
Use Google Trends in addition to the keyword research tools to avoid focusing on a topic with declining search volume and find keywords with increasing search volume.
Are there many people who care about what you’re blogging about? If you want to see how popular the terms you plan to use are, you can type them into Google Trends. It can help track a search term’s growth or decline over time or discover any unexpected spikes in interest.
Google Trends doesn’t even require you to have a Google account to use it; anyone can access it. If you visit the Google Trends page, you can find out what news items are popular now. Little graphs next to the titles showed when the related searches were the most popular.
You can use Google Trends to learn about popular search terms. You can divide your search results by image, news, web, and YouTube queries, monitor the rise and fall of a specific keyword’s popularity over time, and much more.
Google Keyword Planner
Use this free service to help you with your blogging with the help of the keyword tool. This tool can help you identify descriptive phrases for your products and services.
This Google tool will tell you how frequently people are looking for the keywords you’ve selected, helping you zero in on the ones most likely to generate revenue.
Doing extensive keyword research is a prerequisite for successful content marketing. The Google Keyword Planner is an excellent resource for this very purpose.
You can use Google Keyword Planner independently of a Google AdWords account. You can use it easily by entering a search term and clicking a button. You can narrow the search results by including filters like the target countries.
Find a keyword with low competition but high traffic potential for the best results. High-competition keywords and resource pages can also help you in the long run as a blogger.
Ahrefs
There are a lot of similarities between Ahrefs and other similar tools like SEMrush and MOZ. Alternatively, Ahrefs is excellent at monitoring your specific niche for new developments.
As soon as they discover one, you will be notified so that you can adjust your marketing tactics accordingly. I’ve also heard that Ahrefs’s backlink analysis capabilities are unparalleled.
SEMrush
Ever been curious as to what the talk is like amongst your competitors? What specific phrases and terms do they successful use? To what extent do your current methods of advertising succeed?
SEMrush is a tool that you can use to investigate such inquiries and more. This is an essential tool for learning about organic search engine optimisation and conducting keyword research.
A comprehensive keyword research tool, SEMrush, includes a “traffic cost” metric that reveals how much it would cost to acquire Web traffic from a competitor’s site using a pay-per-click model. Helpful information for evaluating their SEO progress.
Quora
Looking at the issues people are asking about on Quora, the most popular social network dedicated to Q&A, is another way to generate ideas for blog posts. The benefits of Quora extend far beyond the realm of academia.
The social network Quora fits this description because of its massive audience and active user base. If you’re a blogger, this is your holy grail because it helps you find the perfect keywords for your posts and helps you draw in the readers you want.
All that’s required to help is to provide in-depth responses to inquiries. Reading Quora’s most recent questions and answers is essential if you are a blogger who wants to continue at the cutting edge of your field.
As a bonus, you never know what you might learn or get inspired to write about on Quora. If you know that your blog audience enjoys reading about current events, you can focus on covering those types of stories.
Many people use Quora, meaning there is more data and intriguing questions to answer. There is a search box on Quora where you can type keywords or a question to get results.
As a result, your Quora blog might be indexed if it contains beneficial information. A well-developed Quora profile can help with search engine rankings, name recognition, and keyword research.
MOZ
Moz is an established SEO tool. The platform shines when it comes to auditing websites. Moz will examine your site and recommend SEO tweaks that will help it rank higher in search results.
Finding and fixing these mistakes quickly gives you an advantage over the competition and, in theory, better search engine rankings. Moz’s straightforward reports can put you ahead of the pack and give you authority over any keyword.
Moz’s offerings are both like and unlike those of SEMrush. Take a look at this informative video to see how keyword research looks in MOZ compared to some other well-known tools:
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is great when you need more than just basic keyword research. Specifically, they have an analytical feature that shows what tactics worked and which ones didn’t.
According to their website, this ability is predictive. To put it another way, Buzzsumo saves you a lot of time by doing most of the work.
Buzzsumo also keeps tabs on the most famous content shared across social media platforms. In addition, there are tools available to help you identify influential people in your field.
I use Buzzsumo as one of many blogging tools because it helps me discover new influencers, track down related keywords, and organise and share the best content across the web.
Best Blog Writing Tools
With your newfound knowledge, you should put pen to paper and compose that post. Sounds too easy to be accurate, but maybe it is.
Not quite, no. After all, you’d like for your post to be readily digestible, entertaining, and pertinent to your brand. Put these tools to work for you to produce excellent writing.
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyser
Your website’s success depends on your ability to attract more visitors. Since people’s attention spans are less than ever, the success of your blog post hinges on the quality of its headline.
Initially developed to facilitate better communication between blog authors and editors, CoSchedule has since expanded to meet the needs of bloggers in charge of promoting their content across multiple platforms.
Their platform also has a headline examiner, a useful extra feature. Plus, it’s free to use with any standard web browser. More importantly, it shows what elements of a headline are successful and which are not. You will become a better headline writer if you use it frequently.
Grammarly
We can’t sugarcoat that hiring human editors comes at a price. They are also ineffective in the brief formats of email and social media posts. Here’s where the “free writing assistant” Grammarly comes in handy. This tool works with Google Docs and is available online as a browser extension.
Check in with yourself weekly to see how you’re doing with your writing goals. There is a paid premium version in addition to a freemium version.
Hemingway App
Instead of or in addition to Grammarly, you can use Hemingway to polish your writing.
This is an excellent tool for enhancing your writing skills. Hemingway provides a detailed analysis of many common writing mistakes, including excessive use of weak adverbs, poor sentence construction, excessive use of the passive voice, and many others.
The app’s sidebar serves as a switch between the writing and editing modes. While in the composing mode, you have access to various formatting options, including the ability to change the font, size, and colour of your text and add hyperlinks. You gain access to most of the app’s features when editing articles.
The app gives you more than just a quick snapshot of your content’s readability, length, and estimated reading time; it gives you detailed analysis and suggests ways to enhance it.
It also includes suggestions for how to resolve the issue. Once you’re happy with your draft, you can export it in various formats, including directly publishing it to platforms like WordPress or Medium. Hemingway can also import content from Microsoft Word.docx files.
Best Search Engine Optimization Tool
Yoast
Yoast is one of the most popular add-ons for WordPress. Yoast’s SEO functionality is improved in both the free and paid versions.
They consider keyword density, readability, and the most recent changes to Google’s algorithm to achieve this. Premium users can access extra functions like fixing broken links and helping with internal linking.
The “social cards” feature is another excellent addition to Yoast. The preview feature helps you check that your social media posts look great before they go live and allows you to make last-minute changes.
Best Visual Blogging Tools
I believe it’s safe to say that if a blog post consists entirely of walls of text, readers will lose interest quickly. Here are some fantastic tools to help you create something unique for your post, whether you want to start from scratch or use stock photo sites.
Canva
Canva is a flexible graphic design tool because it comes in both free and paid versions. To help you look your best in any situation, they offer photo editing, chart-making, and the use of premade designs.
Using their image library or branding tools is a paid feature. If you require premium features, you can choose from various pricing tiers. Canva’s intuitive interface allows even those without artistic training to create high-quality designs.
To encourage my blog posts on social media, I use Canva to design images, and I use stock photos as the featured images that appear at the top of each post. Learn how fast and easy it is to create a professional-looking infographic using Canva.
Where to Find Stock Images Online
You probably don’t need a program with Canva’s functionality, though. Thankfully, there are other options to consider. These three stock image sites, in particular, offer a plethora of images and are a tried-and-true method of sprucing up your content:
Pixabay
In the same vein as its competitors, Pixabay is an excellent place to find high-quality images without spending a dime. You should know that although the photos and memberships are free, there are instances where user registration is necessary.
Unsplash
In need of some free pictures? Unsplash is a photo-sharing website that offers stunning, high-resolution images for free. If I need an image for my blog, I always go to Unsplash first and then copy and paste the photographer’s information that Unsplash provides when I save the image to your computer.
Pexels
Another website similar to Pexels in that it provides free photos for commercial and non-commercial use is Pexels. On the other hand, they provide video materials with the same conditions. Equally important, there are moral constraints on how you can use it.
Best Website Analysis Tools
So, tell me, why do you blog, and what do you hope to achieve with it? It can be challenging to know for sure at times. Consequently, it is necessary to make use of such blog analysis tools.
Results from Google Analytics
It’s a big plus that no financial obligations are associated with using Google Analytics. This “thank you” to the most used search engine in the world will help your site rank higher in the results.
Your wallet’s contents will eventually fall into their hands. Making your advertising more efficient will bring in more visitors and money from their ads.
Google’s Page Speed Metrics
Especially for mobile devices, search engine rankings are becoming increasingly dependent on how quickly a website loads.
Do you think the number of people accessing your site from mobile devices will grow or shrink over the next ten years? Bloggers should prioritise quicker page loads to rank higher in search engine results.
Thank goodness Google provides a handy tool for checking how quickly your page loads. If this metric is low, they will advise on how to increase it. Users incur no costs to take advantage of this service, just as they would with Analytics.
Conclusion
You may feel overwhelmed by the information you need to pour through to improve productivity and boost traffic for your blog. But please remember that every tool listed above will benefit your blogging efforts.
If you want to know more, come and learn about strategies to help you increase your blog traffic. Also, don’t forget to visit our other helpful resources.
