As a beginner blogger, I was trying a few months ago to decide which blogging service to choose. I asked for guidance from the Twitter community, and the “tweeps” who responded there recommended that I should use WordPress. I’m grateful that I followed the advice, as subsequent, informal research confirms that WordPress is a good choice, and so far, I’ve been very happy with the free blogging service provided at WordPress.com.

I later found more specific advice from HubSpot, a provider of inbound marketing software, on why it’s better to choose WordPress, over for example, Google’s Blogger, at least in the case of business blogs. According to HubSpot, if you ever decide to migrate to another site, Google does not let you redirect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) value.

If you currently have a blog that is something like mybusiness.blogspot.com and you build a ton of inbound links to the site, Google [via Blogger] does not let you redirect that SEO value to a new site (like your company website).

Basically, Google has seemingly made it intentionally difficult to migrate off of their platform. If you’re looking to build a successful business blog that will help you find more clients and grow your business, you should find a professional blogging platform that is designed for your needs.  HubSpot has one such offering (it’s a piece of what we do).  But, if all you need is a blogging tool, we’d recommend WordPress.

In his recorded webinar, Tom Johnson from the Society of Technical Communication, also recommends WordPress, because of the flexibility WordPress offers through its widely available themes (both for free or at a reasonable cost, through Premium themes), as well as its over 4,000 plug-ins.

Once I chose WordPress, I had to decide whether to use the freely-hosted service at WordPress.com, or self-hosted service, at WordPress.org.

I’ll discuss the differences between these WordPress services more fully in my next post, Understanding the Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

Your Experiences with Blogging Services?

If you are currently using a free, hosted service other than my WordPress recommendation, such as Blogger, or if you have any additional thoughts about the freely hosted WordPress service, I’d be happy to hear about your experiences, in the comments. (TypePad is another hosted service, though it does require a monthly fee.)

How about those of you who are using self-hosted blogging services, like Movable Type, “Serendipity,” and WordPress.org? How do you rate your experiences with those services?

Your feedback is especially helpful, both to me and any other readers here, who are sorting through the choices. In one article, I learned that with Blogger you can add Google AdSense ads to your  posts to generate revenue, which seems like a potential benefit to that free service.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

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