People ask me all the time, should I use Blogger for my blog or should I use WordPress? Or I get asked why WordPress? Why not Blogger? As someone who has had their blog on both Blogger and WordPress, I feel as though I can speak with authority why WordPress is the best choice for your blog.
When I started my blog, I started it in Blogger not really knowing any better. I remember after about a year people telling me I should really consider moving to WordPress. They cited the things that I could do with my blog: the better SEO capabilities, the plugins, and the design benefits galore. They talked about how I owned my content and controlled my blog. I had no idea the true benefits though until I actually made the move and started noticing the things I could do that I could not have done on Blogger.
- SEO. Yes you can SEO posts in Blogger. But the ways in which you can SEO a post in WordPress are amazing. First of all, I use the Yoast SEO plugin. I have since I moved to WordPress, and it is what most people use. You have this handy tool that shows you how your SEO will look for a particular post. This is what it looks like:
I love being able to see exactly how many times my content shows up, how keyword rich my title is, and being able to put in a lengthy meta description. What’s great about WordPress is that search engines can find websites running WordPress because of the way in which the sites are coded.
- Owning Your Content. I remember when I had my blog through Blogger hearing a story from a friend who one day her site completely disappeared. She had it through Blogger, and Blogger deleted it for no reason. I swear I almost had a heart attack thinking of my site that I had worked on and spent so much time and money on just disappearing! So very soon after I switched to WordPress. I use LiquidWeb for hosting and I own my content and my site. If your blog is on Blogger, Google owns it! You do not. They can shut it down at any time, for any reason. Think about it.
- Design. The design elements in WordPress are leaps and bounds above Blogger. You can do so much more with web coding, elements, and layout. Granted I hired a wonderful designer for this, Lindsey with White Oak Creative. Seriously, she is amazing. But the way my blog looked in Blogger and the way it looks in WordPress are just no comparison.
- Plugins. I spoke earlier about Yoast which is the plugin I use for SEO, but there are so many amazing plugins for security, social sharing, email lists, and so much more that you can have on WordPress. If you ever want a list of the plugins I use, feel free to comment or email me and I am happy to list them out.
- When you need help, have you ever tried to email Blogger? Yeah good luck. Once my site went down for three days when I was on Blogger. Do you know who helped me get it back up? NO ONE! Almost every Blogger site was down for days and there was no one to help. If my site is down in WordPress I am on the phone with someone from my hosting site, LiquidWeb, in about two minutes. That is invaluable! Needing web support is a huge factor if you use your blog as a business and it goes down. How frustrating is it when you can’t get someone on the phone?
I am not giving you these examples because I think you will immediately turn around and change your mind. But from someone who has had their blog on both Blogger and WordPress, if you are wondering, Why WordPress? Well why not WordPress?
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I love wordpress. I tweeted them a question and they tweeted back immediately! I haven’t used any plugins – I know there are so many simple ways I could improve my blog. I’ll have to add that to my to do list.
I’m a wordpress user as well! Thanks for sharing
I’m tempted to switch over to WordPress from Squarespace. Was WordPress hard to learn? It just seems a little daunting.
I used Blogger for 3.5 years and then made the move to WordPress. Truthfully I hated working with WordPress when I was in grad school, but I’ve learned to love it. It was a bit nerve-wracking to switch but ultimately I’m glad I made the move. I think the biggest reason I did so was the whole “owning my content” thing. The other aspects–plugins, boosted SEO, design–were added benefits. Awesome post! 🙂
I’ve never used anything BUT wordpress…and I love it. It’s simple, easy to use, and works. The only thing I don’t like about it is that you can’t CALL anyone if you have support issues!!! You just post on a forum…super annoying if you need help RIGHT AWAY.
Oh god. This scares me. Granted, I haven’t had any issues with Blogger (knock on wood), but I haven’t gone to WordPress because I’m too poor to hire someone to help me and I’m too tech challenged to do it myself and not screw it all up. So I basically sit here in fear, poor and dumb. LOL
If you JUST want to build a website WordPress in itself is absolutely fantastic.
However, many people who want a (WordPress) website really want a web business (get lots of traffic, make money with the site, etc). If you’re in THAT category, keep reading…
So, while putting up a (WordPress) site is easy, knowing how to build an online business is another story.
The real truth is that many people struggle to build a successful online business with WordPress. They keep changing or adding plugins, themes and other features hoping it will solve their problem. Yet WordPress “as is” won’t build an online business. It’s missing a do-able start-to-finish BUSINESS process.
Surely, you can slog through the mountains of business building advice and tools that are out there. But for most WordPress users it all ends up being too much.
So, despite the dazzling display of WordPress features, the reality for most (non-tech) people who want to create a web business with WordPress is that they need to adhere to an easy-to-follow, all-in-one, proven, ethical webbusiness-building system (not a get rich quick scheme), tailored to the WordPress platform, to get (1) a significant amount of traffic and get (2) targeted traffic (example of such a system: WealthPrinciples dot net).
Otherwise… you’ll end up having (and building) only a WordPress webSITE (or BLOG) but not a webBUSINESS.
I’m 100% wordpress, it’s so user friendly compared to blogger and there are plugins for pretty much everything you’d ever want to do!
I also use WordPress. Now that I have really learned about SEO and internet marketing, I know that WordPress was the best option for me. I also love that I can easily transform WordPress into my business site when that time comes 🙂
I started out on Blogger too and recently switched to self-hosted WP to be taken more seriously and utilize all of WP’s plugins and SEO capabilities.
Great post!
xoxo, Jenny
I completely agree! I’m a wordpress fan, and I have used blogger before too.
I had no idea that Google owned all your content if you blogged on Blogger. That is really scary that they could shut it down at any time. Luckily, I started with the free WordPress, then I migrated myself and got self-hosting.
WordPress is so user friendly and so popular you can find so many articles on just about anything you need help with. I love that I made the switch quick! It was definitely one of the best pieces of advice I was given!
Wonderful! I have WordPress, but I decided that I needed to learn why it was so awesome. 😉 I only recently got the Yoast plugin, and I can already see a jump in my views from search engines go up! Wahoo!
Thanks for sharing, I’ve gone back and forth about switching to WordPress and still haven’t decided. Based on everyone’s response, I see WordPress is better to work with if you want to take your blog to another level! Thanks again!
I’d really love to move to WordPress. But I love doing my own design work, and the tech aspects of WP scare the heck out of me, haha. But I do get really nervous about google/blogger owning the content of my blog. At some point, I’ll bite the bullet and make the switch I’m sure.