Blogging is a lot of fun and it can be very rewarding! Whether you are blogging for fun or for income, it is an adventure. I like to think of it like a roller coaster, it has it’s ups and it’s downs.

I love what I do so much that I am sharing my tips and blogging tools with you, but I do need you to know that it won’t be all roses. You will have some major wins, some minor wins, some possible setbacks and maybe even some tears.

Now that we know that there is no magic wand for instant success, I want to share with you our favorite blogging tools.

Being I am a food blogger, some of these tools are for food bloggers but I will specify which ones are. Most of these are recommended for any niche.

I am an affiliate of many of these resources, which means I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase through one of our links. I stand behind the recommendations here as I do use and love them myself! Please see our disclaimer for more information.

Legal

Amira’s legal templates are the perfect way to keep your blog legal. She is a business lawyer who is also a successful blogger. Her templates are amazing and you can have your site legal in minutes for a fraction of the cost of hiring a lawyer to draft the documents.

We have the VIP package, it is definitely worth the money! But just to be bare minimum legal you need to have a privacy policy and disclaimer. She has different sized packages based on your business needs or even individual templates.

Hosting

I have one host I highly recommend because I use them for a couple of my sites – Bigscoots. I have the managed plan, but they do have a starter plan for shared as well that is cheaper. You can grow with them as your blog grows!

Bigcoots is fast and their support responds very quickly to any ticket you submit. I absolutely love them.

Theme

Your theme selection is incredibly important, you do not want an unsupported theme or a theme that will slow you down. You do not need a super fancy theme tho either, you want a responsive theme with support that is constantly updating to keep up with best practices.

We have the Feast plugin (will also be listed in plugins) and are running Foodie Pro on our food blog The Kitchen and a Latte. Please note that the Feast themes and plugins are best for food blogs but can be used with other niches.

With the plugin (which is why it is listed under theme also) you get access to all 5 of their themes, amazing support and updates pushed through the plugin. Instead of constantly updating your theme, you will update the plugin and activate anything you want to change.

They are seriously an amazing blogging tool! They keep up with all the best practices to give us an amazing theme for our food blogs.

Kadence – Fast and built for any blog! They have so much you can customize, I love all that you can do. We have Kadence on this blog with a child theme from Restored 316.

Restored 316 themes – Lauren has put a lot into the themes she has created. They are built with blocks so you can customize it anyway you choose and have an amazing site! They are a child theme for Kadence and they really give you some amazing flexibility. We have the Create them on this blog.

Keyword research

You either love it or hate it, but keyword research is very important if you want to show up in search results! There are several tools that are great for this, some are free and some are paid.

Keysearch – They are great for being $17 a month. I started out with them and they were definitely worth the monthly fee. You can track keywords, search for keywords and questions you would like to add to your post to answer for your readers. I started on Keysearch and upgraded to Semrush.

Semrush – The one I use every single day and absolutely love! They are a bit more expensive but you can really get a lot of information. You can usually start a free trial with them to see if you like it or not.

Ahrefs – I have not personally used this one but have heard a lot of great things about them. I rarely recommend products without physically trying them, but Ahrefs is definitely a great tool. Like Semrush, they are a bit more expensive monthly but with a lot more information. I do know several people who use this one everyday.

Google – Seriously, Google can be a great resource for research! You can find questions that might need answering by typing in your search term. A list of “people also ask” comes up, these are important questions to answer!

Google Search Console (often referred to as GSC) – You do have to claim ownership (or at least that you have the right to) your site to use GSC. It gives a lot of valuable information like what your overall ranking is, what posts are top, what keywords each post ranks for and much more.

Cooking with Keywords (for food bloggers) – This is an amazing course to help food bloggers find the best keywords for their posts! It is not a research blogging tool, but a great course that teaches you how to research properly for food blogging. Tho you can use it for any blog, food bloggers will benefit most from this course. It is designed specifically for food blogs.

Organization

Organization is important in any business! While I don’t pay for any of my organization tools, they are great to have and a big help. Yes that is right, you can use free tools to organize your business.

Airtable – You can sign up for free and honestly, I only use the free version here because they give me plenty of tools in it. You can organize stuff in tables based on what needs to be done, checking if off when it is done and so much more! I use it to keep track of posts to be researched, posts to be redone and anything I want to remember about posts.

Google calender – Yes the best free calender out there! You do need to have a Google account to use it, but it is great blogging tool to have. I love that I can schedule my zoom meetings, webinars and everything in it. I get notifications on my phone if I have the alarm set so I don’t lose track of time. Quite often I plan my whole day out and my phone tells me when it is time to change tasks (if applicable.)

Our Etsy shop – we recently started an Etsy shop where we will be selling various printables and templates for your business. We have calendars, planners and some Canva templates as well!

Soon we will have a shop on our blog too.

Backdrops

For food bloggers or anybody taking a lot of photos for their blog.

V-Flat duo boards are our absolute favorite backdrops, besides making our DIY food photography backdrops. They are easy to cleanup and look amazing in photos.

V-Flat offers a big selection for all photography from professionals taking pictures of models to backdrops for food photography. The duo boards are the ones you would want for food.

Bessie Bakes is our other favorite. She has created some amazing and real looking backdrops that are close in price to V-Flat but a little bit cheaper. The colors are amazing and the designs are perfect adding a special touch to your photos!

There are many more but I have not tried others so I cannot recommend any others. I will gladly add more to the list after testing them out.

Plugins

I try to keep my plugins to a minimum. The more plugins you have, the more conflicts you may have to sort through. You may have more or less plugins then we have depending on your site, but these are some that we love and recommend!

A cookie consent for CCPA and GDPR – there are actually a few great ones here. One that I love is Cookie Notice and Compliance. If you have less then 1000 views a month, you can use the free version. The other one that is great is CookieBot. Cookiebot is not a free plugin, but it is a cheap and affordable way to be compliant.

WP Recipe Maker (food bloggers or anybody looking to add recipes) – This is my favorite plugin for recipes! They are always on top of everything new in our changing online world and keep us up to date with best practices. They offer a free version all the way up to elite. We have elite for the features, but many times the pro or premium is perfect for food bloggers. This depends on the features you want or need.

Feast – As mentioned above under themes. This plugin and theme combo is amazing!

Social sharing – There are many different social sharing plugins and I am sure that many of them are great. Our experience has been with 2 different plugins and they are both great. Grow Social by Mediavine is a cheap and easy to use social sharing plugin. It was our favorite before switching over to Snap Social. Snap Social has a couple different tiers for their subscriptions. There is a lot more features available from Snap Social then Grow, at least at the time of writing this page.

Yoast – Our favorite SEO plugin! I have heard of others using various plugins for SEO, but for us Yoast is the best blogging tool. They have a free version that works great for many blogs (we have the free version on a couple blogs) and then a premium version as well that we have on a couple blogs as well. Free or paid, which is better? It really depends on what you need with your site. Many people can use the free version.

Email Marketing

A very important part of your business! You need to be in your reader’s inbox and provide them with valuable content!

Convertkit – You can start completely free. They have different levels based on the amount of subscribers you have and if you are just starting out, their free plan is amazing to get you started! We use Convertkit and absolutely love them.

I do not have any good experience with other email marketing companies at this time. As much as I like to offer choices, I do not want to give you advice that may not be best.

This page will be updated regularly as we add new things. Please note that we only add things that we have tried so we keep the list and choices short. These are not your only options for blogging tools, but they are ones we love!