At WPBeginner, we decided to move to the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress. It has improved our SEO workflow and given us the tools we need to manage our website.

In this article, we will share our top reasons for switching to All in One SEO for WordPress and why we believe it is the best WordPress SEO toolkit on the market.

Why Use All in One SEO for WordPress?

If you are making a website, then installing an SEO plugin is one of the first things you should do in order to start getting traffic.

When we first started WPBeginner in 2009, we were using All in One SEO Pack because it was the original WordPress SEO plugin. After a couple of years, we switched to Yoast SEO because it was a newer plugin, and it brought some new innovations.

Over the next several years, our website grew a lot. However, we felt that Yoast SEO stopped innovating and no longer had the features we needed.

For instance, we needed better control over XML sitemaps, powerful schema.org tools, and more.

In 2020, our parent company, Awesome Motive, acquired the All in One SEO plugin.

The All in One SEO team did a fantastic job of completely overhauling the plugin, adding all the latest SEO features, and truly making it the best in class.

After numerous rounds of testing, we decided to make the move from Yoast SEO to AIOSEO in November 2021 because our team was convinced that AIOSEO had surpassed Yoast in terms of SEO features.

Since then, we have noticed a significant improvement in our editorial workflow and day-to-day SEO tasks.

That being said, here are the top reasons we switched from Yoast SEO to All in One SEO:

1. Better On-Page SEO Tools

On-page SEO means optimizing blog posts for SEO. This is one of the biggest day-to-day SEO tasks for most users as they add content to their websites.

All in One SEO offers the best on-page SEO experience, with many helpful features and tools at your fingertips.

You will see two prominent buttons in the top-right corner of your screen while writing content.

First, there is The Headline Analyzer tool, which gives a score for your post title with suggestions to improve it.

You can also try different headlines without changing the post tile and pick the best one. See our article on how to use the headline analyzer to write better SEO titles.

Under the ‘General’ settings, you can add a focus keyphrase. This will give you an SEO score for your focus keyphrase with tips to improve it.

Plus, you can optimize your content for more than one focus keyphrase.

The snippet editor allows you to easily add the SEO title, meta description, and focus keyphrases.

You will also see a live preview of how the page would look in search engines.

All in One SEO lets you use dynamic tags in your SEO title and description. This way, you can automatically change the title and description.

For instance, you can use current month and year tags to always display the current year in the post title without editing them manually each year.

Best of all, the tags are searchable, and you can easily add them from the dropdown menus, so you don’t need to know all the tags or look up any documentation.

You can even add emojis to your post titles to increase the click-through rate in the search results.

The ‘Social’ tab in the SEO settings will show a preview of how your article will appear on Facebook and Twitter.

From here, you can set the title, description, and thumbnail you want to use.

All in One SEO allows you to choose from a bunch of options for your social media thumbnails.

You can also just use the Custom Image option and manually upload an image to use as a social media thumbnail for each article.

Need to redirect an article to a different post or page? No worries.

The Redirects feature lets you easily set up redirects for any post or page on your website without harming your site’s SEO.

Other on-page SEO tools include a schema generator, Link Assistant, and SEO Revisions. We will talk about them individually later in this article.

Overall, we believe that All in One SEO offers a much easier yet incredibly powerful on-page SEO experience than any other tool on the market.

2. Powerful XML Sitemaps

WordPress itself comes with built-in XML sitemaps, and almost all other SEO plugins include some kind of XML sitemap functionality.

However, All in One SEO lets you take XML sitemaps to the next level.

The plugin will automatically generate sitemaps for all your content types, including posts, pages, custom post types, products, and more.

You can easily exclude any post or page that you don’t want to include in your sitemaps.

You can also exclude any content types or taxonomies from your sitemaps.

Some users want to include their standalone landing pages in their sitemaps.

All in One SEO lets you include any page not generated by WordPress in your sitemaps.

The plugin also generates an RSS sitemap.

This includes the latest updates to your content and helps your newer content get indexed much more quickly.

If you run a news website, then you can generate a news sitemap to appear in the Google News carousel.

Additionally, you can create a video sitemap. This helps your videos appear in Google Video search results.

This is the most extensive XML sitemap tool currently available to WordPress users, and it is still incredibly easy to use, even for absolute beginners.

3. Most Comprehensive Schema Markup Support

Schema markup is a special type of HTML code that you can add to your WordPress website to tell search engines more about your content.

For instance, you can tell the search engines that a particular page is a blog post, a recipe, an FAQ section, a news article, or a product page in your online store. Search engines can then use this data to display rich results.

All in One SEO comes with the most comprehensive support for schema markup for your WordPress website.

It starts with the Knowledge Graph data that helps search engines like Google get additional information about your website or business.

After that, you can set the default schema type for each post type.

For instance, you can set Article for your blog posts and Web Page for your pages.

You can also generate schema markup for individual posts or pages.

For instance, you can differentiate your regular articles from recipes, FAQs, online courses, and more.

If you run a local small business, then All in One SEO lets you easily add local SEO schema markup. This way, your site gets more exposure in local search results and Google Maps.

You can add multiple locations, display business hours, provide contact information, and more.

This extensive Schema.org support allows you to easily optimize your content for rich results in Google.

AIOSEO lets you generate custom schema markup for recipes, videos, products, FAQ schema, and more. You can also use their next-gen Schema templates to get rich snippets.

For power users, you can even write your custom schema and save it as reusable templates. All in One SEO also has built-in schema validation to check your custom schema markup.

4. Monitor and Undo SEO Changes With SEO Revisions

Are you wondering if the SEO changes you made to an article or page gave it a boost or drop in search rankings?

All in One SEO comes with a built-in SEO Revisions feature that allows you to easily track SEO changes made to each article.

You will be able to see who made the changes and at what time.

You can then click on the Compare or Preview icon to see the changes.

Want to undo a change? No problem.

Simply click the delete button next to a revision to undo that change.

Do you want other team members to know what changes you made, or just want to remind yourself?

Click on the ‘Add Note’ link next to a revision, and leave a quick note about the changes you made.

SEO Revisions can help you understand which changes improved your search rankings and which ones didn’t work.

You can then apply the successful changes to all your articles and improve your SEO strategy.

5. Beginner-Friendly User Experience

Not all WordPress users are SEO experts, and even people with SEO expertise can benefit from a smooth user experience.

All in One SEO for WordPress makes SEO simpler for both beginner and advanced users.

It comes with a much cleaner onboarding experience than other SEO plugins, and a simple setup wizard walks you through the basic SEO setup.

It uses a modern user interface that is easy on the eyes and fast.

It saves you from unnecessary page loads when making changes to SEO settings. The plugin also gets out of your way when you want to write content or work on your website.

Once properly set up, beginner users can focus on creating content and growing their business instead of reviewing SEO settings.

At the same time, all the advanced features are easily accessible when you need them.

We believe this polished user experience makes a big difference when working on your website and performing day-to-day SEO tasks.

6. Use Artificial Intelligence to Write Headlines and Descriptions

All in One SEO comes with built-in integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

When writing your post’s SEO title or description, you can simply click on the robot button next to those fields.

It will ask you to connect to your ChatGPT account.

After that, it will use artificial intelligence (AI) to suggest 5 titles or descriptions based on your content.

You simply need to click on the post title you want to use, which can save you a lot of time on brainstorming headlines and meta descriptions.

7. The Link Assistant Tool

Internal links play a crucial role in SEO. They not only help your users and search engines discover new content, but they can also improve search engine rankings.

However, tools that allow you to analyze your website’s internal and external links are usually very expensive.

All in One SEO brings that same functionality to your WordPress website for a fraction of the cost. The Link Assistant tool helps you analyze internal and external links added to each article.

The plugin will also make smart link suggestions. You can click on a post to review a suggestion and add the link without editing a post.

This comes in handy for promoting newer articles by adding links to your older articles.

You can also click on the ‘Edit’ button and change the anchor text or surrounding text without editing the entire article.

We feel that the Link Assistant tool alone is a strong reason for switching to All in One SEO for WordPress.

8. Redirection Manager

Broken links cause 404 errors in WordPress, which may affect your site’s SEO.

All in One SEO comes with a powerful Redirects Manager tool that allows you to easily set up redirects on your website.

It keeps a log of 404 errors on your WordPress site.

Then, you can easily find posts that may need to be redirected.

Also, if you change a post or page’s permalink, AIOSEO will immediately ask if you want to redirect the old URL to the new one.

Plus, if you ever plan to move your WordPress site to a new domain name, then All in One SEO comes with a full site redirect that automatically redirects users to your new domain name.

9. Social Media Integrations

Social media platforms play an important role in promoting your website beyond organic search traffic.

All in One SEO provides deep integrations to social media platforms with its open graph metadata integration.

You can add links to all the social media profiles associated with your website and help search engines discover them.

Each author on your website can also add links to their individual social media profiles.

This allows search engines to discover social media accounts for authors on your website.

Finally, you can easily set open graph metadata and thumbnails for each article.

This allows you to override default settings and get more control over how each article appears when shared on social media.

10. Enhanced Image SEO for WordPress

Image search is an important source of traffic for many websites. All in One SEO allows you to easily optimize your images to get more search traffic.

Simply go to All in One SEO » Search Appearance and switch to the ‘Image SEO’ tab.

From here, the plugin can automatically use the filename to generate an image title and alt tags.

You can also tell it to replace dashes and underscores with spaces and change letter casing.

With Image SEO, you can disable WordPress attachment pages and redirect them to the original post or page where the image is embedded.

Lastly, you can optimize filenames by not stripping dashes, changing letter casing, and stripping common stop words.

11. Sitewide SEO Audit

For many beginners and small businesses, purchasing an expensive SEO tool for a site-wide SEO audit or competitor analysis is not a practical option.

Luckily, All in One SEO comes with a built-in sitewide SEO audit and competitor analysis tool.

With an SEO audit, you can see an overall SEO health score for your website.

All in One SEO will give you a detailed report with practical suggestions to improve your SEO score. You can also see how your competitors are doing and get an SEO score check for any website.

12. Search Statistics in Your WordPress Dashboard

The easiest way to see how your website is performing in Google Search is by using the Google Search Console.

However, many beginners either don’t add their website to Search Console or don’t check it that often.

All in One SEO brings your Google Search Console data into the WordPress admin dashboard and makes it human-readable and easy to understand.

At the top, you will see graphs for your search performance. They show your recent search impressions, total clicks, average organic click-through rate, and average position in the search results.

Below that, you will see your Top Keywords and Content Performance report overview.

You can also switch to more detailed views of these reports. For instance, switching to the ‘SEO Statistics’ tab will show you the full Content Performance report.

It will show your top-performing articles, their search positions, the number of clicks, and more.

Similarly, switching to the Keyword Rankings report will show you the keywords your site is ranking for.

From here, you can see top keywords with the number of clicks, average position, impression, and difference in search ranking.

Top Losing and Top Winning will help you sort keywords that have recently gained or lost in search rankings.

You can also switch to the ‘Content Rankings’ tab, which gives you a clearer picture of which content has gained or lost SEO rankings and by how many points.

Additionally, you can see if any changes to the Google algorithm have affected your rankings. For more details, see our guide on how to monitor Google algorithm updates in WordPress.

13. Fixing SEO Crawl Budget Issues in WordPress

SEO crawl budget is the number of times search engines like Google will crawl pages on your WordPress blog or website.

Google bots crawl billions of pages each day. They try to calculate how many pages they will crawl on each website domain to efficiently use resources.

As a website owner, you will want to make sure that your most important content gets crawled and ranked quickly. However, search engines may end up spending the crawl budget on less important pages.

All in One SEO helps you fix this problem. Just go to the All in One SEO » Search Appearance page and switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you’ll see the ‘Crawl Cleanup’ option there.

Click the toggle to enable the ‘Crawl Cleanup’ feature.

From here, you can disable the Query Arguments from getting crawled.

Below that, you can disable different RSS feeds generated by WordPress.

To learn more, see our article about the WordPress SEO crawl budget issue and how to fix it.

14. Generate Keyword Ideas While Writing Content

All in One SEO allows you to optimize your content by including more relevant keywords in your article. It will even generate those ideas from your content itself using Semrush.

Simply edit a post and scroll down to AIOSEO settings. From here, add a focus keyphrase for your content and then click on the ‘Get Additional Keyphrases’ button.

This will open a popup asking you to sign in to your Semrush account.

If you don’t have one, then you can create a free account.

Once you are logged in, you will be asked to give All in One SEO permission to connect to your Semrush account.

After that, you will be redirected back to your website, where you will see a list of relevant keywords that you can add to your content.

15. Add Dynamic Table of Contents to Your Posts

A table of contents is a list of links to different areas of longer articles. It helps your users easily navigate to the topic that interests them instead of scrolling down.

Apart from improved user experience, a table of contents can also help you improve the organic click-through rate in search results.

Search engines may include items from the table of contents as jump to sections below your listing in the search results.

All in One SEO comes with an advanced and customizable Table of Contents block that you can add to your posts and pages.

Once you add the block, it will automatically display all headings below it as list items. You can choose to show or hide an item or edit the anchor text if needed.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to add a table of contents in WordPress posts.

16. Use Better Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation is a navigational aid that shows users links for where they are within your website’s navigational layout.

It’s like a path to show them how to get back to earlier parts of the website they may have visited before landing on their current page or post.

It is not only useful for your users, but it also helps with SEO.

Search engines can use this information when displaying a site in the search results.

For beginners, All in One SEO automatically configures and sets up breadcrumbs.

However, it also comes with the easiest and most customizable breadcrumb navigation settings of any WordPress plugin on the market.

Just go to the All in One SEO » General Settings page and switch to the ‘Breadcrumbs’ tab. From here, you will see different ways to easily display breadcrumbs on your website.

You can customize the appearance of breadcrumbs on your WordPress website. You can even disable them (not recommended) if you need to.

For more details, see our tutorial on adding breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress.

17. Easily Control User Access to SEO Features

Want to give some users access to your site’s back end so that they can work on SEO tasks?

All in One SEO comes with powerful access control features that enable you to easily share access. You can control which parts users can access.

Simply go to the All in One SEO » General Settings page and switch to the ‘Access Control’ tab.

From here, you can customize access to existing user roles such as Editor, Author, Contributor, and more.

Below that, you can even turn on/off SEO-specific user roles:

• SEO Manager – Users with this role can access SEO settings for General Settings, Sitemaps, Link Assistant, Redirects, Local SEO, and individual pages and posts.
• SEO Editor – These users can only access SEO settings for individual pages and posts.

To assign a user an SEO role on your website, you will need to add them as a new user in WordPress and set their user role to SEO Manager or SEO Editor.

Bonus SEO Tools Included With AIOSEO

Aside from the above reasons for switching from Yoast to All in One SEO, AIOSEO also gives us dozens of other powerful SEO features that we simply didn’t have previously.

For example, they were the first ones to add IndexNow support in WordPress to speed up search indexing for Bing.

Also, if you are using a headless WordPress site, then they also have full REST API support to improve your SEO rankings.

All in One SEO also offers seamless support for eCommerce SEO.

Need more reasons? Take a look at this extensive list of useful All in One SEO features.

How to Switch From Any WordPress SEO Plugin to All in One SEO

Switching to All in One SEO for WordPress is quite simple.

First, you will need to install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will be asked to run the setup wizard.

During the setup, the plugin will automatically detect your other SEO plugin and offer to import SEO data.

Simply check the box next to the old SEO plugin and click on the ‘Import Data and Continue’ button.

All in One SEO will automatically import all your SEO data, including post titles, meta descriptions, keywords, and more.

You can also manually run the importer by visiting the All in One SEO » Tools page and switching to the ‘Import/Export’ tab.

Simply select the SEO plugin you were using before and hit the ‘Import’ button.

We hope this article helped explain the reasons why we switched from Yoast to All in One SEO for WordPress. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide for beginners or take a look at our detailed side-by-side comparison of Yoast SEO vs. All in One SEO.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 17 Reasons Why We Switched From Yoast to All in One SEO first appeared on WPBeginner.

Maybe they tried to start a blog but were unsuccessful. Or perhaps they believe that social media, video content, or some other new platform is the future.

In this article, we will take a look at these two different arguments and see if blogging has any future.

What Is a Blog?

Now, you may be wondering what a blog is and how a blog is different from a website. A blog is a type of website where the newest content appears first. Blog content is often referred to as entries, articles, or ‘blog posts’.

A blog may be run by an individual or small team, or it might be run by a large corporation. In fact, many big-name brands have a blog.

Blogging started way back in 1993 and has been exploding ever since. We have even written a post about the history of blogging.

But what about the future? Why do people say blogging is dead?

Why Do People Say Blogging Is Dead?

The online landscape is constantly changing, with more platforms and competition every day. Some people believe that blogging is being left behind as better alternatives come along.

For example, there has been phenomenal growth in social networks in the last decade. You can visit Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to catch up with the latest news or view your friends’ photos. It seems like fewer individuals are starting personal blogs.

Also video sharing sites are also rapidly growing. YouTube has 2.7 billion active users, and over half of the internet’s population visits the service each month.

And more recently, artificial intelligence services have taken the world by storm. Some people wonder why a person would read a blog post when they can simply ask an AI a question and receive a detailed answer in seconds.

Finally, there is competition within the ‘blogosphere’ itself. The number of blogs is growing each year, and it becomes increasingly difficult for your own blog to stand out in the crowd. But this is a sign that blogging is alive and well, not that it is dying.

With that being said, is there any reason to believe that blogging is dying? Absolutely not. In this article, we will cover these topics:

The Number of Blogs and Bloggers Are Growing

The number of blogs has continued to grow over the last few decades, and it is not slowing down. Here are a few snapshots of the total number of blogs in the world:

• 2006 – 50 million blogs
• 2010 – 152 million blogs
• 2015 – 227 million blogs
• 2017 – 300 million blogs
• 2022 – 572 million blogs

That growth is staggering.

There are currently over 600 million blogs spread across platforms like Tumblr, Wix, WordPress, and LinkedIn.

Most of these blogs are on WordPress, which is used by 97% of bloggers and powers 43% of all websites on the internet.

More than 500 new websites are created using WordPress every day, and 6 million new blog posts are published each day. That’s 2.5 billion posts each year!

You might wonder if anyone is reading all of those posts. The answer is yes. Over 77 million new comments are left on WordPress.com blogs every month.

The number of bloggers is also growing. Between 2014 and 2020, the number of bloggers in the United States alone increased by 10 million.

Blogging Is a Key Strategy for Successful Marketers

One reason that blogs are so popular is that they work. Running a blog is one of the best ways to promote a small business or online store.

Many marketing professionals find they get better results from a blog than email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, eBooks, webinars, and infographics. In a 2021 survey, 36% of marketers agreed that blog posts brought them the best results.

That’s because blogging can help drive more sales and conversions by boosting your brand awareness and improving the rankings of your online store’s product pages.

According to a study, 76% of content marketers use content to generate leads, and 55% of marketers consider blogging as their top content marketing strategy.

Customers also find blogs important. 56% of people surveyed bought something from an online marketplace, store, or brand after reading the company’s blog. And 70% of consumers surveyed would rather read a blog post than an advertisement.

Users Are Actively Visiting Blogs to Learn

Many customers read blog posts before making a purchase so that they can learn.

In a recent survey, 33% of people said they wanted to learn something new when asked why they read blog posts.

A blog can provide shoppers easy access to the information they are looking for in the form of how-to guides, product roundups and reviews, and more.

This is one reason why how-to articles have become some of the most popular types of content for bloggers to write. 76% of bloggers now publish how-to articles.

At WPBeginner, we agree. The vast majority of our posts teach our readers how to perform a task or fix a problem step by step.

Many Users Prefer to Read Blog Posts Than Watch Videos

Despite the huge amount of video content that is available, many users still prefer to read. In fact, 77% of internet users read blogs.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a demand for video content. While 52% of people in one survey wanted to see more blog posts, 43% wanted to see more video content from marketers.

The good news is that a blog is the perfect place to share both written and video content. Besides that, blogs with images and videos get much more engagement and traffic compared to text-only posts.

That’s why we started our WPBeginner YouTube Channel, which now has almost 300 thousand subscribers. Our users can watch our video tutorials on YouTube or on our blog.

We will show you later in this article how blogs and video content can complement one another.

Money Made by Bloggers Continues to Rise

Another sign that blogs are succeeding is that you can make a good living from blogging.

While not everyone blogs full-time, even as early as 2010, 11% of bloggers were able to earn their main income from blogging. Today, about 25% of WordPress bloggers say they make their full-time living from blogging.

The money a blogger can earn is above average. For example, in 2021, Semrush found that bloggers earned an average salary of $8,000 per month, which comes to $90,000 per year.

If you’d like to do the same, then you can see our guides on WordPress career options and proven ways to make money blogging with WordPress.

Just be aware that not everyone makes money blogging. You might be surprised to learn that 33% of bloggers don’t make any money, and beginner bloggers report making between $200 and $2,500 per month in their first year.

Websites With Blogs Rank Higher in Google

If you want your business website to rank higher on Google, then the best thing you can do is add a blog. Business websites with a blog get 55% more visitors than those that don’t.

If your website has more content, then it is also more likely to show up on search engine results pages (SERPs). Websites with a blog have 434% more indexed pages than those that don’t.

Additionally, your visitors are more likely to link to a blog post than a normal website. Companies with an active blog get 97% more backlinks than those that don’t, and Google will notice this and rank those sites higher.

Does Competition From Social Media Mean Blogging Is Dead?

Social media has become a global phenomenon, with 4.59 billion people using it in 2022. This number is projected to increase to about 6 billion by 2027.

Some people claim that blogging is dead because they don’t believe it can keep up with competition from social media platforms.

However, successful bloggers don’t see social media as a threat but as an opportunity.

Social platforms are an important source of traffic for blogs. In fact, 56% of bloggers report that social media is their most important traffic source.

You can follow our social media cheat sheet for WordPress to learn which social platforms can help you get more traffic and set up your social profiles the right way.

Then, you can even use a tool like Smash Balloon that allows you to show your social media content within your blog posts and get more engagement.

Does Competition From Video Sites Mean Blogging Is Dead?

Approximately 3.37 billion people consumed online video content in 2022. Content creators and marketing professionals would be silly to ignore this, but that doesn’t mean that you should just focus on video sites.

A blog lets you show off your written and video content in one place. It’s now common for blog posts to contain images and video content rather than just the written word. And blog posts with videos get 83% more traffic than those without them.

You could upload video content directly to your WordPress website, but this will quickly eat up your storage space and bandwidth. You should never upload a video to WordPress.

Instead, you can upload your videos to video hosting sites like YouTube or Vimeo. These platforms are built to cope with the huge storage and bandwidth requirements of video.

You can then easily embed the videos in your WordPress blog posts. This can increase traffic and user engagement on your website.

The Impact of AI on Blogging

Artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI are getting a lot of attention. The ChatGPT website alone receives 1.5 billion visitors per month.

You may wonder why anyone would visit a blog when generative AI tools are so convenient and easy to use. You might even worry that AI will replace human content on the web.

Well, blogging and AI are in partnership more than in competition. AI tools learn by processing the information already on the internet, including blog posts. And bloggers can use AI to write better blog posts.

Smart AI tools can revolutionize your blog and make it more competitive. They can:

• Generate topic ideas for your blog.
• Create blog post outlines.
• Draft blog posts.
• Create featured images for your posts.

You can even use tools like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) + OpenAI to generate blog titles and meta descriptions that will catch users’ attention in the search results.

To learn more, just see our guide on the best ways to use OpenAI on your WordPress website.

Some Blogging Niches Are Highly Successful

Some blogging niches are more successful than others. Certain topics attract more visitors, while others can make you more money.

Here are the most successful niches:

1. Food blogs are the most popular, with 42.8% receiving 50,000+ visits per month, and their average income is $9,169 per month.
2. Lifestyle blogs come second, with 13.3% receiving 50,000+ visits per month, and their average income is $5,174 per month.
3. Travel blogs are third, with 10% receiving 50,000 visits per month, and their average income is $5,000 per month.
4. Personal finance blogs are also good earners, with an average income of $9,100 per month.

You can see the full list in our guide on the most popular types of blogs.

Some Types of Blogs Are No Longer Successful

While blogging isn’t dead, certain types of blogs are no longer successful.

With increased competition from other blogs, social networks, and video sites, some types of blogs just can’t keep up and are dying.

• Blogs are no longer the best way to share the details of your personal life with your friends. It’s often better to use social media for this purpose.
• Blogs that don’t use images and videos will not capture the attention of their audiences. Readers expect to see rich media in blog posts, or else they can become disengaged.
• Blogs that contain out-of-date information quickly lose the respect of their readers. You should update or delete your old content so that your posts stay relevant and accurate.
• Blogs that are unfocused will have trouble attracting consistent traffic. Focus your blog on a specific topic or industry and make sure it is ranking for the right keywords.

Finally, blogs that don’t prioritize quality are unable to compete. Quality blog posts take time and effort and focus on user engagement rather than clicks.

Blogging Is Competitive, So Focus on High-Quality Content

Even though blogging is alive and well, not everyone succeeds when starting a new blog. You need to make good decisions, work hard, and focus on high-quality content.

Because there is so much competition, you need to do everything you can to make your blog posts stand out.

Our tutorials at WPBeginner will help you learn how to do that one step at a time.

Because quality is key, you should carefully read our guide on how to write a good blog post. It shows you how to structure a quality post and gives helpful examples.

For example, it teaches you how to write a clear and concise introduction, break up the content into scannable sections using headings, add a table of contents, and much more.

Bonus: How to Start a WordPress Blog

After reading our guide on why blogging is not dead, you might be ready to start your own blog. You will need three key ingredients:

• A domain name: The online address of your site (ours is wpbeginner.com)
• Web hosting: Online storage for your site so visitors can access it
• A blogging platform: Special software that lets you easily create a blog without needing to do any coding

A domain name normally costs around $9-15 per year, and web hosting starts from $7.95 per year. Those costs can add up.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer our users a generous discount on hosting and a free domain name. This means you can get started for as little as $2.75 per month.

If you’d like to see some more options before deciding, then see our guide on how to choose the best web hosting for a detailed comparison of the top hosting providers.

When it comes to choosing a blog platform, there are plenty of choices, including many great free ones. You can see our list of the best blogging platforms for a detailed comparison.

However, if you want to start making money from your blog, then we recommend self-hosted WordPress.org. That’s what we use at WPBeginner.

It has everything you need for blogging, and you can add new features using plugins. The best part is that it gives you the freedom to monetize your blog in any way you want.

For more details, you can see our beginner’s guide on how to start a WordPress blog.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn that blogging is not dead. You may also want to see our guide on why you should use WordPress for your website or our expert pick of the must-have plugins for your business site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Is Blogging Dead? (Our Expert Opinion in 2023) first appeared on WPBeginner.

There are many types of domains, but the most popular are .org and .com. While often taken for granted, a site’s domain extension affects how others view your brand and how easy it is for users to find your site.

In this post, we’ll compare .org vs .com and highlight when to use each. That way, you’ll know which domain extension is right for your needs.

What are Domain Extensions, and Why Should You Care?

Domain extensions, also known as top-level domains (TLDs), are the last part of a domain name, appearing after the dot.

Take WPBeginner, which uses the .com extension, while a site like WordPress uses .org. (There is a .com for WordPress, but it is a commercial product, not open source.)

To understand how a domain name works, you have to know how it interacts with the Domain Name System (DNS).

When entering a website address, the DNS looks up the URL (wpbeginner.com) and finds the hosting server’s numerical IP address where the website lives.

We use domain names rather than typing the IP address because they’re much easier for humans and search engines to use and remember. In addition to the domain name itself, the domain extension can tell visitors what your website is about.

For example, .com is designed for commercial websites, while .org is meant for non-profit organizations.

When potential customers see your web address, they might make assumptions about your business based solely on your URL.

With that in mind, we’re going to highlight the differences between a .org and .com domain extension and which is better for your website. Click on any of the links below to jump to a specific section.

What is a .org Domain Extension?  

The .org extension stands for organization and was created for nonprofit organizations and charities to provide valuable information.

Generally, .org websites are used to raise awareness, accept online donations, and search for volunteers. Thus, when visitors see a .org domain name, that’s what they come to expect.

That said, anyone can register a website with the .org domain extension, even if the website isn’t part of a nonprofit organization.

However, businesses can still benefit from the .org domain when linked to the company’s charitable arm, while other domain names help protect the brand.

What is a .com Domain Extension? 

The .com extension is the most popular domain extension and is used by commercial businesses.

Nowadays, .com has become the default domain extension for general-purpose websites, whether or not they have commercial intent.

With that in mind, the idea of .org being only for nonprofits has stuck around a lot more than .com being only for businesses.

Differences Between .org and .com

As we said above, neither .org nor .com has special requirements to register, even though they were both made for different purposes and users expect different things from them.

Still, there are a few major differences between them that we’ll go into below.

Availability

The overwhelming popularity of .com has made it challenging to find and choose the best domain names with the extension. With many desirable domains either in use or parked, some people turn to other domain name extensions to get the URL they want.

Before you jump to other TLDs, you should start by looking at our free business name generator tool. It gives you clever ideas you can use for your domain name. Just make sure your domain name accurately represents your business and what you do.

For instance, let’s say you want to start a recipe blog.

Using our handy business name generator, you can find useful domain names like thedailyrecipes.com.

You can see in the screenshot above, that many simple .com addresses are already taken.

In contrast, far fewer .org domains are taken. In fact, there are 161.1 million .com domains registered compared to only 10.6 million .org registrations.

Because of its lower demand, .org is also much cheaper to get. That’s the opposite of many .com domain names because they are becoming more expensive because of high demand.

Credibility and Trustworthiness

Because the .org extension was intended for nonprofit organizations and is still used by many of the most well-known charities and philanthropic groups, this TLD still elicits a high degree of trust. When applied to the right site, it adds more credibility than the .com extension.

That said, it depends on what your site is used for. If you start an online store using a .org TLD, most people may be confused by your domain extension since visitors may expect to land on a nonprofit site.

This can lead to a high bounce rate and lower engagement, which also hurts your SEO.

If you own a .org site, your website should align with your target audience and their expectations of a nonprofit mission-driven organization.

The .com extension is still a more widely trusted domain than other TLDs because of its familiarity. In fact, .com domains are 33% more memorable, and when people try to remember a URL, they’re 3.8 times more likely to assume it ends in .com.

It’s also important to keep in mind that other factors determine whether a site is credible. For example, a site using HTTPS means it has active SSL encryption, which is more secure for keeping users and their data safe.

Traffic

If you’re looking specifically for branding and discoverability, .com is the best choice. If you want your potential customers to find you, .com is the most natural extension for your visitors to type in. That’s why we use the .com domain extension here at WPBeginner and for our other products.

48% of websites use .com versus only 5% for .org. Consumers view .com as the de facto default extension. Thus, you’re more likely to get people to remember a .com domain, which can increase direct traffic.

Of course, .org domains will likely rank higher for nonprofit-related keywords.

However, some mobile devices include a .com button on their keyboards, which makes them a more mobile-friendly option as well. Users can press and hold the .com button for other extensions like .org to appear.

When Should You Use a .org Extension?

While everyone can register a .org extension, it may not be the best choice for everyone. Here are a few examples of when using .org is the best choice:

• Charity, community, and nonprofit organizations: .org domains have historically been linked to nonprofit and humanitarian causes. Internet users have come to associate .org domains with charities and nonprofits. This extension can enhance the credibility of an organization as it signals a commitment to serve others.
• Open-source websites: While open-source software companies aren’t generally seen as nonprofits, they commonly use .org extensions. They do so to tell the public their software or user network is available for free. WordPress.org is an example of this.
• Informational websites: .org websites are known for providing valuable, unbiased information that helps people learn about important issues.

When Should You Use a .com Extension?

The best domain extension mainly depends on the type of website you plan to create. Here’s a quick look at when to use .com:

• Business websites: .com has a wide general appeal and is commonly used for commercial purposes making it the appropriate choice for just about any for-profit business. This works for just about any type of business and includes companies of all sizes, including small businesses and startups.
• Ecommerce stores: .com is widely used and trusted, which can instill confidence in shoppers. For example, if given the choice, a user is more likely to purchase from an online store that uses .com than a .xyz or .biz.
• Blogs and Personal Brands: .com is simply easy to remember and better for branding, helping you reach a broader audience.

Which Extension is Better

When running a small business, .com will do the trick. The extension generally performs better for SEO and helps to boost your online presence more than other domain alternatives.

It’s also seen as the default domain extension and is the go-to choice for online businesses, personal websites, publications, and blogs.

The only downside to .com is availability. With billions of websites on the internet, your desired URL may not be available in .com.

In that case, you have to weigh your options. Is altering your brand name or adding additional words to get the .com domain extension worth it?

For some, they rather keep their original name or idea and choose .org instead. Some even go for .net as an alternative.

With that in mind, we recommend using domain name generators or a site like Nameboy to help you find the right URL for your business. Since having a .com can affect your audience’s perception of your brand and traffic, it’s a good idea to find a .com URL that works for you. 

Of course, there are also other TLD alternatives like .edu, .biz, .gov, and .net. If you’re creating multilingual websites or region-specific websites, make sure to use the right country code, such as .co.uk and .ca.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, but .com is best for most new website owners.

How to Use .org or .com Domain Extensions

Once you’ve decided which extension you’d like to use, it’s time to buy your domain and create your website.

1. Pick a Domain Registrar

You can purchase your domain at a few different places, including:

• Domain name registrar: Some companies like Domain.com or Namecheap provide domain registration as their primary service. The best registrars offer low pricing discounts for multi-year registrations and free WHOIS protection (to hide your personal information from domain registries).
• Web hosting service: Many hosting services will also register domain names. Sometimes, they’ll give you a great deal for choosing to bundle one with your hosting plan. For example, BlueHost offers a free domain for your first year when you choose to use their hosting services.

• Website builder: Some website builders like Squarespace let you buy a domain name, host it, and build your site all in one place.

2. Register a Domain Name

Once you’ve chosen a registrar, you can register a domain name.

Use their search tool to find and purchase the perfect domain that aligns with your business.

In this process, you’ll also have to set up your account and provide a form of payment.

3. Choose a Web Host and CMS 

Now that you have your domain name, it’s time to connect it to a website. First, you must rent server space from a web hosting provider. For those using WordPress, make sure to get managed WordPress hosting, which you can get from Bluehost.

While there’s a lot that goes into making a website, using a content management (CMS) such as WordPress can make the process much easier.

And if you already have a website but once you change your domain name, check out our guide on how to easily move WordPress to a new domain.

We hope this article helped you learn the difference between .org and .com domain name extensions. You may also want to read our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting or how to get a free domain name.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post .Org vs .Com: Which is the Better Domain Extension? first appeared on WPBeginner.