Whether your business is mainly online or offline, reaching your customers through online marketing channels is always helpful. One of the best ways to acquire traffic to your website is through content marketing, of which blogging is an adequate component.
When you use a blog as a traffic and lead-generation channel, you can educate potential clients and establish an online presence as an authority.
Your website builder might already have a content management system (CMS) built in, but this is not true for all platforms. For example, take Google Sites. You can use Google Sites for affiliate marketing and even selling things online, but not for blogging!
Shopify, Clickfunnels, Klaviyo, and Canva are examples of online marketing suites that lack blogging capabilities or offer only limited blogging facilities.
So, how would you add a blog to your website when your website management platform doesn’t offer a blogging facility?
Well, you can add a blog widget!
This article lists several blog widgets and add-ons for linking with your existing landing pages, stores, and websites.
Best practices when integrating a blog widget with your website
- Customize your widget — Most widget providers listed below offer many customization options, including a theme editor, blog layout choices, and a rich-text editor. First, make sure the blog widget blends with your current website theme by using the same color palette, fonts, sizes, and business logos. Secondly, ensure the blog content is accurate enough before publishing. Thirdly, make the content on your blog widget more accessible through clearer navigation, a search bar, and internal links. (Pro tip: Adding internal links helps search engines crawl inner pages!)
- Make your blog accessible to everybody — You want to make it easier for readers to find your blog content. Embed your blog widget on a standalone page (i.e., static page) and name it blog (or something that resonates with the blog). Then, add a link to the [blog] page on your homepage, navigation bar, and other related pages.
- Maintain your blog — create a content schedule and drip-feed content so the blog is always fresh. Update older content periodically.
- Convert blog visitors into leads and sales — Use promotions via notification bars and banners, and collect leads via pop-up widgets and other lead-generation forms. Furthermore, you can use social share buttons to help users share articles in their circles to drive traffic to your blog.
- Remember, it’s not a full-fledged blogging platform. It’s always best to remember that you cannot expect to receive all the features you would from a blogging platform like WordPress, Blogger, Wix, or even Brizy in an embeddable blog widget.
Top Blog Widgets and Extensions to Use Today
Elfsight’s Blog Widget
Elfsight’s Blog Widget is one of the best solutions for adding a customized blog widget to any website. Its many features, including AI-powered post generation, allow anyone to create an engaging blog widget.
Elfsight is an HTML widget provider with 90+ apps, such as photo galleries, cookie consent bars, and social feed widgets. As a website owner, you can also use those widgets in your marketing campaigns to reach your goals.
Features
- A true blog widget builder: Elfsight’s Blog Widget app comes with unlimited blog posts and post authors.
- Artificial intelligence for easier blogging: The AI-based system allows you to generate complete blog posts using just a topic or provide additional structure and details for a more tailored output. The AI also creates accompanying images.
- Layouts and postcard styles: The widget builder supports a grid and list layout, as well as 3 postcard styles, making it easy to create a unique-looking blog for every occasion.
- Block-based content editor: No need to have HTML or coding skills to create a blog widget!
- Block types: Eleven block types are currently available, including heading blocks, bullet and numbered list blocks, quotes, images, YouTube, and dividers. However, there is no block to add custom HTML, which is a downside, especially since it limits functionality, such as embedding file viewers (e.g., displaying user manuals in PDF and spreadsheets) and adding an audio player.
- Change blog post details: You can easily edit the publish date, update content, assign a new author, add a featured image, and customize the permalink or URL slug.
- Customization options: Show and hide card elements on the index screen, change colors and fonts, and customize the header. Furthermore, there are custom JavaScript and CSS editors where you can add your scripts and styles.
How to use Elfsight to create a blog widget
Use the widget builder below to create a widget from this page. Select a template, click on the “Continue with this template” button, add author details and your blog entries, and customize it. Once you’re done (you don’t need to make it perfect, as you can customize it later), click on “Add to Website” to finalize the process.
Copy the HTML code for the blog widget from your dashboard. Paste it into your website’s HTML editor where you want to display it. I recommend installing the blog widget on a static page of your website and naming it ‘blog.’
Pricing
Elfsight’s Blog Widget is free to use but has limitations. To unlock features and increase limits, you must upgrade to a paid plan.
Click here to try Elfsight’s Blog Widget.
Fouita’s Mini Blog
Fouita’s Mini Blog widget lets you create a simple blog. Although it is not as robust as Elfsight’s, you can still create a blog widget that features a blog post.
Features:
- Embedded or pop-up showcase: You can use the blog widget as an inline or pop-up.
- Templates: Use one of the available diverse template collections to create your blog instantly.
- Customization controls: Although the available customization options are limited compared to Elfsight’s Blog Widget, Fouita’s visual editor, layout controllers, and custom CSS editor allow you to change the appearance of your widget.
Pricing
Fouita is free to use with limitations. You can adjust your requirements and make a flexible plan.
Click here to try Fouita’s Mini Blog.
Bloggle
Bloggle.App is one of those dedicated solutions that allows you to create a stunning blog, especially for Shopify, without coding. It’s like having a full-fledged CMS at your fingertips to create an embeddable blog for your website, online store, or online portal!
Bloggle offers extensive customization for blog layouts, including templates, blocks, and design elements. You can also create your own blog templates (with its drag-and-drop visual builder), import existing blogs (although it doesn’t offer migration), tag blog posts, and do much more.
Features:
- Dedicated blogging platform: Bloggle.app is more than a mere blog widget. It’s a feature-rich platform for creating stunning, powerful blogs across any industry.
- Blogging with freedom: Unlimited number of blog entries per month, unlimited authors, no-code easy-to-use editor, article cloning, import articles, scheduling, and more, to unnoticed features to help you blog with freedom.
- Integrations: Bloggle is fully integrated with Shopify’s native features. If you decide to uninstall the Bloggle app from your Shopify store, you will keep all your content.
- Templates: Choose from dozens of premade designs and customize them to make them unique and appealing to your readers. Three different hero layouts personalize your blog category page; six different article layouts display your articles within categories; search bar tools, a navigation bar, and tagging tools are also available.
- Performance tools and metrics: Bloggle provides live SEO and UX (User Experience) scoring, enabling you to improve blog content for higher search engine rankings. Moreover, all images are lazy-loaded and served from the Shopify CDN to ensure a smooth experience for end-users.
Pricing
Bloggle is a dedicated blogging app for Shopify. Its prices start at 19 per month.
DropInBlog
DropInBlog is a cloud-based blogging platform like Bloggle that lets you embed a fully functional blog into your existing website by pasting a couple of lines of code or using a JSON API, depending on your preference.
Features:
- Integrations: There is a dedicated Shopify app. You can also choose your blog embed method: HTML Embed or JSON API.
- Inherits your website design: DropinBlog automatically matches your blog’s design with your website’s existing CSS, ensuring a cohesive look and feel without extra work.
- Blog Voice AI: Blog Voice AI is a text-to-speech audio player that uses artificial intelligence to give visitors a new way to experience content. The podcast-like player features 20+ voice options.
- SEO Analyzer: DropInBlog provides real-time SEO scores and suggestions as you write, ensuring your content is optimized for search engines. It also generates a sitemap for blog posts, making it easier for search engines to find content.
- Blogging tools: YouTube/Vimeo video embeds, social sharing buttons, Google Analytics Integration, static posts, Schema for Structured Data, and Disqus or Facebook Comments.
- Teams: Add collaborators such as content writers and managers, and assign role-based access.
Pricing
DropInBlog’s pricing plans start from $49 per month.
Blogstraps
BlogStraps is a simple blog builder. With it, you can create a simple blog and embed it into your website with HTML integration via copy-and-paste, SSR, and JSON API.
Features
- Unlimited posts, content categories, and authors
- Subdirectory hosting (ex: https://example.com/blog)
- Separate routing mode (ex: https://example.com/blog/slug-url) – Better SEO solution.
- Notion-like editor, sitemap, and custom CSS editor.
See a live embedded blog over here.
Pricing
Blogstraps is free, but the free plan limits you to one blog/domain. Paid plans start at $25/mo.
What is the best platform to create an embeddable blog for your website?
It depends on your requirements and the current tools you’re using.
For instance, if you need more than just a blog builder, such as a countdown timer, a pricing table creator, and a before-and-after image slider, Elfsight would be a great solution to consider.
Why?
Elfsight is a platform that lets you create various HTML widgets for your marketing campaigns, such as those listed above. The Blog widget is just one of many it offers. The [blog] widget can be installed on any website builder, regardless of platform, by simply copying and pasting the HTML code.
However, the downside is that it’s not a full-fledged blog widget maker with features like SEO metrics, sitemap generators, and import/export blog posts. If you’re looking for a powerful blog builder for your Shopify store, Bloggle is a good option to consider.
Overall, I recommend checking out platforms, seeing what they offer, and trying them out. Remember, some don’t provide blog imports, so take time to explore them before making an important decision.
Conclusion
For various reasons, the platform you’re using to create a blog, store, or forum might not offer a content management system, also known as blogging functionality. Even though maintaining a blog takes time, the benefits of a blog for a business outweigh those of a website/store/forum without one.
In this article, you explored a list of several platforms that you can use to create a blog widget. Try them out and see which one works best for you.
Also, check out these articles related to blogging & SEO: