Blogger is a free blogging platform from Google that allows private or multi-user blogging features. Blogger was originally BlogSpot which was bought over by Google in 2003. Blogger platform can be great for new comers into the arena, it has a very simple user friendly layout, with simple widgets, simple template designer Etc. But it is just a mediocre platform for Blogging, for those who want their blog to stick out and for professional bloggers, you have to move on. So here are the 6 Reasons why Blogger is a mediocre platform for Blogging.
1. Limited Template Options
Blogger has a few templates that one can choose from while they are starting a blog and most of these templates are very similar to each other, which does not facilitate bloggers being creative and customize their blogs. There are a lot of custom templates available for Blogger, but their installation and customization to meet the needs of a new blogger, may be out of their skill level as they are relatively new bloggers. Most of these custom templates come with some small glitches that are hard for a new blogger to fix.
2. Limited Customization Options
Blogger Blogs have the basic Page Elements Page where you can move around your widgets, it has a Template Designer where you can adjust widths of the sidebar, change the color of background, text, borders Etc.Apart from this there is little else you can do in terms of customized editing. The only other way of editing a blogger blog is by the “Edit HTML” method, where you go and edit the source code of your blog, to make changes in them, I have done a lot of these changes to my Customized Tech Blog, the home page being my proud possession.But this level of Editing the Blogger HTML does not come about until you know a lot about HTML Codes, CSS Styling and have a lot of experience blogging on the Blogger Platform, so this is out of the question for new comers or even those who been blogging for a while. So editing is one huge drawback of Blogger.
3. No Plug-ins
Unlike WordPress, Blogger has no Plug ins, no SEO Plugins, no meta tags Plugins Etc. All this work has to be done manually for each and every blog post. So SEO will be a big pain if you are running a blogger blog. The lack of Plugins also makes Guest Blogging very difficult, you will have to manually receive articles through mail and only then can review and upload it as a guest article.
4. No Permalink Editing
Blogger uses an automatically generated Permalink, which uses the first 5 or 6 words of a Blog Post, but in WordPress we can alter the permalink so that we can fit in all the keywords, those who understand SEO well, will understand the importance of this.
5. CommentLuv does not work on Blogger
Commenting is a huge part of blogging and the blogging community, Blogger Blogs do not support CommentLuv or KeywordLuv Comments, this is only for WordPress, although there are some complicated hacks which may work on certain Blogger Templates, but I would not bet on seeing CommentLuv comments on a Blogger Blog. Blogger has its own comments section and its not a pretty sight, not many features either.
6. Labels do not get Search Indexed
Labels in blogger do not get search indexed due to the pre-loaded robot.txt file which is in all blogger blogs, this makes it difficult to SEO, as you may have to optimize each and every post, which it itself is a pain as I have described above.
I would like to say that Blogger Blogs can be great for new comers, or those that are just Blogging for a few Friends or Family, but if you are a serious Blogger who wants the world as your audience, then I would suggest switching to a custom domain under WordPress.I too am going to switch to WordPress soon, so I thought I should blog about this.Even Blogging greats such as Amit Agarwal shifted his Labnol blog from Blogger to WordPress as soon as he got really serious about it.
In a future post I will concentrate on the few benefits of Blogger, so stay tuned for that!
