GrooveBlog Review – Start A Blog For Free

GrooveMail Features

GrooveBlog was released in February 2021 and is a great alternative to WordPress, Wix or Squarespace.

Here’s a list of the GrooveBlog’s best features and a description of each.

1. Clean Blogging Theme

I’ll be honest here, GrooveBlog has only ONE theme but it’s clean and simple.

Yes, WordPress has loads of themes and you can customize your blog’s design to your heart’s content.

But here’s the catch, you end up spending so much time trying to make everything look good without doing the thing that matters the most….

Writing content.

Quality content that brings in traffic to your website.

Having said that by choosing beautiful images as feature post images, you can make your blog look clean and beautiful.

Don’t worry, GrooveBlog will be adding more themes in the future.

2. Easy Blog Post Creation

Creating a blog post in GrooveBlog is easy.

Just click on “New Post” button and it will load a blog post editor just like WordPress.

3. On Page SEO

GrooveBlog will allow you to perform all your on-page SEO needs.

Here are some of the On-page optimisation you can perform on GroovePages:

• Site name – available in search settings
• Favicon – add an icon to your blog
• Page Meta title – in blog post settings
• Page URL – controlled in post tags
• Meta keywords – add target keywords to blog post
• Meta description – add the description for blog posts
• Open Graph – control the title and description to share on social platforms
• H1, H2, H3 headings are available by highlighting a text and select the heading.
• Images optimization – at the moment there are no “alt tags” available for images

4. Free Hosting

GrooveBlog comes with free hosting and that will save you around $220 per year.

5. Custom Domain & SSL

You can connect your custom domain under settings.

• Click on the domains tab
• Select “Publish to root domain”
• Choose your domain from the drop down
• Click save

Once you publish your custom domain, SSL certificate is automatically installed.

6. Embed Ads, AdSense or MediaVine

If you like to monetize your blog with ads from Google Adsense or MediaVine, there is an option to add your code in GrooveBlog.

7. Google Analytics & Tracking Pixels

To add your Google Analytics or any Facebook ad pixels, you will also find this in settings.

Locate the “Tracking & Pixels” tab and add the Global site tag provided by Google Analytics in the head section of your website.

8. Open Graph

You can customize your open graph title, description and image in the “settings” of GrooveBlog.

Or at the post level for further customization.

9. Mobile Friendly

Last but not least, Grooveblog has a responsive design and mobile friendly.

This is automatically applied, no configurations required.

GrooveBlog Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Clean and user friendly interface
• Free lifetime hosting
• Custom domain name for branding
• Fast web page loading speeds
• Embed ad tracking for monetization
• Embed Google analytics and Facebook ad pixels
• Can disable side bar widgets
• Can rank keywords on Google
• Create Unlimited GrooveBlog on the lifetime plan
• More SEO features being added over the coming months.

Cons:

• Only one blog theme
• No pages template
• No sitemap or RSS feeds
• No plugins (although this can be a pro as too many plugins will slow down your blog)

GrooveBlog Vs WordPress

WordPress has been around since 2003 and is much more mature than GrooveBlog.

This gives it a competitive edge, more time to develop the platform and user interface.

One of the significant differences between GrooveBlog vs WordPress is that you don’t have to purchase hosting and install the WordPress application if you want to connect to your own custom domain.

Which means you save on yearly hosting fees as one GrooveBlog is included in your free account.

Another reason to like GrooveBlog is that it loads fairly fast with a page speed of 260 milli seconds according to Pingdom.

That’s less than 350 milliseconds (that’s less than 1 second)!

When you’re on WordPress, shared hosting may give you a slower page speed as people tend to go with the lowest priced hosting plans.

With GrooveBlog, hosting is provided for you free of charge.

However if you’re intending to drive organic search traffic through SEO and content marketing, GrooveBlog may lack in this area.

If we compare SEO Features, WordPress would be a better choice as there are plugins available that help with the SEO side and flexibility in planning our your site architecture.

However, GrooveBlog is evolving to add the features that you see within WordPress in the near future.

GrooveBlog Use Cases

Personally, I see GrooveBlog as a great way to syndicate your existing content especially when you have an authority website on WordPress and want to build web 2.0 backlinks.

I would use GrooveBlog and GroovePages to start fresh on new smaller niche sites and keep using WordPress for older established websites.

If you’re not a writer and building your audience on a social platforms like Youtube and Facebook, GrooveBlog is a great way to update your audience in text version.

GrooveBlog Tutorial & Demo

Learning how to use GrooveBlog is simple and not complicated at all.

When you create a new GrooveBlog, it comes with demo content installation and all you need to do is make a few edits to customize it.

Watch the video below to see my GrooveBlog tutorial setup and first impressions.