The two most popular ways to create a blog are through Blogger and WordPress. Having tried both these great blogging platforms, are you totally confused as to which blogging platform is superior – WordPress or Blogger? Well, both of them are great blogging systems used widely all over the world and if you are a beginner trying to discover the successful platform among the two for running a blog, you might be wondering and waiting for an answer as to which one is the best bet for you.
Running a site is enjoyable, but you have to determine certain things for yourself from a professional perspective. If you are a started, it is always suggested to opt for Blogger. If you are serious about your blogging, then you are suggested to choose the WordPress Self-Hosting domain and there are many other WordPress hosting services available. You can enjoy the power of WordPress with these Self-Hosted blogs.
Though Blogger gained more recognition early on; WordPress is also one among the best CMS available on the internet. Bloggers can create free blogs on wordpress.com or run their blogs on their own domains, by making use of the WordPress CMS.
Key Differences between Blogger and WordPress
Some of the differences between Blogger (Blogspot) and WordPress are listed below:
Dashboard
Blogger: It has an updated dashboard design. More features are available, but to make use of all of them, it is compulsory to enable JavaScript.
WordPress: The Dashboard in WordPress increases the speed for the dial-up users so that they can easily post an entry without facing too much difficulty, or wasting time.
Languages
Blogger: Blogger by Google supports only 50 languages.
WordPress: WordPress supports nearly 120+ languages.
Domain Names
Blogger: You can transfer your domain for free or you can buy one through the BlogSpot interface. And, once again free blogs are created as sub-domains with URLs like xyz.blogspot.com.
WordPress: The user has to pay some amount in order to transfer an existing domain in case of the paid service, but of course you can create free blogs on wordpress.com in form of a sub-domain like abc.wordpress.com.
Mobile Access
Blogger: You can access the help pages of Blogger, but there’s no mobile-specific version. But you can publish your post by sending SMS or MMS, for more information read this – http://www.blogger.com/mobile-start.g.
WordPress: You can be accessed through mobile on m.wordpress.com.
Note: You can blog from your mobile phones or devices, there are lots of 3rd party apps.
Customizing Themes
Blogger: There are many blogger templates (themes) that can be customized without any hassle. You can edit the HTML and CSS directly.
WordPress: There are extremely high numbers of free WordPress themes available over the internet. Using the WordPress.com version of WordPress you can not fully customize the template, you can only customize the options available to you or switch to a new template.
Image Storage
Blogger: When you upload photos to Blogger they are stored in Google’s photo system, Picasa. There you can browse your images and much more. In blogger there is 1 GB of storage space (images under 2048×2048 do not count towards that limit, so it’s actually MUCH more than 1 gig) for storing images. If you required more space, you’ve to pay for more space.
WordPress: It has 3GB of storage space. But, if you want more space then you’ll have to upgrade by paying some money.
Categories
Blogger: There is an option called Labels, which serves as a tag, and posts are archived in monthly and yearly manner.
WordPress: It has an option to upload categories and tags.
Team Blogs
Blogger: Only 2 types-either Administrators or Non-Administrators.
WordPress: Various accounts for Editors, Authors and Contributors can be created.
Static Pages
Blogger: You can create up to twenty static pages, but like WordPress those static pages cannot be placed on the home page easily. If you want to show such static page as homepage, you’ve to edit the template HTML which is painfully complex for many users.
WordPress: You can create as many pages or posts that can be listed in the home page.
WordPress Vs Blogger SEO
If you take the suggestions of 100 bloggers on which platform to use – Blogger or WordPress, then the chances are high that 90 of them will blindly say WordPress. First of all, Google does not consider meta-tags and keywords. Another point is Blogger owned by Google makes things easier to support the blogger blogs. As there are many more changes to come in future, you will be safe if you are within Google’s backyard.
For your information, there are tons of Blogger Blogs ranking in the top page in Google for various keywords, but you won’t see too many WordPress.com blogs ranking high (of course we aren’t saying that there aren’t any, but rather we’re saying there aren’t many!). On the other hand, there is literally millions of blogs set-up with the WordPress CMS.
I think WordPress is a better platform to blog and I have written about the same topic concluding the different results. I know Google is backing Blogger but given that, with WordPress, there comes lot of flexibility which blogger doesn’t allow.
No doubt WordPress is the best platform for blogging, the best thing is no need of any technical or programming skills. Anyone can start a blog with the help of user friendly tools and the best part is there are so many readymade plugins for blogging purpose. You can easily add those plugins in your blog. Only if you have own custom domain otherwise no matter if its a blogger or WP. (free blogs are totally useless).
I would say WordPress is way ahead of Blogger as a blogging platform (not the free version, but the self-hosted .org version). If we compare the free version of both, then Blogger is better as it allows more customization.
I would slightly disagree with you on the last part about search results. I don’t think Blogger blogs get any advantage just because they are under Google’s services. If that was the case, people wouldn’t have paid money to use the WordPress.Org and/or Squaraspace platforms for blogging.
For the last part, I have considered WordPress.com blogs. On WordPress.com, you can do much for SEO as no option to use plugins and customization options are limited. In the case of Blogger blogs, we can customize almost everything. So from SEO perspective, I prefer Blogger over WordPress.com.
Good to know that this topic is being covered also in this website and there are a lot of developers working on this segment but this is one of the best innovative ideas ever seen. A good way.