19 Must-Have Best Blogging Tools For Beginners

Are you a beginner blogger struggling to find the right tools to take your blog to the next level?

Look no further!

As a blogger with some experience, I’ve tested countless blogging tools and have compiled a list of the absolute best ones for beginners. The ones that are must-haves for every blogger to set up their blog or you could say the most basic tools that will kickstart your blog.

From user-friendly website builders to essential plugins, this post will have you covered with everything you need to start your blogging journey on the right foot.

Whether you’re looking to increase your blog’s visibility or streamline your writing process, these tools will make your life as a blogger so much easier. So let’s dive in and explore the best blogging tools for beginners!

Many tools in this list are WordPress plugins. So it is recommended that you choose WordPress as your content management platform. Trust me, there’s nothing like WordPress in the market.

Disclosure: Some links in this article are my affiliate links. If you buy any product through any of these links, It’ll give me a kickback at no extra cost to you. Such a commission helps me to stay motivated and produce more such content. Thanks in advance if you buy anything from my affiliate links.

With that being said, let’s start our list of the great tools for beginner bloggers.

But first…

What Tools Do You Need To Start A Blog?

If you are a beginner, then you need to have the following essential tools for starting your blog. These tools are just there for helping you bring your blog to life. The list of other tools that you will need soon after is covered later in the post.

1. Web Hosting

You need a ‘host’ to enable other Internet users to visit your website. The host makes sure that everyone who clicks on a link or types in your URL may see your blog.

They also keep all of your website data safe and secure. Consider web hosting to be similar to your home. Someone can view what’s inside by coming over (typing in your blog’s URL).

I use Hostinger for hosting my blog. The plans start from as low as $1.99 a month.

2. A content management platform

This is the platform that you will use to design and manage your blog. It basically runs your blog.

Again, there’s no other platform like WordPress. The flexibility that it provides in terms of functionality is unbeatable. I too use WordPress for managing my blog.

3. A Theme

An SEO-friendly WordPress theme is an essential tool for bloggers. Your organic traffic will depend a great deal on the SEO-friendliness of your blog’s theme.

The free themes available in WordPress are SEO-friendly. You can definitely go for them if you don’t want to pay.

But if you are ready to pay for a theme, then you can find awesome themes on Generate Press and Astra.

These were the three tools you need to kickstart your blog. But soon after, you will also need some other essential tools for blogging that will shape up your blog the way it should be.

So let’s dive into the list.

Best Blogging Tools For Beginners

1. Hostinger

Web hosting is the most important tool for bloggers. For your blog to be found in search engines, you need web hosting.

I use Hostinger WordPress hosting for powering my blog. Hostinger is the best hosting provider for me and it has never let me down.

As soon as you purchase the WordPress Hosting plan, Hostinger will guide you through the setup process, and within minutes, you will be in your WordPress dashboard designing your home page.

Did you know? It just costs $35.88 a year to run a blog with Hostinger (no more costs to pay for; just $35.88)

The best thing about Hostinger is it’s super quick, super friendly, and super helpful customer service. I have gotten my website into terrible problems (due to my own mistakes) and the Hostinger team has always saved my a*s.

The plans start from as low as $1.99 per month.

2. Cloudflare

I use Cloudflare to make my website run more efficiently. A beginner blogger can use the free version, which is sufficient. It looks after the performance requirements of your website.

It also comes with a lifetime free SSL certificate even with the free plan.

Connect Cloudflare to your website, and forget about your website’s performance.

The features of the free plan are:

• Auto-minify: Reduce the file size of the source code on your website boosting its performance.

• Brotli compression: Speed up page load times for your visitor’s HTTPS traffic by applying Brotli compression.

• Rocket Loader: Improve the paint time for pages that include JavaScript.

• Image Resize: You can resize, adjust quality, and convert images to WebP format, on demand. We cache every derived image at the edge, so you store only the original image.

3. WPTouch Mobile

As of 2022, the percentage of mobile users for Google searches worldwide is approximately 61%. This means that the majority of Google searches are performed on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

This makes it increasingly important to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. I mean, think about it – would you want to visit a website on your phone and have to pinch and zoom just to read the text?

No, thank you!

By making your website mobile-friendly, you’re not only providing a better user experience for your visitors, but you’re also keeping up with the times.

This means optimizing your design, font sizes, and images for smaller screens, and ensuring that your content is easy to navigate and interact with on a touch screen.

I use the WPTouch WordPress plugin to optimize the mobile version of my website. It makes sure that the mobile version of my website is responsive and user-friendly.

Related: How To Use The Google Mobile-Friendly Test For Your Website

4. Smush

Image optimization is a critical component of a blogger’s toolkit. The use of an image optimization tool can significantly improve the user experience and speed of your website.

Large, high-quality images can slow down your website’s loading time, leading to a negative impact on SEO and user experience.

I use the Smush WordPress plugin for optimizing my images. The plugin automatically optimizes any images that you upload on your website, making sure the quality of the images isn’t compromised.

5. Rank Math SEO

Rank Math is the most used WordPress SEO plugin and my personal choice. It is undoubtedly one of the best tools for on-page SEO.

It has great functions like basic SEO, a little advanced SEO, a readability score for your post title, and the readability score of your content.

It will give you suggestions and instructions about improving the SEO of your post while you are writing your post.

Note that getting a good score on Rank Math or any other SEO tool doesn’t mean your content is optimized for search. It just means that you’ve met some basic on-page requirements like including your target keyword in your title and content, sprinkling in some related keywords, etc.

While some of the criteria used by such SEO plugins are considered on-page SEO best practices, you shouldn’t waste your time obsessing over scores because these aren’t determined by Google.

SEO is much more detailed and deeper than these tools make it seem. Don’t worry, you will learn with time.

I am still learning.

6. Simple Author Box

Have you ever stumbled upon an article or blog post and found yourself wondering, “Who wrote this masterpiece?” That’s where the author box comes in.

An author box is like a little signature at the end of a piece of content. It tells readers who the author is, what they do, and where they can find more of their work.

I use the Simple Author Box WordPress plugin.

Think of it as a mini-bio that helps readers connect with you on a more personal level.

Plus, Google’s EAT update loves to see an author box to give authoritativeness to your website.

7. Internal Link Juicer

Internal links are like the secret tunnels of your website. They connect your pages together, allowing both users and search engines to navigate your site with ease.

But they’re not just handy shortcuts. Internal links can also have a huge impact on your SEO.

They help transfer authority from high-authority pages to your low-authority pages.

I use Internal Link Juicer for internal linking.

It helps you define key phrases for each blog post. Whenever these key phrases appear on your other blog posts, they are automatically linked to the former.

8. ThirstyAffiliates

Affiliate marketing is undoubtedly the best way to monetize your blog. But if you are promoting a number of products and your links are scattered everywhere on your blog, then you need to manage them effectively.

ThirstyAffiliates is my favorite affiliate link management plugin for WordPress. It is one of the most essential affiliate marketing tools for every blogger. With ThirstyAffiliates, all your affiliate links are stored in one dashboard. You can give reference names for all your affiliate links such as ‘Hostinger hosting’, ‘GetResponse email marketing’.

What’s more, if any of your affiliate links get expired, then all you need to do is replace the old link with the new link, and all your expired links will be changed to the new one.

9. Easy Table Of Contents

Think about it – have you ever landed on a blog post that looked like a never-ending scroll, with no clear indication of where to find the information you need?

Don’t worry! You can save your blog readers from this.

The Easy Table of Contents WordPress plugin does it for you!

With a quick glance, you can see all the sections of the blog post, and jump straight to the part that interests you.

It is not a significant tool but it adds greatly to the user experience and Google’s algorithms love good user experience.

So next time you’re writing a blog post, don’t forget to add a table of contents – your readers will thank you, and you’ll be one step closer to blogging greatness.

10. Notion

Being a blogger is like being a juggler – you’re constantly trying to balance multiple tasks at once, all while keeping your eyes on the prize (or in this case, your blog’s success).

With so much going on, it’s easy to let things slip through the cracks and end up feeling like a disorganized mess.

I have been through this phase too. A rush of ideas in my mind throughout the day, some remembered, some forgotten. Forgot to note down any new easy keyword opportunities (an opportunity missed).

So I finally decided to stay organized.

I use Notion for staying organized as a blogger. It is an over-simplified workspace that helps me maintain a record of every tiny thing I come across and find useful.

This is what I mean (see below)

I have different places to store different ideas and information.

A separate place for:

• New blog post ideas

• New Tweet ideas

• Any tips and tricks that I found useful

• My daily to-do list

• My Reading list

• Important resources (any articles or blog posts), etc.

11. SEMrush

SEMrush is widely popular and one of the best keyword research tools out there. It is an all-in-one SEO toolkit that provides much more than just keyword research.

Using the Keyword Overview tool, you can type in a keyword and get all the important metrics for that particular keyword including the global and country-wise search volume, the SEO difficulty for the keyword, and the popularity trend for the keyword (whether its popularity is growing or reducing).

Related: How to do keyword research in 2023 for getting organic traffic to your blog

12. MailerLite

I regret not starting an email list sooner. And I recommend you start yours today. Email list subscribers are your most loyal audience.

One of the best email marketing services for beginners is MailerLite. There’s a reason I highlighted and Italicized “beginners”.

Because MailerLite is the perfect email marketing tool for beginners thanks to its free plan that offers everything that a beginner (even a semi-pro) blogger needs.

The free plan has the following features:

• Store up to 1000 contacts on your email list

• Lets you send 12000 monthly emails

• Email automation

• Opt-in forms and pop-ups

• 10 landing pages

• Drag and drop email designer

I personally use MailerLite’s free plan for managing my email list. It has never let me down once.

13. Block yourself from analytics

This Chrome extension is very important to me. It helps me block my own visits to my website from Google Analytics.

In simple words, Google Analytics won’t count your own visits to your site. This helps me know about the actual traffic to my blog.

Just download and activate the Chrome extension and mark the webpage you are on as “Block Analytics for this website”.

14. Shared Counts

Shared Counts is a WordPress plugin I use to put social sharing buttons on my blog. It also shows the number of shares for your posts on different social media platforms.

Social media is a beginner blogger’s best friend. You cannot expect to generate a tonne of traffic from Google if you are a beginner.

Currently, over 80% of my blog traffic comes from Twitter, which brings us to the next tool, Twitter itself.

15. UpdraftPlus

What if your blog gets hacked? What if you accidentally delete important data from your blog? What if something happens and all your blog data vanishes into thin air?

It could be the worst nightmare for a blogger who has a lot of data on their blog.

But don’t worry, UpdraftPlus is a WordPress plugin that easily backs up your website data. With a backup, you can easily restore your blog to its previous state, even if the worst happens.

What’s more, you can also automatically schedule backups like daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

16. Grammarly

For those who don’t know, Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that can help you with everything from spelling to punctuation to sentence structure. It’s like having a personal editor at your fingertips, ready to jump in and save you from embarrassing mistakes.

But Grammarly isn’t just a tool for your grammar. It’s also a great way to improve your writing skills.

By highlighting areas where you can improve, Grammarly can help you learn from your mistakes and become a better writer overall.

Just install the Grammarly Chrome extension and you are good to go. It’s super easy to use.

17. ChatGPT

Aren’t you interested in the fight between Google’s Bard and Bing-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT? I definitely am.

There are a gazillion things going on in the world of AI and as a blogger, it won’t hurt to take advantage of the trending AI tools.

From content writing to SEO, from image generation to video generation, from writing email copy to writing ad copy, AI is everywhere.

As a blogger, you too can make some good use of AI.

ChatGPT can be a useful tool for generating ideas or providing information, but it’s important to carefully evaluate and edit the content before publishing or using it in any official capacity.

I rarely use ChatGPT to generate little pieces of text such as intros and conclusions that are properly edited. It saves me a little time so that I can move on to more important things.

And if you generate your entire content through AI, then keep in mind the 75% rule. Edit 75% of the content generated by AI and add your own voice to it.

Related: The Best ChatGPT Chrome Extension For SEO

18. Canva

Blogging isn’t just about writing content. You have to take care of the visuals too.

Oftentimes, a blogger needs to add images to his/her blog posts. Other times, they need to design a thumbnail for a new blog post.

You need a graphic design tool to be able to do this. Canva is without a doubt my go-to tool for graphic design.

I use it to design thumbnails, infographics, etc. for my blog posts.

19. Twitter

You are probably wondering, why am I including Twitter in a list of blogging tools.

Twitter is my favorite social media platform to engage with other bloggers and people related to my niche.

As I said, social media is a beginner blogger’s best friend, add one more friend to the gang – building relationships with other bloggers.

As a blogger, you can’t be a lone wolf. You need to be a part of a bigger tribe to sow the seeds of your success. Twitter is the place where I found many bloggers who were ready to build meaningful relationships and help other bloggers climb the ladder for mutual gain.

In fact, I have gained a few high-quality backlinks from Twitter by building relationships with other bloggers.

Engaging with other bloggers will go a long way in boosting your blogging efforts.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, starting a blog can be an exciting journey, but it can also be overwhelming, especially for beginners.

With the right set of tools, you can make the process much smoother and increase your chances of success.

We hope our list of the best blogging tools for beginners has given you some great ideas for getting started. Remember to choose the tools that best fit your needs and goals, and don’t be afraid to experiment until you find the perfect combination.

With these great tools and the right mindset, you can create a successful blog that will help you connect with your audience and achieve your goals. Good luck on your blogging journey!

If you found this post helpful, consider sharing it on social media and with people you think might benefit from it. Sharing it will make my countless hours more meaningful. Don’t forget to add any other blogging tools for beginners to the list.

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