https://ghost.org is the other good option. It also has an Open Source part that you can host yourself if you need in future.

WordPress is matured and lots of options (plugins) to get it done one way or the other.

Can't you just use Wix or Wordpress or Squarespace or Medium, etc.?

Otherwise, Astro makes it easy to self-host a blog written in Markdown, and Markdown WYSIWYGs you can easily get for your operating system. There are also older generators like Hugo and Jekyll, etc., but they've fallen out of fashion.

You can also consider headless CMS systems (disclaimer: I work for one) but I think that's kinda overkill for what you need.

I've shared a step-by-step guide on GitHub for creating a simple blog page using the OpenAI O1 model. I also explained how to deploy it. https://github.com/mergisi/openai-o1-coded-personal-blog

The simplest way to write an SEO optimized blog is to go to wordpress.com and pay the subscription fee to get a blog you can associate with your domain.

No messing with hosting. No distractions fiddling with NGINX config.

Just a white box with a cursor blinking.