5 Free Tools Every Blogger Should Use

These websites will take your writing to the next level.

When I started blogging, I was totally unaware of how many great free resources were available. Over the past few years, I've gradually built a bookmarks folder filled with amazing blogging tools. In this article, I want to share with you the five that I use most often.

If you've been blogging for years, you might have already heard of most of these, but if you're new to blogging, I think that this list is really going to help you out. It's exactly what I wish I had from day one.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that I don't have any kind of affiliate connection with any of these websites. I'm recommending them because I truly find them helpful.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a freemium program that checks your articles for proper spelling and grammar. It's basically like having a personal proofreader, but without having to pay a

dime.

No matter how good you are at proofreading, almost everyone lets one or two mistakes slip through. Grammarly catches them.

The paid version also includes stylistic suggestions and a plagiarism checker. I used to have the paid version, but these days, I think that the free version does more than

enough.

The only caveat that I'll give is that sometimes Grammarly gives incorrect suggestions. It's great for catching mistakes, but make sure you understand its suggested corrections before accepting them.

Capitalize My Title

Capitalize My Title is a very basic site that does exactly what it says it will. You paste a title into a little text box, and the website automatically converts it to proper capitalization.

What I like about the site is that it's easy to use and it works with a wide variety of style guides. With a single click, you can convert between APA, Chicago, AP, and more.

The website also rates the quality of your headline. The rating isn't foolproof, but it's a good starting place if you don't know much about writing titles. It gives you a basic idea of your headline's readability and search-engine readiness.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a great site for brainstorming article ideas. You enter a topic, and the site gives you a ton of questions that people are searching for about the topic.

You can use these questions to start an article, and they even work great as headlines. If you're ever feeling writer's block, this site is a great way to snap out of it.

Answer the Public lets you run a couple of free searches a day. After that, you need a paid account. However, each search gives so many potential article topics that I've never needed to upgrade to paid.

Search Console

Google Search Console is a free analytics tool from Google that lets bloggers monitor their search engine traffic.

Let me start off with an important caveat: It's mostly designed for self-hosted blogs, and as far as I know, there's no way to use it on this Site. However, if you have you have a self-hosted blog, it's truly indispensable.

It tells you what search terms your website is showing up under, how it's ranking, and how many people are clicking through to your site.

It also shows you exactly which pages from your blog are driving traffic.

The analytics are easy to read and incredibly informative. It's a great way to see which topics you should spend more time on and which are duds.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is a collection of public domain and Creative Commons media - mostly pictures. In other words, this site is a treasure trove of images that you can legally use on your blog for free. (Note, however, that some images might require attribution or have other restrictions.)

There are a lot of sites these days for free images, but Wikimedia Commons is my favorite. It's easy to search, offers images in a variety of resolutions, provides clear information about the license, and has suggested attribution language.

The quality of the images ranges from amateur to professional, but there are so many available that I can almost alwas find something suitable for my blog posts.

I hope these tools help you as much as they've helped me! If you know of any great websites that I missed, please feel free to share them in the comments.