New to blogging and looking for the BEST blogging tools for beginners?
Starting a blog can be hard and sometimes overwhelming, especially if you have no technical experience. You will need all the best tools and resources to make your journey easier.
Today, I want to share with you my 9 tried and tested best blogging tools for beginners, to help you to get your blog off the ground running and fast track you to success.
The best part? Most of them are FREE or at least have Free trails.
Without further ado, here are my 9 Best blogging tools for beginners.
Disclosure: Some of the links in the article contains affiliate links, which means that if you make a purchase through one of the links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the blog and allows me to continue to make free content. I will only recommend products that I use and love. Thank you for your support!
#1. Grammarly (Free)
Are you one of those who has so much knowledge to offer but the writing gets in your way to start blogging? or perhaps English is not your first language, you just need someone to look over your shoulder to make sure you are saying things the correct way.
Grammarly is the tool for you.
It checks your grammar and spelling, suggests the appropriate punctuation, and suggests alternative words for quality writing.
While there is paid pro version, you can use the Grammarly for Chrome add-on extension for FREE. As a starter, the FREE version might just be what you need.
One caution, Grammarly is not compatible with Google suite (like Google docs), it does work with WordPress.
#2. Canva (Free)
This is one of my favorites when it comes to the best blogging tools for beginners!
Apart from the fact that is free, Canva is a drag-and-drop online editing tool that helps you to create professional graphics.
I love using Canva to create graphics for my website, and pins for my Pinterest account. It auto saves everything you created, therefore it is very quick and easy to replicate similar graphics. The best part is, you don’t have to be artistic to make attractive and professional looking graphics.
Want to learn more? Got you covered.
Here’s my post on “How to use Canva for FREE to create attractive Pinterest pins.”
#3. Tailwind (Free trial)
Let’s just say… I am a big fan!
When I first started blogging, I was desperately looking for ways to get traffic while waiting for Google to recognize my site. Pinterest is the social media platform that I turned to boost traffic to my new blog.
Tailwind is a Pinterest (and Instagram) approved auto-scheduler to help you pin while asleep (or working on your blog).
The best feature in Tailwind is the Tailwind tribe. It kind of work like Pinterest group boards, but way better. They are groups of people who share each others pins on specific topics. There are tribe rules to hold all members accountable for their sharing and the quality of the pins.
As a complete beginner when I started Pinterest and Tailwind, I made every mistake under the sun. I even got myself in Pinterest Jail for a week (yeah…very traumatizing). This is because there isn’t an official training.
To avoid you learning Pinterest and Tailwind the HARD way like I did, I weeded through many eCourses on the market for you. Elise’s “Paid by Pinterest” is the one that helped me to get back on track and start growing my blog traffic.
If you just started a new blog and are wondering why you are not getting any traffic. I highly recommend to give Tailwind a try! You can use my link below to get 100 pins and 5 tribe memberships with Tailwind for FREE.
#4. Best Blogging Tools for Beginners: Google Analytics (Free)
Ok, so this is NOT a tool you should be running out of the door to get, if you are still setting up your blog or only have a handful of blog posts. But I want to include it here to emphasis the importance of knowing your DATA.
If the goal for your blog is to make money, then you need to keep your eyes on the statistics right at the start. Google Analytics is a FREE tool to help you look at many key aspects of your blog.
It will answer questions like:
- How many people visit your website per day?
- What are the audience geographic locations?
- Which social media source sent the audience?
- Which page or post got the most views and least views?
- How long do people spend on your site each time?
- How fast or slow is your site speed?
…and many more.
By knowing this information, you will be able to optimize your content. For example, write more similar posts to the one that is the most popular, or tweak the one that didn’t get many visits. You can also figure out which social media platform is most effective on sending visitors to your site.
There are so many more things that you can do by knowing your numbers! And did I mention it’s FREE?
Here’s a short video on how to install it:
#5. Best Blogging Tools for Beginners: GetResponse (Free trial)
If you are just starting a blog or thinking about starting a blog, you may not have even heard of “list building”. But trust me my friend, “build your email list right from the start” is the NO. 1 advise many successful bloggers have given.
To build an email list, you need an autoresponder – a service that captures email addresses from subscribers and automatically sends emails to them. It’s an efficient way to communicate.
This is one of the biggest roadblocks I came across as a new blogger.
After spending DAYS trying many autoresponders (Free and Paid), I finally came to accept that if you are an affiliate marketer like me, you will need to invest in a PAID autoresponder, otherwise, you will eventually get in trouble with their policy, and potentially lose your access to your hard-worked email list.
Just to save you time, here are the ones that I tried and got rejected, as they do not support any type of affiliate activities. So please AVOID the following:
- Mailchimp
- MailerLite
- ActiveCampaign
- Benchmark
- Constant Contact
- SendinBlue
Here is the one I am happily settled with – GetResponse. This is the best blogging tools for beginners when it comes to email autoresponders, especially if you are an affiliate marketer.
Without getting too technical, here are the features that separate GetResponse from others:
- Gives a piece of mind for affiliate marketers
- Free 30 day trail
- Low basic plan at $15/month with unlimited number of emails, up to 1000 subscribers
- You can send time-based or action-based emails
- Has the best landing page building feature
- The best deliverability rate (99%)
#6. Best Blogging Tools for Beginners: Tinny PNG. (Free)
According to a recent study by Orbit Media, the data showed that “there is a clear correlation between highly visual content and success”.
While the images are important, it can slow down the loading time of your page. As a result, it will make the visitors skip your website, or it will hurt your website SEO.
Tinny PNG is one of most popular free online image optimization tools. This tool will help you reduce the size of images so they don’t slow down the page loading time.
It works with both PNG and JPG images, and you can upload up to 20 images at the same time.
Once the images are compressed, you can either save them to your computer or dropbox.
It is also available as a WordPress plugin.
#7. Best Blogging Tools for Beginners: Jaaxy (Free with Wealthy Affiliate)
We all know the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), right?
An SEO friendly blog can be ranked on top of the search engines, therefore, getting more organic traffic to your website.
It all starts with keyword research.
While there are many free and paid keyword searching tools out on the market, the one I recommend fits 3 criteria, especially for new bloggers:
- Reasonably priced
- Effective on finding unique long tail keywords
- Beginner friendly with a free trail.
Jaaxy is the tool of choice when it comes to keyword research. It is the most essential tool for my blogging prep work.
If you want to see it in action, check out my step-by-step guide on keyword research using Jaaxy.
Use my link below to try it for FREE:
Keep on reading to find out how to use Jaaxy for FREE with Wealthy Affiliate.
#8. Best Blogging Tools for Beginners: Yoast SEO (Free)
Yoast SEO is a powerful yet FREE plugin that you can install on WordPress.
This is one of THE BEST blogging tools for beginners when it comes to SEO optimization.
After you’ve done your keyword research, you will need to know where and how often you need to put them in your blog – aka SEO optimization, so your blog can be ranked high for these keywords.
I have summarized 13 tips and tricks you can do to optimize SEO for your blog HERE.
Yoast SEO will score each of your posts on SEO optimization and Readability, and then provide feedback on what you need to correct or improve.
It does have a premium version which offers much more powerful features, however, why not try the FREE version first before you decide if you need to upgrade?
#9. Wealthy Affiliate (Free trail)
OK, I have saved the best to the last…
If you are a complete beginner when it comes to blogging and overwhelmed by navigating the technical site of building a website, dare I say THE BEST blogging tool for beginners that I have come across is – Wealthy Affiliate, aka WA.
It is an all-in-one platform that hosts wordpress websites, provides step-by-step training, offers 24/7 supports. It also includes a built-in keyword searching tool – Jaaxy.
The most valuable part for me? It houses a warm active community of like-minded online business owners who are there to help you to be successful.
In case you are wondering why not go for some popular site host services such as Bluehost, SiteGround etc.?
While the initial fee may seem to be very low, pretty quickly, you will realize that you need to pay for many additional services in order for the website to run properly and securely, not to mention the training you need on top of that to build a website and learn about blogging.
Learning to build your website can be time consuming and frustrating, if you don’t have a proper training program. With Wealthy Affiliate’s step-by-step training bootcamp, it makes learning fun!
I was a COMPLETE newbie when I started my blog. Wealthy affiliate got me off the ground running within 3 days.
Here’s my in depth review on WA.
It’s also worth mentioning that Wealthy affiliate has an amazing affiliate program so you can make money while learning about online blogging? Win-Win!
For $49/month premium membership on Wealthy Affiliate, you get access to another best tool for Blogging – Jaaxy Lite for free.
Here’s your chance to try Wealthy Affiliate for free by click my link below:
Over to you
So here you have it, my 9 tried and tested best blogging tools for beginners.
Did you discover any new tools from the list above that you are interested in trying? Leave the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.
Chloe x
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Ok, I am saving this list to my bookmarks! Some of these I already use such as Wealthy Affiliate, Jaxxy, and Canva. However, I could really use Yoast SEO. It would give me great peace of mind to know I am placing keywords well in my posts. Additionally, I have been lagging behind in getting a email list builder. I’ve gone back and forth, but it seems like it is time. GetResponse looks like an awesome tool and it is not all that expensive. Thanks for including such great information!
Hi Steve,
I got so many questions on Yoast SEO (especially from the WA community). If you are using something else and not quite sure whether you are getting the benefit from it – I suggest you to SWITCH IT NOW!
I did, and it was a game changer for me. It took be a few posts to get all green buttons for the SEO and Readability, but now I can pretty much get green buttons right first time. This is because Yoast SEO helped me to get in the habit of meeting all the criteria in writing an SEO friendly post.
I hope this will help you too!
Chloe
Hey, I enjoy a lot while reading your guide on 9 tried and tested best blogging tools for beginners. Currently I am using few of them. After going in deep I found that we must need all the tools as a blogger to get awesome results. I am going to add Yoast SEO (Free) and GetResponse (Free trail) in my list. Your all tools will defiantly work for me. Keep them up for everyone.
Hi Harish,
Yoast SEO is up there on my top recommended tool list. It was a game changer when I switched from All-in-one SEO.
Definitely give a try for the FREE version, you may realise that’s all you need. Nothing to loose and SO MUCH to gain!
All the best my friend,
Chloe
Hello! great article! I’ve been using Grammarly(free version) for the past few months and now I can’t write without it! It’s weird though because sometimes it would stop working on WordPress then start working again after a few days. I also discovered Canva recently and I really like it. I used to wonder why everyone on Pinterest was so good with Photoshop! This explains it. Thank you for your recommendations. I have a question – I want to try the Yoast plugin because I’ve read many good things about it. But we already have the All-in-one-SEO. Would it be redundant? Would you suggest replacing it with Yoast?
Sunny
Hi Sunny,
To answer your question on Yoast SEO plugin… I swap All-in-one-SEO for Yoast – it was the best thing! Yoast SEO actually helps you with the mechanics of how to optimise your keywords and readability, whereas All-in-one doesn’t.
To swap, just install Yoast SEO in WP – activate it, and deactivate All-in-one.
Hope this helps.
Chloe
Hi
Thank you for sharing this amazing post, l am of those people who do not know how to blog and I have no technical experience on blogging. This article have given me some of the knowledge that was missing.l have learned a lot from your page everything is clear and the videos. I have no experience but still learning as I go here at .Wealthy Affiliate. Hopefully someone with more experience in the topic will give you more about the topic.
Thank you stay blessed.
Hi,
Hope you picked 1 or 2 useful tools from this post. If you are limited with technical experience like I was, Wealth Affiliate is really a best tool of all. I have learned so much from this platform and the community. Hope you can benefit from it too!
Thanks for stopping by Fiona.
Chloe
Your guide is really very helpful on tried and tested blogging tools for beginners. I like all list of tools. Now a days I am using almost all tools listed here. I like all tools but I love wealthy affiliate platform very much. I become premium member within a hour after know about the platform. I personally recommended wealthy affiliate to everyone. It is really the best tool for our success in blogging.
Hi Praveen,
I have to agree, the best of the best blogging tools for beginners in my opinion is Wealthy Affiliate. Glad to hear that you are enjoying your premium membership too!
Chloe