I’ve always been a true believer that having the right tools available can definitely make your blogging easier. The Internet has grown so much, we can now promote and increase brand awareness quickly within a few days. Imagine sharing content on your social media account with 50,000 people? That’s enormous traffic directed to your blog within a few minutes, leading to a higher chance of conversions. Anyway, with that said, I’ve always believed the success of a blog starts with a great blogging interface. We have several blogging platforms available to us but it’s important you are clear about what’s important so you can make a decisive choice. Let’s look at the important things to look for when choosing the right blogging platform.
This will be Part 1 of 2.
Let’s get started…
The Backend Interface
I think one of the MOST important things when choosing a blogging platform is the backend because it needs to be easy to use. This part of the platform controls the posting, setup, customization, and other important elements to establish a successful blog. You need to be able to find things easily while knowing what each menu will do for your blog. From the top of my head, I know what’s important to me, like:
- Publishing posts
- Moderating comments
- Theme customizations
- Meta settings
However, you can only tweak them when you know where they are located in the backend. When choosing your blogging platform, pay close attention to the important factors and how easily they are accessible.
Templates
I use to be able to code very well and be able to design my blog from scratch, but I no longer have that knowledge like I did so it’s important I have theme flexibility. What do I mean? I want to be able to go into the backend and install the type of template I need with the click of a button. This way, installation is quick and I get EXACTLY what I am looking for. Another important thing is to be able to easily customize the theme so look for where the platform keeps the .CSS and other files while checking how easily they can be customized.
Here are a few things to pay close attention to when choosing a platform for the sole purpose of web design. Does the platform offer a great selection of:
- Themes
- Mobile-friendly themes
- Accessible files for tweaking
- Themes with a simple drag and drop interface
All of these will make it very easy for you to go live with your blog quickly so you can focus on content and marketing.
SEO Information
We all know the importance of SEO and how it can help grow your blog. Google uses meta tags to identify what your website is all about so it’s important that these options are available in your platform backend. It’s important you first know what’s important when it comes to SEO and if you don’t, consider the following:
- Page title
- Page description
- Keywords
- “Target” keywords in content
- xml
- txt
Having easy access to these factors will allow you to optimize your website quickly for search engines. Organic traffic can be a great source of FREE relevant traffic perfect for brand awareness and conversions.
Wrapping It Up…
This is the end of Part 1 and in Part 2, we’ll be looking at another 3-4 important factors when choosing a blogging platform. All of the factors listed above are important to streamline your blogging and business growth. The way I look at it is the less time you spend on customization, the more time you can focus on writing high value content, testing, and tweaking. In the next part, I’ll also discuss what blogging platforms I recommend if you’re just getting started to streamline your entire blogging mission.
Please provide feedback and let me know if you have any questions.