If you love to blog and do not have the financial capital to start with, then your best solution would be to use a free blogging service. But which one should you choose? This article examines some of the criteria for choosing a free blogging service, and makes a recommendation based on how the most popular ones measure up.
Bear in mind that if you start a blog on the Internet, the professional way would be to buy your own domain and a hosting space that costs some money. If you cannot afford this at the beginning, blogging service providers will provide a sub-domain URL for your blog for free (e.g thisisyourblog.blogspot.com if you are using Google Blogger service.)
Of course, the hosting space is free, as your content will be stored on their own servers, so you do not need to pay anything. This article will attempt to review the top blogging service providers on the Internet for this year. Selecting an appropriate blogging service is critical; you will need to choose one before you can begin blogging online.
This review will be very helpful to those beginning bloggers needing to earn money from blogging as well as looking for the most efficient blog platform in terms of search engine optimization and blog page design. This is also helpful for those beginning bloggers that are planning to migrate to a paid hosting solution in the future using their own domain, but would like to start blogging using free services for now.
This review does not include paid blogging services like Typepad and Squarespace.
Criteria for selecting the best free blogging service
There is more to selecting a blogging service than just registering, selecting your favorite theme and then starting to write a blog post. Most beginning bloggers fail to realize some of the important criteria to consider when selecting a proper blogging service, which are as follows (by order of importance):
Ability to edit the blog template HTML source code - This is very important. Without this feature, you cannot monetize your blog, as you cannot add AdSense code and other blog monetization methods. In addition, the ability to edit the blogging service's source code will provide you with more search engine optimization opportunities than you would have with those that disallow template source code editing.
Ability to transfer your blog's link juice to your new domain - This is also very important, because a time will come when you decide to transfer your content to your new domain. This domain will be hosted some place other than with your free blog service provider. There are lots of ways to do this, either by redirection (server side) or link rel canonical (template side).
Allows you to monetize your blog -- This can include putting Google Ad Sense codes and affiliate links on your blog. If the free blogging service doesn't allow this, then you cannot make money out of your content.
Ability to change blog theme and designs - A blogging service with this feature will allow you to change the look and feel of your blog even after you've started blogging and been doing it for a while; you're not locked into what you chose when you first signed up.
Does not put third party advertisement banners or links on your blog - It would be nice if the free blogging service did not provide advertisement banners to crowd out of your content. Your blog will definitely look better and cleaner without them.
Privacy and anti-spam protection- It is extremely important, if you wish to protect your privacy and identity, that these features are offered by the free blogging service in addition to preventing spam in your blog.
Ability to edit the blog template HTML source code
Reviewing all of the top free blogging services, only Google Blogger allows full template source code editing.
With this enabled, you can add the following very important blogging tools for success:
Verification methods for Google Webmaster Tools and other search engines (like Bing).
Website analytics - such as Google Analytics or Stat Counter.
Other third party JavaScripts such as those used for Google AdSense and In-text advertising.
The implementation of advanced onsite SEO techniques (title tag optimization, etc).
Search Optimization 
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