Blogger Review 2022: Is Google Blogspot Still Worth It to Blog?
This is a complete Blogger review. In this review on Blogger, you will find out everything from features, use-cases, pros and cons, and alternatives for Google Blogger in 2022.
When it comes to blogging, only a handful of blogging platforms out there that can really push you forward; help you achieve your goals, ambitions, and dreams.
Blogger.com (or Google Blogspot) is one of those excellent free blogging sites.
Today, I will review Blogger blogging platform. It is one of the best. 1.4% of the world’s blogs are built with Blogger.
What is Blogger?
Blogger.com is a free blogging platform owned by Google. Hence it is also known as Google Blogger to disregard any confusion with the ‘blogger’ noun (a person).
The history of the Blogger goes way back to the 1990s. It was started by Evan Williams and is regarded as the pioneer of online content publication service, aka weblogging, aka blogging. Evan Williams also contributed to founding Twitter and Medium – both pillars of internet publishing.
Once Pyra Labs, which was co-founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, sold the Blogger platform to Google in 2003 after four months of negotiations for an undisclosed sum, Google integrated the blogging platform with its servers and enhanced the blogging platform so that anyone could start a blog. In this review on Blogger, I will explore them and help you decide if you should invest in Blogger CMS.
Blogger vs Blogspot
Blogger vs. Blogspot – What is the difference?
You might come to know both terms. In fact, those are mostly the same. Blogger indicates the blogging platform itself, while Blogspot is the hostname for blogs. For instance, you might create a blog on Blogger and get a host domain name that includes .blogspot.com.
The best part is you can hide the Blogspot domain name from the site by mapping a custom domain name which I will further discuss in detail in this Google Blogger review.
The influence of Blogger blogging platform
Currently, Blogger web hosts might hold a low profile. But several years ago, it was one of the best and most influential blogging platforms. In fact, Matt Mullenweg started blogging on Blogger, and his dissatisfaction with Blogger.com was a reason to create the first version of WordPress in the early 2000s.
Some notable blogs and bloggers who get started on Blogger are:
- Amit Agarwal – Founder of Labnol.org – Some of his Blogspot blogs can be found on https://labnol.blogspot.com/
- Google.blog – The official blog of Google.com. The site itself indicates that if you have skills in coding, you can change the appearance of a Blogspot blog and make it unique.
- Harsh Agarwal – Shoutmeloud.com is one of the most popular Indian blogs, and it was started on Google Blogspot first,
So, why do people start on Google Blogger and then move to other blogging platforms?
Reasons why people move away from Blogger
- Blogger is the oldest blogging platform. Hence, it has gained popularity and the hand of Google. So, people trusted Google Blogger over other platforms, for instance, Tumblr. But later found some alternatives to Blogger with reasonable features.
- Many bloggers from third-world countries got started on Blogger for the low cost. Once made some money and had a sustainable income, moved to a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress.org or Magento.
- Low customization options. Blogger is one of the least free blogging platforms when it comes to customization features.
- The danger of deleting a BlogSpot blog. Yes, there are many incidents Google removed an entire blog from its servers that broke Blogger terms and conditions.
- Future of blogging. Blogging space changes rapidly. Since Blogger is the least flexible blogging site, you cannot find plugins or reasonable features for current marketing requirements, such as Rich Snippets plugins, image optimizations, and custom CDN solutions. Not to mention that Blogger offers many blogging-related features last after many Blogger competitors offered them. Ex: drag and drop website builder
But that does not mean Blogger is not a good blogging platform. In fact, it ticks many boxes if you are particularly looking for an excellent blogging platform for small projects. I will discuss some of them further in this Blogger review.
Blogger Review: How to use Blogger
The best thing about Blogger is it is free of cost. And its intuitive dashboard is clutter-free and less complicated so that anyone with or without experience in blogging can get started today and make a blog.
First of all, you must have a Google account to have a Blogspot blog. The best part is one Google account can manage multiple Blogger blogs.
Go to the Blogger.com homepage and log in to your Blogger account.
Sign in to your Blogger account The first step is entering the name of your blog. For example, if your blog is related to foods, you can enter a name like ‘Best Food and Cooking Tips’ or a name of the blog like ''Money Connexion, You can change it later.
- Choose a name for the Blogspot blog.
- The next step is entering a subdomain name for your Blogger blog. Depending on your name of selection, the subdomain web address will look like example.blogspot.com. And you can change it later and use a custom domain name instead.
Once you click the ‘Save’ button, you will be redirected to the new Blogger blog’s posts section.
Here are the main menu options:
- Manage posts – Create blog posts, edit published ones, delete blogs
- Blog statistics – Get an overview of blog statistics
- Comments – Manage comments by users
- Earnings – Monetize Blogspot blog by using Google Adsense
- Layout – Add or remove widgets or reorder existing widgets on the sidebar, header, or footer. Really depend on the Blogger theme.
- Settings – Modify blog settings — Password protect blog, prevent search engines from indexing, specify who can comment, etc.,
Manage Blog
Managing a Blogspot blog is simple. Here are several features of Blogspot blog management:
- You will get a free SSL certificate from Google. So there is no need to install any script
- The blog is entirely hosted on Google fast servers. No need to adjust anything at your end.
- You can start changing the blog’s appearance by adding a new theme, adding widgets, changing layout order, etc.
- Edit Robots.txt, header tags, SEO title & description, and redirect 404 pages to optimize Blogger for search engines.
If you click the view blog button, you will see how your site will appear in the “unedited” state.
Change Blogger theme/template
You will see that the default Blogger template does not match many niches. So, the next step is changing the Blogger theme. Depending on the Blogger theme you use, it will have different Layout structures. For example, some Blogger themes will have header and bottom widget sections, while some only have sidebar widget sections.
Blogger has some free themes. However, many of those might not apply to your niche. So, what I recommend is using a custom-built one or a premium Blogger theme. The best place to buy premium Blogger themes is Themeforest. Make sure those are responsive and professional-looking Blogspot themes and allow customization.
Once the theme is changed, you can change the Layout as you’d like.
You can add a gadget such as a translate widget, follow us widget, or Google Adsense ad section to your blog. For instance, if you want to embed a Convertful opt-in form, the recommended gadget type is ‘HTML/JavaScript.’
Custom domain name
One of the best features of Blogger compared with other free blogging sites is that you can use a custom domain name. This will improve your site’s professional look and Blogger SEO.
Head over to Settings >> Publishing >> Custom domain and set up your custom domain. I recommend buying a cheap domain name on a domain name registration service like NameCheap or Porkbun and later moving the domain management to Cloudflare.
Cloudflare provides many features to improve your site’s security and performance. Also, Cloudflare renews the domain on wholesale, not retail pricing.
Use a domain name availability checker tool to find an excellent domain.
