I have written some couple of comparisons between these two most popular Blogging platforms or should I called them Blogging Software Applications. In those comparisons, I have tried to pair them side by side but these time, I am going to isolate WordPress and treat it as the best. 

This article is based on fact and my personal experience with both platforms, and I hope it will be of help to those who are at the cross road of decision making to know why they should go for anyone of these two blogging platforms.

Blogging is a serious business and every professional blogger wants to have his blog on the best possible platform. Well, the truth of the matter is that professional bloggers don’t blog on Blogger.com and with good reasons. These reasons are what we want to explore in this article to help you make informed decision towards your blog set up or migration

As some of you may know, I recently migrated WealthResult.com from Blogger to WordPress script which gives me first hand experience of what I am trying to talk about. Though this isn’t my first time on WordPress but a lot have changed between 2007 and now, and these changes are among the things that placed WordPress shoulder high above other blogging platform.

I think the earlier you migrate to WordPress the better it is for your blogging business. Delayed migration could cause you serious hardship and serious hard work. So, it is my humble wish that this article will motivate you to take that important step now. But before you talk of migration or using WordPress as a fresher you need to understand exactly why you have to. Below are some of the obvious reasons every serious blogger must be on WordPress and not Blogger.com

Ownership – You don’t own a Blog you build on Blogger.com

It doesn’t matter how big your blog is, you are not the owner of that blog as long as it is on Blogger.com. People may argue that the content you upload on Blogger.com is your content. As a matter of fact, Google do make it clear that such content is yours. Under the fifth sub heading in Google’s Terms of use, you will see the below statement made clearly.

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

However, that is just for the content alone – such as blog post, photographic images, videos, and other multimedia contents you uploaded to your Blogger.com blog. How about the blog itself? You simply do not own that blog, that is why your use of the property is governed by Google’s terms of use in which you must abide to at all time if you hope to continue using it. Take a look at some actions Google may take against your blog if you violate any of their terms of use:

If we find that a blog does violate our content policies, we take one or more of the following actions based on the severity of the violation:

• Put the blog behind a ‘mature content’ interstitial
• Put the blog behind an interstitial where only the blog author can access the content
• Delete the offending content, blog post or blog
• Disable the author’s access to his/her Blogger account
• Disable the author’s access to his/her Google account
• Report the user to law enforcement

Does it not give you any concern in any way that the blog you are spending your whole life building has a ‘Delete button’ somewhere under another man or woman’s control, to be used any time he or she deemed it right according to his own judgement? Except you are not serious at what you are doing as a blogger, that’s the only when you can just dismiss that and put your blog in subjection to terms of use you may not know the extent it can affects your blog.

Some may argue further that they aren’t going to violate Google terms of use therefore no reason to worry over that. Well, no one wants to violate any terms and condition, everyone of use are law abiding but remember that your blog can be put behind bar base on mere claim until you are able to make counter claim and provide enough evidence.

Talking about “violation of terms of use” if you are able to provide me with a blog that is at least two years old on Blogger.com that doesn’t have one or more violation of the said terms of use, I will give you $100. That’s how bad it is, you are existing solely at the mercy of Google. But that is not the case with WordPress.

With WordPress script, you own 100% of your content as well as your site – your Blog and it’s entire content are 100% your property and nothing short of that. WordPress is open source script founded by Matt Mullenweg and maintained by worldwide dedicated and volunteer experts. The moment you download and upload the script on your servers, it becomes 100% yours and you are responsible to the use of it from that moment henceforth. You build your own site based on this script and own it and the content you create – I think that’s how every professional blogger would like to operate.

SEO – WordPress can be better Optimized for Search Engine

I have heard many people argue that Blogspot sites get indexed faster on Goggle’s search engine. My response to that is ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and I will explain why I choose double answers. If your blog is using the Blogspot sub domain (Yourname.blogspot.com), your blog will get indexed faster than a new WordPress.org script user whose domain is new and registered for only one year. The reason is because Google algorithms considers domain age in their indexation. When your new blog name is Yourname.blopspot.com, it will inherit Blogspot domain age which is more than 11years old, prompting Google to index it faster than a top level domain that is new and registered for only one year, it doesn’t matter if the site is on Blogger or WordPress.

On the other hand, if my site is new on WordPress and I registered the domain for 5-10 years, there is no evidence that blospot base blog will get indexed faster than mine. On the contrary, my site may get faster index because I am more a serious webmaster in the eyes of Google than the guy with blogspot sub domain.

At the end, the real SEO is much more than the early day index – It goes beyond the scope of any amateur imagination and in this kind of search engine game, Blogger is no competitor with WordPress SEO optimized site in ongoing bases. WordPress has countless SEO plugins that are so comprehensive and powerful that they can do all things SEO. These plugins has the ability to ping all the search engines the moment you publish new post, inviting them straight to your site anytime there is new content on your blog. Blogger doesn’t have anything like that!

Ability – You Can do many things with WordPress

Title: Custom title field gives you the ability to choose different Title for blog post and different title for search engine display. This is a vital search engine optimization technique. Especially important when you desires long title for your blog post but don’t want it truncated by search engine in search results, you can choose the long one for site display and the shorter one for search engine. Blogger.com doesn’t have anything like that too.

Images: The featured images enable you to choose any image on your blog post to display as your post’s thumbnail, it doesn’t matter the position of the image on your blog post. You can even choose image that is not on the post as the featured image and no one will see it on your post, only shown as thumbnail. This gives you verities of option to manipulate things on your blog as you wish. Blogger have nothing near to that. The first image is what shows as thumbnail on blogger whether you like it that way or not, you can’t change that.

Media Library: Means all the images and videos you ever uploaded on your blog are there in the library to be used anytime you want it at your convenience. Anytime you want pictures, you have option to choose from the library or upload new one. Blogger doesn’t have such – instead, all your images are stored in Google Picasa web album and I am sure most of you doesn’t know where Picasa is.

Plugins: Whatever feature WordPress doesn’t have by default is available as plugin. These plugins makes it possible to turn WordPress site into anything imaginable, offering you limitless possibilities.

One very popular feature of WordPress is its rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its abilities beyond the core installation. WordPress has a database of over 24,000 plugins, each of which offer custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their site to their specific needs. – Wikipedia

All plugins are aggressively developed and maintained in an ongoing bases with many more new ones coming up. With all these, why wouldn’t it be pure fun blogging on WordPress?

Investors – No serious Investor will invest or buy a Blogger Blog

Every professional Blogger is building a business, a business you hope that one day investors could come in with lots of cash to invest in your business and further grow it higher. Sorry to disappoint you – no investor will come in if you are building on Blogspot. When we say that Blogger.com is for amateurs, people tends to criticize the comment but that’s how is it.

Blogger.com blog is almost impossible to sell due to Google’s TOS though people say it can be sold through some backdoor like processes. If at all it’s salable, it can never bring in big bulk. The big question becomes; why build a business you can’t sell in future??? Remember that big blogs are sold for millions of dollars – it make no business sense building yours if it can’t be sold in future should you wish to.

Reasons Some Choose  Blogspot

1. Some choose Blogger.com because they believe it is more secured since it is a Google’s company, that is logical and true. But would you like to keep squatting with a friend unable to acquire your own home because you are afraid of maintaining a home? Would you choose to stay in Police station perpetually because you are afraid of crime out there? Doing any of these will amount to high level of irresponsibility. The earlier you starts taking responsibilities, the better human-being you become, and more developed you’ll gonna be.

2. Others choose to stay with Blogger because it’s free to use. They reason that if they use blogger, they will be able to cut cost while enjoying profit. Another good logic! Isn’t it? Only that free foods doesn’t taste great all the times! There is this happiness and satisfaction that comes with taking responsibilities and paying bills, you will miss out in that feeling if you keep taking free stuffs and not creating yours.

3. Another group believes Blogger is simple to use. The truth is that both are simple to use! I don’t see Blogger holding any advantage over WordPress on that. Just the same way Blogger dashboard seems a little bit confusing the first day you login to it – so is WordPress. By the time you spend some couple of days doing it, you will get use to it.

Some of the Finest Websites on the Internet are on WordPress

Over 60million websites (some of which represent the best in their industry) can’t just be in the wrong place at the same time. Mashable, CNN, and TechCrunch are some of the best websites on WordPress either in part or in full. WordPress controls 42% of the entire worlds blogs while Blogger just make do with 2% out of which there are just few notable blogs.

I am sure you now have enough reasons to upgrade to WordPress, don’t you? I want to hear from you – what do you think about these facts? Make your comments below and lets take the conversation further.

Update: After writing this article, I discovered some wonderful secrets that made me had rethink. Blogger has improved tremendously to the point I considered it better than WordPress. Full article on that soon!