Blogging on Blogger? It Maybe Time to make the move!
Blogger is undeniably the cornerstone around which the entire blogosphere was constructed. And Blogger has played host to some seriously fantastic blogs, ones that look great and have the traffic flowing in. But there are some areas where Blogger too has shortcomings, and if you are one of those people who are contemplating if Blogger is THE best platform to blog on, maybe you should consider these things. Of course, what this post addresses is the areas in which blogging on the Blogger subdomain, may cause some issues. If you own a custom domain powered by Blogger, the story is different. What makes blogging on Blogger a bit of a problem is that, even if you have a blog that generates an enormous amount of traffic, there is a potential for Blogger to pull the plug on it. Here are a couple of examples.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t reinstate the blog, or retreive it. But it is certainly inconvinient. While this is by no means an everyday occurence, the number of incidents where this has happened on Blogger are higher than other blogging platforms.
Here is an article that explains the entire process of blogs being deleted on blogger.
All the views I have expressed here are my own. In no way is this post intending to condemn blogger or it’s users. But if someone were to ask me if Blogger is the best solution out there, my answer would not be in the positive.
It’s Like Being the Captain of Someone Else’s Ship
If you are blogging on blogger you, are in no control of your blog. Everything is managed by Blogger, which can seem like a boon at first, but if you want to control individual metrics on your blog, it is fairly difficult to do so. Since Blogger provides the hosting, if your content in any way goes against Blogger’s policies, then you can say goodbye to your blog. If people report your content, for whatever reason, your blog will immediately be suspended.
Of course, you can make a request for the blog to be restored. But it could take longer than the 48 hours that is stipulated on Blogger. And time is money. Even if your blog is reinstated the sheer inconvenience of the whole process is tedious. In Jonas’ case, it took more than 48 hours and multiple appeals. The forum, where this was posted, does not even say if it was eventually resolved. So if I were in his shoes, I would be a little worried.
Harder to Maintain Traffic
It takes more than consistent posting to maintain traffic on your Blogger blog. Merely a week long hiatus could result in the traffic decreasing drastically. This is because your cyber imprint is highly vulnerable with blogger. The SEO, which we will come to next is not great on Blogger, and this affects traffic. Regular, uninterrupted posting is required to ensure that traffic keeps coming into the blog. This is also because of the indexing issue with Blogger, that will be discussed below.
You Can Open a Bottle of Expensive Bubbly if your Blog is Indexed on the Search Results
Okay, it may not be that extreme. But getting indexed on Google Search is a task when you are blogging on a subdomain. And Blogger being exactly that, it makes the process pretty difficult.
Here is an article that elaborates on this. Again, this is with reference to blogging under the blogspot subdomain, and not on Blogger hosted blog.
When Indu Matthew migrated her Blogger blog to a custom domain provided by Cucumbertown, we found that most of her recipes had not been indexed by Google. This is despite the fact that she had been blogging on that domain for nearly 8 years. And she is not the only one to face this issue. Several others have had the same problem. On the flipside, Jane Jojo, who has been blogging using Cucumbertown, has had her recipes indexed by Google, complete with reviews and comments.
SEO is a Wild Goose Chase
One of the biggest issues with blogging on Blogger is that the domain changes according to the geographical location. So what is blogspot.com in the US could become blogspot.in or blogspot.ca and so on. This is not favorable in terms of SEO. Lack of a fixed domain, lack of indexing and lack of any SEO enhancing apps like those found in Wordpress, makes SEO a point of grave concern for bloggers. What this means is that your blog will basically not show up in search results as often as it should.
Yes, there are inbuilt SEO hacks that one can use on Blogger, but that requires a certain amount of intelligence and work. If you are like me, and want an easy solution like a plugin, you may have to look elsewhere instead of Blogger.
But there are several people who run successful blogs on Blogger, but I wasn’t one of them. Neither was Indu. Nor some of the other blogspot blogs that we migrated.
Of the 5 blogspot blogs that we migrated Indu had the highest traffic from search. That was 7.3%. Jane gets almost 95% of her traffic from search. Despite starting 3 years after Indu did.
Limited Design and Template Options
Compared to a blogging platform like Wordpress, the design options on Blogger are extremely restricted. Not only are there far lesser templates, the customization options on the available templates are also very limited. You can’t add too many widgets, you can't change the layout significantly and the design lacks a certain sophistication and professionalism.
Added to this, is the high possibility that several other bloggers may use your design. There is nothing particularly unique about this and your blog will not stand out. In a highly competitive blogging atmosphere, this does not bode well.
You can buy the themes on Etsy if you want, but again, to me, this is additional effort.
Uploading Files is Harder
It is a process to upload videos or other heavy files on Blogger. Often you even have to rely on free file hosting services. You cannot store files with extension like .mp3, .zip, .exe etc. This is detrimental to the blogging experience. Besides, because of the limited storage space, food bloggers will find it particularly hard. A single post will usually have 3–4 images of high quality. If you couple this with the fact that you may be posting every day, then this number will escalate easily. So you will easily exhaust the limited 15 GB storage space( This is only for Google Plus account holders; otherwise it’s limited to 1 GB), and will need to resort to buying more space.
There’s no Keeping it Short
Everyone knows that with domain names, the shorter the better. The recall value if your domain is under 6–7 characters is much greater than a long domain name. So if you are blogging on Blogger, no matter how short your domain name was meant to be, it will lengthen by eight more characters. So what was www.ramyarambles.com, will become www.ramyarambles.blogspot.com. Not only is this longer, in my opinion, it is not the most professional.
At the end of the day, it boils down to this; Blogging with a blogspot subdomain is great, but, is it the best?
Look at the difference in appearance in these two blogs. The image above is the blog on Blogger and the one below is a custom domain managed by Cucumbertown. The difference in look and feel for both blogs is great. The image below is far more professional, easy to navigate and user-friendly.
Even in terms of Monetisation, a custom domain works better. Approval on Google AdSense, and pitching to potential partners is easier if the blog is self-hosted. After all blogging began as a medium to express one’s opinions. If there are controls on that, much like the highly detested editorial control exercised in the media, then it negates the whole point of blogging. With Blogger, even though it is not strictly a controlled environment, the fact that the decisions are made by them and not you, puts the ball firmly in their court.
This is the biggest reason you should pack your blogging bags and move to a custom domain or any other blogging solution, apart from Blogger.
To hear more from the Cucumbertown Team, connect with us. We would love to know what you think!
