Even the experts will tell you that blogging isn’t easy. Whether you’re a creative writer trying to get traction, or a small business owner crafting content as part of your content marketing strategy, it’s easy to get bogged down by inertia, lack of inspiration, editing, and SEO needs.
Writing for the internet is not like writing internal communications, for newspapers, or your own experimental expression. Not only do you need to create engaging articles that draw in (and keep) readers, you need to outfit those articles with the correct keywords, formatting, and media to attract the attention of search engines as well.
Your issue might be a lack of search optimization knowledge, or it might be writer’s block. Luckily, we live in an era of free or inexpensive writing tools that can help all of us to be better (and more productive) writers and bloggers.
It doesn’t matter what kind of blogger you are, what your goals are, or what your skill level is like. Just do yourself a favor and take a look at the 15 best writing tools for blogging and explore exactly what those tools can do for you.
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- ❌ Cleaning HTML, removing span tags, line breaks, etc.
- ❌ Creating your Table of Contents anchor ID links for all headers by hand,
- ❌ Resizing & compressing images one-by-one before uploading back into your content,
- ❌ Optimizing images with descriptive file names & alt text attributes,
- ❌ Manually pasting target=“_blank” and/or “nofollow” attributes to every single link
The 14 Best Writing Tools
- Wordable
- CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
- HubSpot’s Blog Idea Generator
- Calmly
- Otter
- Grammarly
- Hemingway Editor
- OneLook Reverse Dictionary
- Yoast SEO
- Evernote
- BuzzSumo
- WordPress Distraction Free Writing
- StyleWriter
- Unicheck
- Writesonic
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We’ll dive into each one individually.
1. Wordable
Wordable is a tool that lets you upload a Google Doc draft to WordPress, fully formatted and with images included, in just a few seconds.
A lot of us will know the pain of writing up a blog post in a Google Doc, then copy and pasting it over-just to find that the formatting is all off and all your time spent working on the spacing and headers and font was a waste.
If you value your time as a writer and a creator, Wordable is a no brainer. Your productivity will skyrocket, and you don’t have to download any fancy writing software. Everything gets uploaded in just a few clicks.
2. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
One of the most difficult parts of writing a blog post is coming up with a headline.
Your blog headline has got to be informative, powerful, and engaging. It needs to have a certain number of words and/or characters. And it should never be click-bait.
Unfortunately, coming up with a million-dollar headline for each and every blog post can take a lot more time and creativity than some of us have got to offer.
You could spend hours tweaking your headline blindly, sure. Or you could just use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is a fantastic online writing tool that gives your headline ideas a score based on a number of factors, including the use of emotional or uncommon words, your “first and last” word choices, and even the sentiment. (Hint: Write one that is strongly positive or negative, not neutral.)
Blog content with a bad headline is rarely read, no matter how good the body copy may be. That’s what makes the Headline Analyzer one of the best online writing tools on this list.
3. HubSpot’s Blog Idea Generator
Here’s the thing about blogging: You can’t just do it “every once in a while” or “sometimes.” One of the keys to success is having a regular blogging schedule as a part of your content marketing strategy and sticking to it.
Not only will readers come to expect your content, but you’ll be better at writing it because you’ll have more practice.
The problem? Coming up with blog ideas. That’s where blogging tools like HubSpot’s Blog Idea Generator come in.
The Blog Idea Generator allows you to input up to five different nouns that are related to your niche or industry. Then, the generator will come up with as many as 250 blog titles for you to riff on.
Word of warning: not every suggestion is a winner. That being said, the sheer number of blog ideas will be enough to help you get the ball rolling every time you need to sit down and write.
The best part: this blogging tool is not only easy to use, but it’s also totally free.
4. Calmly
Content writing on a computer is advantageous in so many ways. First and foremost, it’s easy to forget about the ways in which it hinders us. It’s easy to get distracted by the world of information and communication just a few keystrokes away with a text editor or writing app like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or WordPress.
One of the better options for trying to stay focused while you’re writing blogs is to use Calmly.
Calmly is a simple writing platform with a simple mission: keep your fingers on the keys and churning out great blog content. You can use it to tune out everything else on your computer screen while you write.
In “Focus Mode,” you can go as far as tuning out everything but the paragraph you’re working on. You’d be surprised how much more you get done when you can only focus on the next line of your article.
5. Otter
It doesn’t matter if you’re an award-winning blogger or a writing newbie: absolutely no one likes transcribing video or audio files. If you want to interview someone to provide more insight and context for a blog but dread the idea of transcribing their answers, use Otter.
Otter is one of the better transcription apps available today, and it’s a free tool (although you’ve got to upgrade for extra features).
You can generate conversation transcriptions instantly, including breakdowns by speaker, and additional information such as keywords and searchable text. Another great transcription tool is Happy Scribe which enables you to convert mp3 to text.
The result: no more spending countless hours rewinding and rewriting (because sometimes, the best writing tools are ones that help you write less).
6. Grammarly
Great writers aren’t always great editors, as this helpful writing assistant teaches us on a daily basis. A grammar checker like Grammarly or any of it’s alternatives is the next best thing to a writing assistant.
Grammarly is an online tool that functions as a text editor as well as a browser plug-in. This means that all of your writing across all platforms is scrutinized. Grammarly reviews your writing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
The premium version of Grammarly also checks for plagiarism (unintentional or otherwise) and vocabulary enhancement suggestions.
If you don’t have access to a copy editor who can look over your blog posts before you post them, a grammar checker like Grammarly is the next best thing.
Read our full review on Grammarly at our sister site, Codeless.
7. Hemingway Editor
Let’s be honest: when you’re working on the first draft of a new article or blog, you’re probably going to overwrite and toss in too much content. We add extraneous words and clog up our copy with passive voice.
In an ideal world, we’d all write a bit more like Ernest Hemingway, the master of short and direct language.
Or, we could just use the Hemingway Editor.
Copy and paste your first pass (or your second or third) at a blog post from Microsoft Word or whichever word processor you might be using into Hemingway, and this free writing app will highlight your long sentences, complicated word choices, and nouns that are acted upon by verbs (rather than the more active, direct language).
You’ll be surprised how much easier it is to read your own blog once you’ve removed the window dressing with Hemingway. This online tool is fast, easy to use, and will help your blog posts get to the point a lot faster. Your readers will definitely thank you.
8. OneLook Reverse Dictionary
Few things can halt the momentum of writing quicker than having a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can’t remember. And few things halt a reader’s interest in your writing quicker than encountering the same word or phrase over and over.
Solve both of these issues with the OneLook Thesaurus. This writing tool lets you describe a concept (in a word or in a sentence) and gives you a list of related words and phrases.
You can then use these results to give your writing a lot more variety and verve and to make sure you’re creating quality content that avoids clichés and repetition. You’re then going to be left with more original content that will not only rank better but read a lot better, too.
9. Yoast SEO
For the non-SEO savvy among us, there may not be a better WordPress plugin than Yoast SEO.
If you’re writing a blog post on WordPress, Yoast SEO is an amazing online tool that will help you write SEO-friendly copy. Yoast Seo also keeps you focused on your stated keywords, automatically suggests links to other topics, and avoids Google penalties for things like duplicate URLs and poor site functionality.
Yoast SEO operates on a freemium basis. That means you can utilize a free version on WordPress that comes with all the basic functionality you need.
Or if you’d like to upgrade, Yoast SEO Premium goes a step further by making I-powered internal linking suggestions, content insights, and extra customer support where required.
10. Evernote
Have you ever had problems staying organized when blogging? You should check out Evernote.
Evernote is a cross-platform tool available as an Android app, iOS app, or desktop app. Evernote is a great tool for writers because it lets you save notes, drawings, pictures, screenshots, or web pages in one place.
You can tag or edit each item, which means it’s always super easy to categorize your thoughts or ideas and call them up when needed.
That’s why Evernote is a perfect app for any content writer that needs a hand making sense of all their ideas, finding inspiration, and putting all the pieces together to create quality content. Evernote is especially useful for big projects like book writing (because when you’re writing a book, you’ve got a lot to keep track of).
11. BuzzSumo
It’s all well and good coming up with a great topic for a new blog – but before you start writing, don’t you want to know what other people have got to say about it? Cue BuzzSumo.
BuzzSumo is a blogging tool that helps you explore content that’s performing well on social media or other sites and research the competition to find out what kind of content is going to generate awesome engagement.
After you’ve done a deep dive on trends and written your blog, BuzzSumo can then help with content marketing by identifying relevant influencers that might be able to help expand the reach of your content.
12. WordPress Distraction Free Writing
The web is a pretty loud place – and when it comes to blog writing, loud isn’t always best. That’s why if you ever write a blog directly into WordPress, it’s definitely worth enabling Distraction Free Writing.
After you’ve switched it on and start writing, your menus, word count, browser toolbar, and everything in between fade away. There’s nothing to look at but the text (or blank space) on the page.
That means you can’t get distracted by Twitter, WordPress plugins, or whatever other tabs you might have open. You can just focus on the task at hand and get that blog written.
13. StyleWriter
If you feel like your blog content has got too much jargon and not enough substance, StyleWriter is a great tool for editing, proofing, and getting rid of words that don’t belong.
StyleWriter automatically detects awkward phrases, out-of-place words, and grammatical errors like a lot of other proofreading tools. But StyleWriter’s Jargon Buster function goes a step further by highlighting all of the niche language you’ve been using that isn’t going to mean much to a wider audience.
By ridding your blog of clutter and inaccessible words, your writing will be clearer, more concise, and more enjoyable for readers.
14. Unicheck
(Let’s face it: if you’re blogging about a popular topic, chances are that other bloggers have already covered a lot of the content you’ll be using. But even if you’re touching on the same sort of content, you’ve got to ensure that your writing is unique.
Avoiding plagiarism isn’t just about respecting other bloggers’ intellectual property. Search engines punish blogs that publish duplicate content, and you’re not going to win many new readers when people start to realize your posts are super similar to other sites.
That’s where Unicheck comes in.
Unicheck is a cloud-based plagiarism checker used by over a million users in 90 countries. You can upload documents in over 25 different languages, and Unicheck will then instantly search through 40B different web sources to report back and highlight which parts of your blog are 100% original (and which parts are too similar to other sites).
15. Writesonic
When it comes to AI writing tools, they are not just limited to students who want to generate plagiarism-free content. Instead, they are powerful allies for anyone who wants to unleash their imagination, express their ideas, and craft compelling stories.
And, one of the best options when it comes to an AI-powered writing tool is Writesonic.
Writesonic can help you generate ideas, prompts, headlines, outlines, summaries, and even entire texts based on your inputs, preferences, and goals. It can also help you edit, proofread, and enhance your writing.
Be it a blog post, product description, FB ad copy, or any other form of content, Writesonic can help you with it. It is a smart, friendly, and versatile writing tool that can take your content creation process to the next level.
So, if you are looking to speed up the content creation process and skyrocket your productivity, try Writesonic.
Conclusion
Don’t leave yourself out on an island as you write. These are some of the best free writing tools-or cheap writing tools, at least-out there today. Whether you need help focusing, or writing to impress Google as much as your readers, use these apps, platforms, and services to make the process easier without sacrificing speed or quality.
