Blog Posting Frequency Part II – SEO, Business Blogging and Size Matters
Blog posting frequency is a pretty complicated subject. There are many factors regarding blog posting frequency that I didn’t realise at first glance. Things like:
- Length of your content
- Reason for posting in terms of site goals
- Sustainability of your posting habits
- SEO
- Blog posting frequency when weighed up against social media and other types of online marketing.
Of course, I tried to write about all of these things yesterday in one big stream-of-thought article.
Naturally, there were some leftover thoughts that I didn’t mention. Today’s article will talk about some of those.
How Often Should You Blog For Business?
Most of my blog readers are young guys (and some girls – I haven’t forgotten you!) looking to build their own businesses. Copywriting and my articles about online business are a great way for them to do that.
However, on occasion clients and other business people stop by. Other copywriters want to increase their skills and businesses want to improve their sites. (Obviously, hiring me is the best way to do this.) Businesses that run e-commerce stores or Brick & Mortar shops happen by, wanting to know how best to run the online marketing side of their business.
Some of those types who’ve stumbled here will probably think that my blog posting frequency stuff is complicated and too labour intensive.
If the majority of your traffic comes from footfall or a newsletter (be it physical or digital) then you might consider not using blogging as a primary platform for getting new business. I can see that being the case.
However, I see many businesses making the same mistake. Little family-run restaurants, farm shops and other self-employed types regularly do this.
They Run Their Blog As A Half-Measure.
They’ll have a “blog” section on their website. It’ll have some random thoughts on it – which, if you’re writing completely random, unrelated stuff on your business website stop it right now. That’s not even the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that if your business posts once “every so often” people will think you’ve gone out of business. Absolutely and without question. If your business has a blog and the last update was more than six months ago, this will decrease trust in your business.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a corner shop or a one-man band, people will trust your business less if you have a poorly updated blog.
Sure, you don’t have time to blog. Maybe you don’t want to hire somebody to do online stuff for you. That’s fair. Don’t include it at all. In this regard, blog posting frequency is the same as social media; don’t include something if you’re not going to update it.
When you run a business and you have a blog, I still recommend once a week. If that’s too much, two times a month is the absolute minimum you should be updating it.
If that’s too much, scrap the blog idea and instead use different social media which is less time-intensive. Something like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter requires less effort to appear like you’re spending time on the platform.
How Often Should You Blog For SEO?
I promised I’d write about this yesterday.
Google spiders reward activity. A static site with great information will outperform a poor one, generally. However, a good site with regular updates will outperform a static site. Google algorithms think somewhat like a news cycle in many respects; they’ll assume that pages updated in 2016 are more relevant to a searcher than ones posted in 2010 – provided all the quality markers are there on both pages.
They also reward longevity of a site. An older site gets more leeway than a younger site, and also gets more love. When I first launched this site, Google barely recognised any of the search terms I was trying to rank for. My posts would end up back on Page 24 of the search results, even if I did everything perfectly.
Now, my site ranks on the first page for some of those keywords, even though I haven’t touched the posts since.
Those two things when put together account for most of why you should post regularly and consistently. They’re also the two major reasons why spammers don’t win at the SEO game anymore; posting hundreds of articles within minutes of each other and then not touching the site is unnatural behaviour, and the search engine algorithms are sophisticated enough to deal with it.
Hidden Question: How Long Should Your Blog Posts Be?
Some of you are crying. I’m a fan of a lot of content being the backbone of online marketing.
You don’t have to pump out thousands of words a day though. If the idea of publishing two thousand words a week troubles you, then you can play around with article lengths.
Remember, search engines, humans and whatever else might read your site only care about all the things I’ve mentioned in the past two days as secondary concerns. The primary concern for all mentioned is that your site is a real site with real information that’s useful.
Sure, posting 2,000 word articles every day of the week that answer all of your audience’s questions is perfect.
But you’re human. Your company if you have one has a finite budget and limited hours in the day. These things aren’t always possible.
However you can do other things as well. You can mix the longer posts with shorter articles. You can do photo articles and catch-ups from your social media – or even short videos. These won’t harm your site, but they will help it because you’ll be actively and regularly posting content.
Not every article has to be long. Some of them should be, but you can mix it up if you’re posting regularly.
Actual Final Thoughts
Between the two articles in this series, I’ve gone into pretty exhaustive detail about blog posting frequency.
You can apply this advice whether you’re a blogger, a guy making to look a quick $ with niche sites or a fully-fledged company who is trying to build up some brand awareness. These ideas work for SEO, engagement and traffic building.
Whilst I lean on the heavy side of producing online content (what with it being the business and all) you can take what I’ve given you here and strip it down to a few hours a month. The return on investment for blogging is huge if you work at it consistently and use it to push traffic to your services in a relevant manner.