Blogger
The term blogger has a double meaning. On the one hand, this can mean the free blog hosting platform blogger.com from Google and, on the other hand, a person who runs their blog.
Blogger (Human)
Bloggers are people who run a weblog for private or business reasons and publish articles called “posts” there at regular intervals. Posts by bloggers are usually characterized by the fact that they reflect subjective points of view. This subjectivity can relate to an individual, to a group, or even to an entire brand or corporate identity. A blogger can also be referred to as a linker if he reaches a large number of other people with his contributions because of his personality or position.
Subjects
When it comes to topics, bloggers are not limited because no topic cannot be blogged about. For this reason, there are fashion bloggers, car bloggers, political bloggers, etc. Some bloggers also join together to form community blogs, where several editors write articles on a common topic.
Private vs. Commercial
The number of bloggers living in Germany cannot be precisely estimated. Some say that more than 100,000 people blog regularly. However, the total number of blogs is declining, as the ARD/ZDF online study 2013 shows. One reason for this trend is certainly that blogs in Germany are less integrated into the social web than in Anglo-Saxon countries or the USA. There, many bloggers can make a living from their blogs.
SEO Blogger
Blogging is particularly popular in the SEO scene because blogs are an important source of information for industry professionals. Well-known SEO blogs are, for example, the blog by Mediadonis or the SEO book. In Anglo-Saxon countries, for example, Moz or Matt Cutts’ blog.
Blogger.com (blog system)
Blogger is a service offering from the product portfolio of the Google group. The Blogger.com site allows users to register with a Google account and run their blog. Blogger.com is characterized by a simple, free blog CMS, for which bloggers neither have HTML knowledge nor need to rent web space.
Story
The blog hosting service Blogger was founded in 1999 by the company Pyra Labs. Blogger has been part of Google since 2003. A year later, features from the Picasa photo editor and the Hello program were integrated into Blogger’s features. Since then, users of the blogger system have been able to integrate photos into their posts even more easily.
In 2004, blogger.com was updated in both design and functionality. Similar to WordPress, it was now possible to upload postings via email.
Since 2006, all blogs created with a Google account have been exclusively on Google Inc. servers. In the same year, other new functions were introduced, such as inserting new designs using drag-drop and RSS feeds.
Advantages and disadvantages of the blog hosting system Blogger
Anyone who starts their blog with Blogger.com has many advantages, which are briefly listed here:
- free hosting
- easy blog creation
- simple, almost intuitive handling with a single Google account
- Blogging with multiple users is possible
- easy monetization through easy integration of Google AdSense
- easy posting via the Google Toolbar
- Quickly create and upload content with Microsoft Windows
The disadvantages would be:
- often monotonous design
- few customization options compared to other blog systems
- IP needs to be shared with many other blogs
In principle, the user is free to redirect the content from Blogger to his domain. Blogs created with Blogger can be recognized by their address form: examplename.blogspot.com
Blogger as a blog system and SEO
Setting backlinks en masse via blogs has long been a tried and tested means for SEOs to increase link popularity. Blogger.com was right on time with its offer to create free blogs quickly and easily. However, the SEO scene and the algorithms of the search engines have changed in the meantime and it is not advisable to do massive link-building via Blogger.com.
However, if you also want to use the blog hosting system for SEO purposes, you can consider Blogger.com as an additional portal to transport content that is picked up by others. Thanks to the excellent integration of Blogger’s blog content into the Google search engine index, the content is very easily accessible. This fact can be an advantage when it comes to getting more reach with a .blogspot.com address. However, the same SEO rules apply to indexing as to all web projects.