How to Pick The Best Website Platform for Blogging

Blogging is an essential part of any SEO and organic marketing strategy. It provides long-term growth and draws the right people to your website. But how do you pick the best website platform for blogging when you’re just getting started?

This blog will help you decide between WordPress, Showit, Wix, and Squarespace blogging features. Whether you’re looking to switch platforms or just starting your blogging journey, this guide will help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. In the end, I’ll share my preferred platform for blogging. 

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Blogging Platform

What are some things you need to consider when choosing a platform for your blog?

Ease of Use

Use free trials of different tools to see how easy it is to use for yourself and your audience. You want to be able to add new posts easily. You also want a positive user experience by making navigation and search easy on your blog home page.

Read reviews to see how people like the platform. Pay attention to their positive and negative feedback on the platform.

See what it’s like to interact with their customer support. If anything goes wrong, you want a responsive customer support team ready to help.

Customization Options

Are you able to easily customize your blog? Templates are a great place to start, but you don’t want to look like all the other blogs out there. Make sure you can customize the template or theme to your style and branding.

SEO Capabilities

SEO is HUGELY important for blogging. Although you can start to optimize a post while you’re writing it, a large part of SEO comes while you’re publishing it to your website. Does the website platform have built-in SEO tools or plug-ins to help you optimize your content? At a minimum, you need to be able to edit the SEO title and meta description.

You also need to make sure the platform supports mobile responsiveness. Google only indexes websites that are mobile-friendly. You need your website to support mobile search. Most website platforms will have this functionality, but this is just a reminder to double-check!

Monetization Options

Website platforms sometimes have limitations to their monetization options. Depending on your needs and goals, these are the features you’ll want to look for:

• Ad Integration: Support for ad networks and flexibility in ad placement and formats
• Affiliate Marketing: Easy integration with affiliate programs and tools for managing affiliate links and tracking performance
• Sponsored Content: Options for managing sponsored posts and collaborations, and tools for disclosure and compliance
• E-commerce Capabilities: Ability to sell digital and physical products
• Membership and Subscription Models: Support for creating membership sites or subscription-based content, plus tools for managing subscribers and payments
• Donation and Crowdfunding: Widgets and buttons for accepting donations directly

Cost

Some website platforms are free but they come with limited functionality. Paid options obviously have a cost, but it might be worth it for the features. Keep in mind that you may have to pay for add-ons even if the subscription is free.

Popular Blogging Platforms

Being a blog writer for creatives, I’ve worked with a variety of platforms. These are some popular website platforms for blogging. It will help you decide the best website platform for blogging for you!

WordPress

There are actually two versions of WordPress:

• WordPress.org: Self-hosted option for advanced users who want full control and customization.
• WordPress.com: Hosted option for beginners and those who prefer a managed solution

Most creatives will choose wordpress.com; wordpress.org is typically for website developers and coders. 

WordPress allows you to install plug-ins to extend your website’s capabilities. One of the best plug-ins for blogging is Yoast. It’s an SEO tool that helps you optimize your content by offering suggestions and areas for improvement. I love using Yoast!

WordPress is the platform that integrates with Showit websites for blogging. It combines Showit’s design flexibility with WordPress’s powerful blogging features. The design is created in Showit, while the content is uploaded to WordPress. The integration pulls the Showit template into each blog you publish on WordPress. This is the combination I use for my website!

Wix

Wix is a popular option for creative entrepreneurs because of its easy drag-and-drop interface. You don’t need coding knowledge to use Wix. It’s a straightforward way to create and manage your website and blog.

Wix has the basic SEO functions you need to optimize your blog posts. Like other platforms, you can organize your content with categories and tags to improve navigation and SEO.

However, remember how I said Google only indexes (AKA finds) mobile-friendly websites? Wix sites are responsive, but the mobile versions might not always be as optimized, leading to performance issues on mobile devices. This is a huge issue if you’re trying to drive organic traffic.

Squarespace

Squarespace is another great platform for beginners. I actually built my first website on Squarespace. If I can do it, so can you!

It also has a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor to easily build and manage your blog. I like Squarespace because it’s an all-in-one solution that includes hosting, templates, design tools, and customer support. You only need this one tool to manage your blog.

Squarespace has built-in SEO tools to help optimize your blog content. However, it doesn’t allow you to install tools to help you optimize it further, like Yoast. So I find it more difficult and manual to optimize blogs on Squarespace.

The Best Website Platform for Blogging

So, what’s the best website platform for blogging? WordPress is my preferred platform for blogging. You can’t beat the customizing features and SEO capabilities. I find it pretty easy to use for blogging. Designing an entire website on WordPress can get a little complicated, but if you integrate it with Showit like me, the WordPress side for blogging is easy.

I want to mention that even if you have a blog on a platform besides WordPress, it can be successful. You don’t have to switch to WordPress to have a blog that’s driving organic traffic to your website. Any blog strategy will do that for you! 

Are you ready to get started with blogging? I’m currently accepting new clients and would love to meet you! Explore my blog writing services and book a discovery call with me to discuss your needs!