With today’s Blogger Review I want to determine if the platform is still relevant in this day and age. With the technology that took big leaps towards creating stunning websites and competitors like Word Press, Is it still worth it? I have been using Blogger for 10 years plus and thus feel qualified enough to review the platform and share my experience.
Website
Cost
Free – You will only need a Google account.
Ownership and Short History
Blogger is one of the oldest blogging platforms around and was founded in 1999 by Pyra Labs. Google took over in 2003 and redesigned it to become one of the most popular blogging platforms of all time.
Blogspot vs Blogger
Blogspot is the free domain service provider and blogger is the publishing platform (website builder) where you will create your blog. Both are used together and owned by Google. When you create a site on blogger, you will automatically get a Blogspot domain. You also have the option to use your own custom domain (Preferable).
Any Up-Sales?
None, whatsoever. If you choose to add your own custom domain, that will obviously cost extra.
User Interface
Blogger is as straightforward as it gets. The interface is beyond easy to navigate and tabs a clearly marked. One of the most simplistic builders around, hence the reason why it is the number one for beginners.
What About Support?
Google has a help center and a community to answer questions. Personally, I would not rate it as the best support available as the community seems a bit outdated or lack correct answers. However, the help center will cover all the major problems in detail and it is easy to figure out. I have been using Blogger for 10 years plus and honestly; I never had a problem big enough that could not be solved via the help center.
What About SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is basic on Blogger. You can add a “search description” in your editor and this will obviously be your keywords. You can also choose between the main header, subheader, header, and so forth which obviously represent your H1, H2, and H3. Basically, you have enough SEO options to get you started but it would be a good idea to do a bit of SEO yourself as well for better performance. I will add that I never had any problem ranking well with my Blogger websites, using the SEO provided. Simple, yet effective.
Make Money Online – Importance of a Website
Writing and Publishing
Blogger’s writing platform is easy and straightforward. You can easily add videos and images to your content with multiple options available. You have a “preview” option to view your page before publishing and can also save it as a draft to save for later publishing. Publishing itself is easy with one click.
Blogger Review – My Favorite Features and Pros
100% Free without any upsales. The only thing you need is a Google account.
Creating a website on Blogger is straightforward and simple. It is beyond easy to manage and use the platform. No advanced technical skills are needed.
Your website is hosted by Google, so yeah, no issues with downtime or slow loading speeds.
The platform is secure.
No need to do manual updates as updates are done by Google in the background.
If you use Gmail, YouTube, Adsense, and all of the Google services, it will be easy to intergrade these with your website.
My favorite part of the platform is the detailed statistics that come with it. It includes daily visitor stats, page views, demographics, views on each post, your audience, top referring URL, and so forth. It is impressive for a free blogging platform indeed.
Monetize your website with Adsense and promote it with Adwords to earn income from your blog. Statistics are provided about your earnings to help you keep a close eye on clicks and so on and so forth.
A good variety of themes to choose from, designed to be easily monetized. If the themes available is not up to your taste, you can go with one of the “Simple” themes and monetize it by adding color, changing the fonts and font colors, a header image, and so on.
Settings to monetize your website that includes some of the following: (Please do not ask me to mention everything)
- Blog address, redirect domain, and custom domain
- Your blog description and title
- Privacy
- Permissions – Blog authors and admin
- Post settings
- Comments settings
- Email Settings
- HTTPS redirect and availability
- Monetization
- Errors and redirects
- Formatting
- Backup and import
- Meta tags
- Crawlers and indexing
Cons
Google can suspend/close your website at any time. You ARE NOT the sole owner of your content, Google owns it. So basically, if you cross the line, your site can be snuffed without much warning. I have never encountered this issue with any of my blogs because I keep the rules, but the possibility is always there. If you plan to write about political issues, violence, racism, or anything that might trigger a “report” for inappropriate content, it would be better to go another route.
Since it is a free platform, you are limited to basics. Not a massive variety of gadgets or themes to monetize with. Not an issue per se, however, if creativity and uniqueness are something that you want, this platform is not going to work well.
Not so easy to move a Blogger website elsewhere, basically you are stuck. So yeah, a few hosting companies do offer to move your website over to WordPress, However, for me, personally, it is just too much of a mess and a hassle and never worked out well. URLs end up being broken, the content was a mess and images just did not respond as they should. I ended up just re-doing everything anyway. WordPress and Blogger are just way too different in the way they work.
Let’s Sum This Up…
Keep in mind that this is a free platform and if one prefers perfect with minimal issues, it would be better to rather go the WordPress way and pay for top hosting instead. Simple is sometimes more! Just because there are no fancy tools and themes available, it does not mean that you cannot create something stunning. Blogger’s themes are customizable and with a bit of imagination, you can still create a Blog that looks professional or to the tune of your taste.
The biggest issue that I have with Blogger is obviously the fact that you have no ownership of the content. As mentioned above, it can be snuffed if reported too much. In 2010, ALL my websites were started on Blogger and grew old and successful on this platform. However, today, I only have 2 left and migrated the rest to WordPress, mainly for this reason. I can imagine losing hard work that came for years, just because someone reported it without much reason. I do make use of the backup feature just in case and I would highly recommend anyone with a website on Blogger to do the same.
To sum it up, after using Blogger for so long, I still love it and feel reluctant to let go completely even tho I prefer WordPress now. Blogger has a few things that are hard to find and priceless. One of those is the lack of downtime, never experienced it in over 10 years. Their ability to handle traffic spikes effortlessly and not throttling or charging additional fees make the risks involved, worth it.
So, this brings us to the final question; is it still a top blogging platform in 2022?
I would say, maybe and most definitely an option to consider if you have very limited funds and still need something stable that performs very well in the areas needed the most. (traffic and uptime). WordPress is the new age of blogging and website development and is on top for a good reason. However, if you love the simpler things in life without too much drama, Blogger will provide just that. If you decide to go the Blogger route, be responsible and back up your website on a regular basis, refrain from posting inappropriate content and you should be just fine.
Well, this is it for this review. Thank you for stopping by, your time is valued and it is appreciated that you made it all the way to the end to read my opinion.
Do you use Blogger or used it in the past? I hate for one-sided opinions and would love this review to have those of others as well. Please do not be shy and share yours as this will help others to make a more informed decision.
Thank You and Have Yourself an Awesome Day!