My Favourite Blogging Resources

As a blogger, I love resource pages. I find them so helpful. I love finding new products to use and what products other bloggers use. I’ve always put off writing my own blogging resources post, though. But why? I’ve been a blogger for over two years now. I started in June 2019, so it’s not like I’m a newbie at all of this. So why the self-doubt? Is it because I don’t make any money from my blog? (Not yet, anyway!) Is it because I don’t have thousands and thousands of readers each month? Because I’m worried that people don’t actually care what I use? Imposter syndrome? Who knows? 

Well, it’s time for me to get over that fear. I have decided to create my own blogging resources page. I want to share with you all of my most favourite blogging resources that I just couldn’t be without.

It’s filled with everything I have used for my website and everything I’ve used on my blogging journey.

Hosting

I host my blog with SiteGround. Although they are a bit pricer than others, I cannot fault the service I receive from them. Any problems that I have, I just go through to their online messaging service, and there is usually no wait at all. They are then normally able to resolve the problem within the hour. I have found, though, that since I stopped messing around with my website and updating the theme etc., I have had a LOT fewer problems! 

They also offer a lot within their price, as you can see below:

Sign up with SiteGround here.

Blog Theme

I’ve only used one paid theme since I started blogging, and that’s Soledad by PenciDesign. It’s a great theme that has absolutely everything you need. However, as with some themes with everything, it’s not bloated and doesn’t slow your site down.

I can’t possibly list all of the incredible things this theme does because we would both be here for hours. But, it is SEO optimised, has unlimited layout options, header and footer builders, AMP supported, EU GDPR Policy Compatible, GIF images support, unlimited colours, and optimised for site speed, but to name a few.

Plugins

One of my favourite blogging resources is Plugins. I absolutely love having access to plugins. They make bloggers lives so much easier. There seems to be a plugin for anything and everything you want. At one point, I was using 30 plugins. Yes, you read that right, 30! I have managed to get this down to 11 now. Nobody needs 30 plugins on their website; that’s just ridiculous. These are my favourite ones to use:

• Broken Link Checker – Pretty much does what it says on the tin! I like this checker as it emails you when you have a broken link. It also tells you when links are in a warning status so that you can update/amend them.
• Yoast SEO – Just the free version. I’ve toyed with the idea of going for the paid option, but after asking around, I understand that it isn’t really worth it.
• Akismet Anti-Spam – Stops spam comments on your blog. 
• Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights – I had issues getting Google Analytics to work after doing something on my blog, so I opted for the plugin, and I’m so glad that I did. It’s so easy to use, and it also has a convenient feature called Headline Analyser, which gives you a score based on good your headline is.
• SiteGround Optimiser – Helps speed your site up even faster. It has SuperCacher Controls, Environment Controls, Frontend Optimisations, image optimisation and more.

Ebooks

I have bought so many blogging ebooks and courses in the past. Some have been amazing, and others not so good. Okay, others have been downright terrible! It’s always worth doing your research before purchasing any blogging ebook. Things to think about before pressing buy are things like; Do other bloggers promote them? Do they have any reviews? How long have they been blogging for? What is their following like?

Some of the best blogging ebooks that I have purchased are:

Beginners Guide to Blogging by Jenny in Neverland

Jenny is probably one of my favourite bloggers, so of course, I purchased her ebooks. In fact, I think her ebooks were the first-ever ones that I bought on blogging.

A beginners guide to blogging is absolutely fantastic for newbie bloggers or even bloggers looking to up their game. It explains everything that you need to know in an easy to understand way.

A Beginners Guide to Growing Your Blog Following by Jenny in Neverland

Jenny spills even more of her secrets within this ebook, explaining how to grow your blog following.

A Beginners Guide To Pitching To Brands eBook

Although I haven’t yet started pitching to brands, I knew that I would NEED this ebook. Jenny has worked with some great brands, so if I’m taking pitching advice from anyone, it’s going to be Jenny!

Shop all of Jenny’s ebooks here.

Keyword Research For Bloggers

Anytime anyone says that they need help with Keyword research on Twitter, I always direct them to Nele’s Keyword Research ebook. I didn’t realise how vital Keyword research was until I read this. I had a vague idea of what to was, but Nele’s ebook gives incredible detail on what you need to know and how to do it. 

SEO for Bloggers

Another detailed ebook from Nele and this one delves into the world of SEO. She explains what it is, why it’s important and why all bloggers should implement it. 

On Page SEO checklist

This is an entirely free checklist but contains invaluable information. It tells you everything you need to double-check on your blog post before hitting that publish button. I got this about a year into my blogging journey, and I couldn’t believe how much it helped me!

Off-Page SEO For Bloggers

And finally, Nele explains why off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO in this ebook.

Shop Nele’s ebooks here.

A Beginner’s Guide To Affiliate Sales

Kayleigh has jam-packed this beginners guide to affiliate sales with ALL the information you need to make money from affiliate sales.

Blog Audit

I recently had my blog audited by The Bloggers Incentive. It was completed within three days of purchase and was brimming with information and advice. Alicia checked backlinks, site speed, blog design and branding, image size, keywords, on-page SEO and more. Everything was fully backed up with the relevant documents and spreadsheets. I’ve already implemented some of the changes, and I’m looking forward to doing the rest and improving my website further!

Canva Pro

If you’re not sure if Canva Pro is worth the money, let me tell you – It IS! I did the month free trial of Canva Pro, liked it, but didn’t think that I needed to pay £10.99 a month for it. So, I went back to using normal Canva. Yeah, I soon signed back up to the Pro version!

Although Canva is great if you’re a hobby blogger, if you’re creating Pins for Pinterest, you’re going to need that Pro version. It opens up so many more pictures for you, allows you to resize designs easily, has a background remover, gives you use of premium templates, and you can create a brand kit which means that you can easily apply your brand colours and fonts to all of your designs.

Pinterest With Ell

If you want to learn how to use Pinterest, the only course you need is Pinterest with Ell. She is the absolute Queen of Pinterest. Her course will teach you everything that you could possibly ever want to know about it, and no detail is left out.

Keysearch

I LOVE Keysearch. I tried getting along with the free version, but you only have a limited number of searches, so I went for the paid version. The paid version allows you to search 200 words per day, whereas the free version, I think, only gives you 5. 

I enjoy Keysearch as it tells you how easy/difficult it is to rank with your chosen keyword and suggests other words to use. It has a competitive analysis, where you can check backlinks, URL matrics, and a page analyser (I use these to check my own site.)

Personally, my favourite part is the content assistant. Once you have written up your post, you can paste it into there, and it will tell you how it fares against other posts in the first spot on Google. For example, it will score you on the word count compared to other posts and counts how many other recommended keywords you’ve included within the post. 

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed writing up my favourite blogging resources post. There are so many resources and bloggers that I just couldn’t do this job without.

How many of these resources do you currently own or use? Are there any that you would add to the list? Let me know in the comments; I love discovering new blogging resources to use!

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Cover Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash