The 5 Best Ways to Find Good Blogs and How They Suck!
Please don't take the title the wrong way. We think that most of these sites are great at what they were intended to do, but shall we say, fall a little short, in there ability to help us find good blogs with minimal effort.
It was the short comings of these sites that lead us to our “There’s got be a better way!” moment of shear frustration. Then on to build what we hope will be a better way to find good blogs.
To be clear, it is possible to find good blogs with these sites. We have. It's just not easy, or at least it's not as easy or enjoyable as we think finding good blogs should be.
It comes down to the right tool for the right job. If the job is to find, enjoy and keep up to date on good blogs then conventional ways of finding blogs fall short. In particular we were surprised at how poorly blog centric site did at providing a good user experience.
1. Search Engines
We all use search engines, and they are wonderful for answering specific questions. We have used them dozens of times in building this site and we made way more progress with them, than we would have without them.
Here is what search engines don't do that we think a blog discovery platform should offer.
- Provide "browse by topic" with a much better presentation of the postings.
- Remember your search and show you the latest postings.
- Notify you in app or by email of new posts on blogs you follow.
- Provide user feedback including likes, views and subscriptions so readers can gauge the quality of the blogs.
2. Directories
Another potential way to find good blogs is through blog directories. This concept is almost as old as the original blogs. Most directories are not designed for the reader, but were started essentially to buy and sell links and advertising. Many, if not most, of these directories have not been significantly updated since they were launched. The few directories that have a modern visual appeal still had issues what we consider too much “friction” including:
- Having to go to a directory page (ie the home page was very “register you blog here” centric)
- One directory required readers to sign up, before you could click through to the blog
Aside: Using Google’s auto-complete feature when typing “best blog directories” did not show it as an option, this implies nobody ever searches for blog directories. After typing the entire phrase we looked at the #1 ranked result: 10 BLOG DIRECTORIES ACTUALLY WORTH YOUR TIME Of the first 4, one was no longer on-line, one was a “telephone style” directory, one required sign up before allowing click through, and the one and only one that looked reader friendly was mostly paid listings (of the first 20 blog posts 16 were paid placements), and some of the renaming 4 were links to other pages on the site that looked like duplicate content and launched additional tabs every time I touched the vertical scroll bar. I have tried looking for blogs on social media, but that was a very unsatisfactory experience. While you can find bloggers and posts of blog posting it very hit and miss. It certainly takes considerable time to even understand the quality of the many blog groups. Even if you found a blog group that you liked it would have a very small fraction of all blogs. This is a next level island/silo issue.
3. Content Sites
Another avenue for connecting with blogs is via content sites (like YouTube) and content indexing sites (like Pinterest). While these are great sites, may bloggers are not YouTube stars, and many blogs are not visual or design centric. This leaves many blogs undiscovered by many potential readers.
4. Blog Hosting Sites
Finally there are multi-blog sites like wordpress blogspot and medium. This category shares a common problem they are islands of blogs. Here is what searching them was like. WordPress – Could not find a search capability, and index or directory by browsing the WordPress world. Googling led to and a couple of WordPress support posts that led to a sign in wall. With more Googling we eventually found a public search page and the first thing to pop up was a WordPress advert for a better search at $10.00 per month. The free search box gave quality results, but with a very poor layout. BlogSpot/Blogger (BlogSpot reroutes to Blogger) looks like something out of a time capsule. The first thing we noticed was the most recent posting is 2 years old, the next one 3 years old, next 4 years old, next 5. So they were in a steady state of posting once a year and now, maybe not at all. No search, or index or directory anywhere in site. Medium has an obvious and good search capability. Although they offer a free trial, ultimately they have a pay wall. Best case you can only find blogs they host. You can only discover blogs that are hosted on the respective sites. Bloggers know that many of the best blogs are not on these multi-blog domains, but have their own domain. It is a thought that has brought us to build this site and we hope that you agree – “There has to be a better way to find good blogs”. If you already agree you can skip the “problems” and go straight to Our Solution.
5. Social Media Sites
While these sites would in theory be a great place to find blogs, there is a big gap between theory and practice. First lets address hosting blogs on these platform. Again possible in theory, not done very much in practice.