50+ Best Blogging Tools to Help Grow Your Blog 

Blogging on a budget is indeed possible. You can go a long way with the bare minimum—web hosting and a domain name.

However, over my 8+ years of blogging, one of the most important blogging tips I learned was to utilize tools and resources.

Tools can help us save time by automating certain tasks—especially tedious ones like adding internal links to older content.

Tools can also help us boost our blog growth with things like finding blog posts ideas, backlink opportunities, and more.

In this post, you will find some of the best and most popular tools you can use on your journey to building a successful blog.

But first…

8 Tools I CANNOT Live Without

While I've used many great tools over the years, some of which I still use every day, there are a few that I can't just live without.

Whether you're a beginner blogger or a seasoned pro, these tools will add a lot of value to your blogging arsenal.

Here are 8 of them that are essential to me:

1. WPX Hosting

WPX is one of many tools that provide quality web hosting services. It is my web hosting provider of choice. Their 99.95% uptime guarantee is on point as we have never had any issues with our sites being down.

WPX is more expensive than many other hosting companies. That’s why it’s best to use a cheaper web hosting provider during your first year of blogging.

If you have a site with lots of content (100+ blog posts) and you get thousands of visitors every month, then it’d be best to switch to a web hosting service like WPX.

2. WordPress.org

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform. It's an open source content management system that allows you to create and manage websites. It offers tons of website design templates and addons and can be custom coded for advanced users and experienced bloggers.

WordPress is completely free, however, you'll need a domain name and a web host to use this on your own blog.

3. Thrive Suite

Thrive Themes is a company that specializes in conversion-focused tools for WordPress. They offer 10 plugins, one of which is Thrive Theme Builder that lets you design your entire website using one of 3 pre-built themes.

There’s also Thrive Architect, one of the most popular visual page editors for WordPress. It’s what we use here on Blogging Aid to create all our blog posts and landing pages.

Another plugin we love is Thrive Leads. It's a list building tool that lets you create optin forms on your site. There are many templates for all types of forms.

Thrive Suite is a membership where you get access to all of Thrive’s plugins. Highly recommended.

4. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool created by Neil Patel (one of the most recognized names in online marketing) and his team. Features of Ubersuggest include keyword research, keyword rank tracking, backlink analysis, competitor analysis, SEO audits, and more.

If you’ve heard of Ahrefs, which I’m sure you have, Ubersuggest is like a version of that—minus the large price tag.

It's one of the best blogging tools that will help you create your content strategy.

5. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is an email marketing tool. It allows you to manage your email lists, run email campaigns, create landing pages and optin forms, and even receive payments when you sell your own products.

One of the best things about ConvertKit is that you can get started for free. Especially if you’ve just started your blogging journey. Their free plan allows up to 1000 email subscribers.

6. SurferSEO

If you’re serious about your search rankings then SurferSEO is the tool for you. This has become so essential for getting organic traffic from Google.

SurferSEO analyzes the content you’ve created and compares it with pages that are currently ranking for your target search terms. The tool will give your content a score out of 100 based on on-page optimization factors such as keyword density.

7. ChatGPT

ChatGPT has become very popular lately. It’s an AI tool by OpenAI that essentially lets you chat with smart AI.

Bloggers and content creators have utilized this advanced AI tool to create their content. But ChatGPT can be used for more.

One of my favourite things to do with this tool is to generate ideas. It’s so good at getting your creativity going.

You can use it to write an article outline, get new content ideas, redo some of your writing, and more.

The best part about it is that it’s free.

8. Jasper

Jasper is another AI tool. This one, however, focuses on content writing.   

It can be used to write a blog post outline, a certain section, a headline, or even a whole article.

You can pair Jasper with ChatGPT to enhance your content creation even more.

The Best Blogging Tools in 2023

There are hundreds of tools for blogging, SEO, and online marketing in general. I could list 200 of them here and they'd all deserve it in some way.

But let's not go there.

Instead, here are 50 of the best of the best blogging tools that'll help you grow.

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is arguably the most popular tool in the SEO realm. For good reason too. It provides many features and solutions such as keyword research and backlink analysis.

For instance, there’s the Keyword Explorer. Not only does it help you find keyword ideas but also important data such as search volume and keyword difficulty.

Another one is the Content Explorer. You can find so much content that gets a ton of traffic and backlinks. This is one of the best features.

Then there’s the Site Explorer. This one is for competitor analysis. You can enter a competitor’s URL into the tool and it’ll show you data such as who links to their pages, which content performs the best, and the keywords the site is ranking for.

There’s also more features such as SEO auditing where you can find what’s wrong with your site from a technical SEO standpoint. For example, you could find many broken links you weren’t aware of.

Ahrefs is pretty expensive compared to other SEO tools. So I’d recommend it to those that can afford it.

2. SEMRush

Like Ahrefs, SEMRush is also arguably the most popular tool in the SEO industry. It provides many features such as keyword research, search rank tracking, competition analysis, SEO audits, link building, and more.

SEMRush also has one of the largest price tags for SEO tools. Their cheapest pricing point is $119.95 per month.

However, the tool offers a freemium plan where you can access limited features.

3. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is another SEO tool that provides a variety of features to help you improve your search engine rankings. Some of their features include keyword rank tracking, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, keyword research, and more.

This tool is like SEMRush and Ahrefs in many ways. They provide the same features and offer the same solutions.

Where SE Ranking shines is the price tag. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars every month, you can enjoy the advanced SEO features at a very affordable price.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an online tool that tracks your website’s traffic and engagement. It’s a free tool that’s become quite essential for bloggers and online marketers. Google Analytics is the best tool to see how your website traffic is doing.

You simply copy and paste a snippet of code into your website and bam. You’ll be able to see things like real-time visitors, which country your traffic comes from, and more.

While there are many analytics tools out there, you will never go wrong with this one.

5. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is one of the best SEO analytics tools that’s become essential for any website that focuses on SEO for their business. GSC allows you to track your website’s search presence and rankings.

You’ll be able to track important data such as the number of clicks you get in the SERPs, the number of impressions, your average search rankings for your keywords, and more.

And like Google Analytics, or any Google tool for that matter, GSC is 100% free!

6. Link Whisper

Internal links are important for SEO because it helps Google understand which pages on your site are most important. It also helps Google understand your site structure—making it easier to navigate through your site and ultimately improve your search rankings.

Adding internal links to existing posts can be a tedious task. Especially if you’ve published dozens or even hundreds of blog posts.

Link Whisper will help you do that much faster. The tool will make suggestions to where you can add internal links—either to existing content or to an article you’re currently writing.

Link Whisper is a WordPress plugin. You can install the free version right from your WordPress dashboard.

7. RankMath

RankMath is a popular SEO plugin for WordPress that helps you optimize your website for search engines like Google. The plugin offers a wide range of features such as keyword optimization, XML sitemaps, 404 monitoring, meta descriptions, and redirections.

RankMath also offers instant indexing, meaning you can ask the tool to ping Google and index your page right after you publish.

You can install RankMath for free right from your WordPress dashboard.

8. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is arguably the most popular SEO plugin. It provides many of the same features as RankMath. You really cannot go wrong with either.

Yoast SEO is also free. You can get right from your WordPress dashboard.

9. Namecheap

Namecheap is one of the most popular domain name registrars. It’s the one I use and the one I’d recommend. They provide a clean user interface that makes it super easy to buy and manage your domains.

Namecheap also offers services like web hosting, email hosting, SSL certificates, domain transfers, and more.

They also make it super easy to connect your domain with a third party web hosting provider.

10. Elementor

Elementor is a popular page builder plugin for WordPress. It allows you to create custom pages and designs without needing to code. It uses a visual page editor that comes with many design elements such as text, images, columns, lists, and more.

Elementor can also be used to build custom headers, footers, and website pages like your blog post page, home page, latest posts page, and more.

You can download Elementor from your WordPress dashboard. Their free version is really all you’ll need. But their premium plugin—Elementor Pro—offers a wide range of page templates and other cool features.

11. Leadpages

Leadpages is an online tool that focuses on generating leads for your business and increasing conversions. The product includes a website builder, landing pages, popup forms, and alert bars.

The website builder offers dozens of templates that include homepages, about us pages, services pages, and more.

The landing page builder also offers many templates. You can find templates for lead generation pages, sales pages, checkout pages, thank you pages, and more.

The popup forms and alert bars also come with many templates. Whether you want to use them to build your list or send out important messages to your visitors, you’ll find one that meets your needs.

Everything is built using their visual page editor. It provides a clean user interface and many design elements and widgets.

Leadpages also hosts all your website pages, landing pages, and popup forms on their servers. That means you wouldn’t have to install anything on your site, which would likely slow your page speed down.

12. GeneratePress + GenerateBlocks

GeneratePress is a WordPress theme that offers a variety of features. This includes 80+ pre-built demo sites that you can import onto yours—which would automatically build your homepage, about page, contact page, and more.

GeneratePress is built with clean lightweight code. This is to ensure that your site will run smoothly and with fast page loading speeds.

GenerateBlocks is a separate plugin that extends GeneratePress’ functionalities. It adds full-theme building capabilities where you can create custom headers and footers. It also adds more design widgets such as grids and containers to create custom layouts.

13. Google Docs

Google Docs is a free online word processor. You can use it right on your web browser or download the app on your smartphone.

If you have a team of writers you can all see the document at the same time with real-time editing.

You can also add extensions or add-ons from the Google Workspace marketplace.

14. Trello

Trello is an online tool that’s used for project management and organizing your tasks. It is based on the concept of a "board," which is made up of different "lists," and each list contains "cards" that can be used to represent tasks, ideas, or any other items that need to be organized. 

The cards can be moved between lists, and can have attachments, comments, and due dates added to them. Users can also assign members to cards, making it a good tool for team collaboration.

Trello is free but offers a premium version with more features.

15. ToDoist

ToDoist is a task management and productivity tool. It allows users to create to-do lists. You start by creating a project, add tasks to it, set a due date, and set up reminders.

The tool also supports collaboration features. You can share your tasks with other users and even have discussions using the comments feature.

ToDoist is free. However, the paid version offers great features such as reminders.

16. Quora

Quora is the most popular website where users go to ask and answer questions. Topics range from cooking to parenting, technology to marketing, and everything in between. No matter the question, people use Quora to get quick answers.

However, there’s a different way to use Quora. From a content creator or blog writer’s standpoint, Quora is a goldmine for finding blog post ideas.

You can use Google to browse through Quora’s pages. This can be done by typing this into the Google search bar: site:quora.com [topic].

17. Google Trends

Google Trends is a tool that allows you to see the popularity of a search term or topic over a period of time. You can set the time frame to the past day, week, month, year, and even all the way back to 2004. You can also set your search for specific regions or countries and even by languages.  

18. AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic is a web-based tool a blog writer can use to generate new ideas for blog posts. It uses autocomplete from Google search to list questions and long-tail queries that users enter type into Google.

19. Grammarly

Grammarly is a blogging tool that is essential for writers. It looks at your spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery of your content. If it detects any mistakes or any text that can be improved upon, the tool will offer suggestions on how to quickly improve or fix it.

Grammarly is one of the best writing tools on the market. It offers a free version is best for beginner bloggers and writers.

20. Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway writing tool is a great resource for blog content creators. Like Grammarly, it reviews your writing and looks for any mistakes. But it also looks at your structure and readability. The Hemingway Editor focuses on making your content look better and read better. 

The Hemingway Editor is by far one of the best free blogging tools for writing great content.

21. Frase.io

Frase is a blogging tool that is similar to SurferSEO. It's an AI-based writing tool that is designed to help you create high-ranking blog content. It does this by analyzing the top 20 results for your target keyword. It offers suggestions for your outline and related keywords to add to your content. 

It'll then show you a content score out of 100. The higher the score the more likely you are to rank in Google.

Frase also does some backlink tracking. It'll find where your competitors are getting their backlinks. This is great data as you can try to replicate these links for yourself.

There is a $1 trial going on at Frase.io so I'd recommend you check it out for yourself.

22. Bramework

Bramework is one of the best blogging tools for content writing. It's a writing tool that is AI-based. Its main feature AI-generated content. It starts by using your target keywords and outputs headline and outline ideas. It's a good tool to help you write blog posts fast.

23. Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool you can use right from your web browser or on your smartphone with their new app.

The tool offers a free version that provides everything you need to create visual content for your blog. There are thousands of icons, graphics, animations, and even stock photos.

Canva also has hundreds of templates to choose from. Whether you need custom graphics for your social media or your blog, you’ll find it a great use.

24. Unsplash

Images for your blog are very important. Unsplash offers thousands of great images that you can use for free. The most you’ll pay is the link back to the photographer’s profile.

If you use or plan to use stock photos for your blog post featured images, Unsplash is a great place to find them.

25. Pixabay

Pixabay is like Unsplash. The site is a stock photography business that offers thousands of free images. You will find photos that will fit in any niche. The Pixabay license doesn’t require you to attribute the photographers.

26. ShareX

ShareX is one of the best tools for taking screenshots for Windows users. It’s free to download. It comes with a great toolbar that includes things like text, arrows, and boxes—which you can add to your screenshots.

If you’re on Windows I’d recommend you get ShareX. Screenshots are a big part of blog content. They’re the next best thing to videos.

For Mac users, I’d recommend Jing or Skitch.

27. Loom

Loom is an online video screen recording tool. You can install it on your web browser from the extension marketplace.

The free version of Loom allows you to create short videos.

If you’re planning on recording your screen for things like online reviews, tutorials, and training courses or webinars, then Loom can be for you.

28. ShortPixel

ShortPixel is a WordPress plugin. It focuses on optimizing your website loading speed. Particularly by compressing and optimizing your images.

Images play a major part in page speed performance. If your blog images have large file sizes or they have wacky dimensions, they will have a negative impact on your site’s ability to quickly load pages.

ShortPixel makes it easy to optimize your images.

It’s free with a premium version with more features.

29. TinyPNG

Blog images are important. If they’re not optimized, your website loading speed will suffer. That would be horrible for SEO.

TinyPNG is one of the best tools that compresses your images. It can cut between 60 to 80% of an image’s file size. It works best against PNG images. However, JPG images can be compressed too, but not as effectively (20 to 40%).

The tool is free. You can use it right from your web browser by visiting the site.

30. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a WordPress tool that is designed to speed up your website. The plugin’s main feature is caching—one of the best ways to speed up a site.

It also offers other features to boost your performance, such as removing unused CSS and lazy loading images.

If you’re serious about SEO and page speed optimization then this tool will be useful. It’s a premium plugin so if it fits your budget I’d highly recommend it.

31. PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a free online tool by Google. It gives you a detailed report on your website’s page loading speed. It looks at both your desktop and mobile versions of your site and scores them out of 100 based on how long it takes for your page to load.

The tool will provide suggestions on how to improve your site's performance.

It’s free to use. You can access it right from your web browser.

32. MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing software that allows users to manage email subscribers and create, send, and track email campaigns. It features a drag-and-drop email builder, automation workflows, and integrations with popular e-commerce platforms. It also offers detailed reporting and analytics to help users improve the performance of their campaigns. 

It provides a free plan for users with up to 1,000 subscribers. Overall, MailerLite is user-friendly and cost-effective for bloggers that want to get into email list building.

33. GetResponse

GetResponse is a marketing platform that offers many features. It started out as an email marketing tool where it allowed users to manage their email lists, send campaigns, and setup email autoresponders.

Today, it does much more. Other key features GetResponse offers include marketing automations, landing page and popup boxes, live chat box for your site, webinars, e-commerce integrations, and even a website builder.

34. Buffer

Buffer is a social media management tool that allows users to schedule posts across different social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other popular social networks. It provides users with analytics and engagement metrics for each post to help them find what works on social media and what doesn’t.

Overall, Buffer is a solid tool to help you save time on social media marketing. Instead of manually posting every day, it’ll allow you to set up all your social media content in less time.

Buffer offers a free version with limited features. This includes 10 scheduled posts, but no analytics.

35. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a task management and social media schedule tool. It allows users to create and track their tasks on a calendar with a great user interface. It also allows you to schedule posts on your social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and other popular networks.

Additionally, the tool provides bulk social media publishing, social media templates, collaborations with team members, and more.

36. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is one of the best tools for lead generation that many advanced features. Key features include subscriber management, email marketing integrations, a/b testing, advanced analytics, content locking, and a drag and drop optin form builder.

It’s the most popular list building among online marketers. It provides a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to set up on your site.

37. SeedProd

SeedProd is a website page builder for WordPress. The tool comes with a visual drag and drop page editor with an easy-to-use user interface. The page builder comes with many design elements and page blocks. There are also over 150 page templates for landing pages, home pages, about pages, contact pages, and more.

SeedProd is a premium tool with multiple payment plans.

38. BuzzStream

BuzzStream is an outreach tool that allows you to send emails to other bloggers, businesses, and entrepreneurs for link building and blog promotion purposes.

The tool offers many great features that include contact info discovery, outreach email templates, email scheduling, automated follow ups, bulk emailing, and more.

BuzzStream also provides users with influencer metrics. That means you’ll be able to see data such as the number of social media followers your target influencers have.

It offers a free trial where you can try BuzzStream for 14 days before committing, which is always great.

39. Hunter

Hunter is similar to BuzzStream. It’s an email outreach tool for link building and content promotion. The tool’s features include email address discovery, email address verification, link tracking, and more.

It offers a free version with limited features, but good enough for a small blogger who wants to do outreach for link building and content promotion.

40. ThirstyAffiliates

ThirstyAffiliates is a link cloaking tool that lets you “change” your affiliate links so that they look cleaner. It turns this: companyname.com/product?aff103fb into this: bloggingaid.com/buy-product.

It also provides other great features such as link reports, link categorization, easy link insertion, and Amazon API importing.

ThirstyAffiliates offers a free version with the link cloaking feature that can be installed right from your WordPress dashboard.

41. Lasso

Lasso is an affiliate marketing tool with awesome features. Like with ThirstyAffiliates, Lasso allows you to cloak your affiliate links so that they look “pretty’. It comes with a clean dashboard where you manage all your links.

It also offers a product display feature where you can create unique boxes for affiliate product promotion. These displays include product images, a content blurb, and buttons to the product pages.

Other Lasso features include an affiliate program database, Amazon link importing, link tracking, and the keyword opportunities feature where it scans your content and gives you suggestions for affiliate link placement.

42. Affilimate

Affilimate is a solid tool to help you keep track of your affiliate revenue. It’s an even better tool to help you improve your affiliate conversions.

After adding Affilimate to your site you will be able to see how many times your affiliate links are clicked, which links are clicked, and what elements or CTA’s are working.

43. Wordable

Wordable is one of the best blogging tools for content writers. It’s a huge timesaver. The tool works by exporting all the content you write on a Google Doc and imports it to your WordPress blog post. It keeps all the formatting so you won’t have to go through your entire article to add subheadings, for instance, after you copy and paste it into WordPress.

Wordable offers a free version where you can export 5 Google Docs articles. After that, it depends on how often you’re using the tool. But you can expect to pay around $1 per export.

44. Asana

Asana is a project management tool. It’s especially designed for teams. It's one of the best collaboration tools. However, bloggers and solopreneurs can find uses for it too.

It allows users to create projects and set up tasks within them. You can assign these tasks to your team members, create due dates, and even give them a priority rating.

Asana projects can be viewed in a calendar, board, list, timeline, or workflow.

The Basic plan is free for up to 15 team members and limited features.

45. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great tool for finding ideas for content. You can enter a keyword into the Buzzsumo search box and it’ll show you some of the most shared content on social media.

You can also use it to find backlink opportunities. It does this by showing you where an article gets its backlinks from so that you may try to get it yourself.

Buzzsumo can also be great for finding influencers in your industry. This is perfect for building new connections, promoting content, collaboration, and link building.

46. Teachable

Teachable is an easy-to-use tool for creating and selling your own online courses. It allows users to create a website and landing page where you will promote and sell your courses. You can either use a subdomain or get a custom domain if you’re on a paid subscription.

If you don’t want to create an entire course, Teachable allows you to sell coaching services and digital downloads such as eBooks.

Payment is easy to set up. It is done by connecting Stripe to your Teachable account.

47. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media marketing and management tool. It allows you to create and schedule posts on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

One of the best features Hootsuite offers is suggesting when to publish your social media posts, based on the data the tool has gathered over the years.

Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial. After that, it’s rather expensive—paid plans start at $100 per month for the smallest plan.

48. Divi

Divi is a WordPress theme that offers website building features. The page builder is a front end visual drag and drop editor. It comes with hundreds of website template packs that include home pages, about pages, and other essential pages for a website. It also provides you with many design elements and customization options.

Divi also offers a plugin version that is compatible with any WordPress theme.

49. Kadence WP

Kadence WP offers one of the most popular WordPress themes: the Kadence theme. Kadence is a lightweight theme with many features such as starter templates which are pre-built professional templates and designs for your website.

Kadence offers a free version that provides everything you need to build a nice website. However, the premium version offers more features such as more templates, more design elements, lead generation features, and more.

50. Serpstat

Serpstat is a powerful tool for SEO analysis. It is similar to tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and SE Ranking. It offers many useful features are keyword rank tracking, SEO auditing, competitor research, and backlink analysis. Serpstat also allows users to do keyword research where you find long tail keywords and get data such as search volume.

Conclusion

There are so many great tools at your disposal.

Many bloggers will go the budget route and only use blogging tools that are free or that offer free trials. While it's doable to see results on a budget, you need the right tools. 

If you can afford a paid plan, I'd highly recommend getting SEO tools like Ahrefs and SurferSEO to help your blogging efforts.