List of free and paid best blogging tools bloggers should use for traffic, SEO, writing, analytics, email marketing, social media management, and much more in 2024.

There are many useful resources and tools that bloggers need to manage and run their websites. From devices like laptops or desktops, windows, or mac software like office 365 apps to blogging platforms like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, etc. Below is a list of the recommended tools that we use for blogging.   

1. Bluehost (Webhosting Platform) 

A good web hosting means that your website will load faster and have minimal downtime. Google considers page load speed as one of its key ranking factors. Most of the blogs that we run do use Bluehost shared hosting because of its high uptime and 24 hours available support. Bluehost also won the 2020 martechbreakthrough award for the best web hosting service.  

2. Convertkit (Email Marketing tool)

Building an email list is one of the most important decisions that a blogger should make. This is because email marketing drives consistent and reliable traffic. According to a study done by SEMrush , website traffic plays a key role in search rankings. 

We do recommend convertkit for email marketing because it is built for creators. If you are looking for an affordable, self-hosted option, then you might want to consider a self-hosted one.

3. SEMrush (Keyword Research Tool) 

SEMrush is one of the most powerful tools that we use to audit our page SEO, improve our page SEO, track our rankings, do keyword research, build links, and conduct market research.

Large Companies like PayPal and Forbes use SEMrush to conduct research about competitors. SEMrush Alternatives include ahref and ubersuggest.   

4. Elementor Pro (Page builder) 

Elementor is one of the best drag-and-drop website page builders. Unlike other WordPress page builders, Elementor provides the best performance and is SEO-friendly. You can use Elementor to create engaging pages thus increasing search rankings. 

As of September 2020, Elementor plugin had been downloaded over 74 million times and had 5 million active installations.  

5. Jetpack (Backup tool) 

Although the Jetpack plugin is free to use, Backup and Spam filtering features are only available in the premium version which comes at an affordable price. We have been using Jetpack premium since 2017 for backup.  

Jetpack security feature keeps your website safe from spam by automatically filtering spam content and links in the comment section. Spammy content and links influence your search ranking score. 

The most important feature for Jetpack Pro which you might want to use is Backup. With Jetpack backup, you will not have to worry of losing files if your website is hacked, a file is accidentally deleted, the site breaks, or if you want to migrate to another host. Your website is automatically backed up daily and the backup files are stored in Jetpack servers. This saves you disk space and protects you just in case your hosting account is also compromised.

6. StackPath formerly MaxCDN (CDN for load speed) 

The two major benefits of using a CDN for your blog is to improve page load speed and protect your website against attacks. One of the best free CDN that you might have heard of is Cloudflare. We tried using the free Cloudflare package, and it had its limitations, we upgraded to the Pro package and still did not see any significant improvements in our website load speed. We also started noticing a drop in Google AdSense earnings and upon deactivating Cloudflare our earnings normalized.  

7. Canva (Photo Editing Tool) 

Canva is a free online graphic design tool that you can use to edit and design blog post photos. We use Canva to create unique blog post images, infographics, charts, logos, social media cover photos, and much more.  

One of our eCommerce websites receives 50% of its organic traffic from Google and Pinterest images that we create with Canva.  

8. Grammarly (Proofreading Tool 

Grammarly is one of the best tools for bloggers when it comes to editing. Grammarly can help you avoid grammatical errors in your post that have the potential of making your blog look unprofessional thus hurting your returning visitor website traffic.  

9. Genesis (WordPress theme) 

All our WordPress blogs do use Genesis framework. It is one of the most popular and powerful WordPress themes. Genesis is simple to use, SEO Friendly, regularly updated, and requires a onetime payment (NO yearly or monthly subscription fees). 

A well-built WordPress theme can help your blog rank higher in Google search if it complies with the following three factors. It is Mobile responsive, it is lightweight and is SEO friendly. Genesis meets the three factors. 

10. Yoast (SEO plugin)

Yoast SEO plugin implements Technical SEO that helps your blog get indexed faster by search engines. Without Yoast, you will need coding skills or an SEO expert to implement some Technical SEO features like meta properties, schema graphs, keyword analysis, search appearance, etc.  

11. Google Search Console (Search Metrics tool) 

Google Webmaster helps you get information on how your website is performing in Google search which can help you analyze and optimize your website for Google search improvement. You can use GSC to check for organic search clicks, page impressions, CTR, website search position, etc.  

12. Google Analytics (website traffic analytics tool) 

Google Analytics is a free tool that can be used for website traffic tracking, monitoring, and analyzing. Google Analytics provides insights on your overall website search traffic source, top-performing pages, devices used to access your website, traffic location, etc. The major difference between Google search console and Google Analytics traffic metrics is that Google search provides metrics on traffic from Google search only while analytics tracks social media, all search engines, direct traffic, paid search traffic, etc. 

13. Hootsuite (Social Media Management Tools) 

Matt Cutts from Google confirmed in a Q&A on Youtube that Google uses Social media signals for page ranking. There is no better tool to help you in social media management like Hootsuite. 

Hootsuite is a Social Media Management tool that every blogger should consider using. With Hootsuite you can automate publishing of posts to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest. Hootsuite alternative tools include Buffer and Sprout social  

14. WordPress (best blogging platform) 

WordPress.org is a free and powerful content management system used by millions of blogs and top bloggers. It is what we use to run all our blogs and it meets all our blogging needs. WordPress.org alternatives include BlogSpot, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Joomla, and medium (for writers).