Part of any good content marketing strategy includes adding new content to your blog on a regular basis.
After all, more content makes it easier to achieve high rankings in the SERPs for additional keywords, plus gives your audience something new and exciting to read.
But how do you know when to post and why does it even matter? How often should you blog, after all?
In this guide, we’ll cover these questions and provide various factors to consider when strategizing your editorial calendar.
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Is There an Ideal Blog Post Frequency?
This is a question that digital marketers have debated for years.
While some swear by posting daily, there’s actually a confirmed sweet spot when it comes to posting frequency.
Most experts agree that blogging two to four times per week is the best way to see increased traction from your content.
This equates to somewhere around eleven to sixteen posts a month, depending on how set you are on the actual times per week you post new content.
However, this isn’t a final tally.
In some competitive niches, it is important to blog more often, such as four to six times a week.
In contrast, some evergreen niches where information doesn’t change frequently can usually withstand less new content.
How Often Should You Blog for SEO?
The answer truly depends on a few important factors. First of all, answer the following questions:
- Are you just starting out with a small site?
- Are you an individual or part of a small team who runs a large site?
A weekly post is recommended if you have a limited amount of resources to work with.
It is possible to benefit from posting more often, but it can drain your resources.
Quality wins in this case, according to Google’s quality vs. quantity debate. Once or twice a week is a good goal.
What kind of site do you run? Do you have a team of content creators and a large audience? As long as you post once or twice a week, you should have no trouble meeting the requirement.
Depending on your needs, you may post every other day, every five days, or every seven days.
The only people who should blog every day are those who:
- Have the resources and time to publish a daily blog post
- Don’t already have a wealth of useful content
- Find blogging to be an enjoyable experience
- Are content marketers who are able to come up with plenty of blog post ideas
The judgment you use here is crucial.
Test posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, five days a week, and on weekends.
When you post more frequently, does your traffic increase or decrease? There will be some variation from the posts’ content, of course, but you will have to account for it.
How Long Does It Take for a Blog to Rank on Google?
It takes a lot of time and effort for website developers to make their sites appear right beneath that box on Google’s first page.
For small businesses without a web presence, ranking high in search results takes time.
Google usually ranks websites in three to six months after using optimization (SEO) techniques.
Depending on the industry you’re in and the keywords used, you can expect it to take between 90 and 180 days to jump to the top of Google’s results.
In competitive fields, a high ranking can take up to a year due to several factors, including competition, domain age, and content accumulation.
Both developers and clients may find this frustrating. A new website was just built after weeks of work, after all!
However, there’s nothing to worry about. When you do everything right, you won’t see results immediately.
It’s not a magic trick to rank on Google — it’s a process.
Using a Googlebot, Google crawls billions of websites, cataloging and collecting information that is added to Google’s web index. Your website needs to be crawlable and readable by the “spiders” to reach Google’s index.
Websites are ranked according to a variety of factors, including the following:
- Domain age
- SEO
- Keyword competition
- Clean domain
- Content quality
Ultimately, the answer to this question truly varies depending on the work put in, to begin with.
Be patient, as this is a process that’s important for your website’s success.
What Content Marketing and Building a House Have in Common
We’re going to take a moment here to use an analogy.
Let’s say that your website is a house. Makes sense, right? Both involve building and growing over time.
Now, let’s pretend that you want visitors to come to your house.
While you would love for all those people to walk in the front door at the same time, it makes it hard if there’s only one entry point.
Instead, you would want to install multiple doors… maybe one on the side of the house or a set of French doors in the back. Perhaps even one out onto an upstairs balcony.
But you also can’t fit everyone into a single room, either. So, you’ll want to build up additional floors where more people can come in.
Blogging on your website is like adding doors and floors to your website.
The more pages you have for someone to enter the website on, the more likely it is they’ll get inside and look around.
In turn, this can greatly help you increase your organic traffic, reach conversion goals more quickly, and enjoy all the benefits that digital marketing has to offer.
By adding new posts to your page on a regular basis, you can help facilitate this level of growth.
How Often Should You Blog? 6 Factors to Consider
When it comes to determining how often to blog, there are numerous factors that you need to keep in mind.
These indicators make it easier to determine if your content creation process needs to include writing new posts on the lower end of just a couple per week or if you should be blogging each day.
By analyzing your industry, goals, and needs against this list, you should be able to come up with a good posting schedule for your blog.
Here are six factors to consider:
1. Overall Goals for Blogging
The first factor you need to consider when determining how often to post content is your overall goals for blogging in the first place.
This should be the main catalyst for why you’re even writing new pieces in the first place.
- Do you want to improve your traction in the SERPs for a specific set of keywords?
- Is SEO a high priority?
- What about brand recognition or industry clout?
Adding new posts with lots of quality information can really boost your reputation as a leader in your niche.
By keeping these factors in mind, you can easily determine whether it is important to post more or less often depending on your end goals.
2. Industry Movement
When deciding how often to blog, you’ll also need to look at industry movement.
By this, we mean how often things change in your particular niche.
If you’re in an industry where new ideas and resources come out on a regular basis, you’ll want to add more posts.
In addition, you’ll need to also go back and edit old content to remain as up-to-date as possible.
However, if the processes and information your customers need to make a purchase decision or stay apprised to the latest news about a specific topic don’t change frequently, you might not have to be as forceful in your editorial calendar.
Instead, choose topics that work on an evergreen basis to help meet your content marketing goals.
Probably you also going to think in outsourcing your content to acceletrate your strategy.
3. Available Resources to Create Content
When deciding how often to post to your blog, you also need to think about your available resources and content to actually get it done.
It’s one thing to say you want to add four new blog posts to your website a week.
But, if content writing isn’t your thing or you spend an enormous amount of time on research, you might not have reasonable room in your schedule to accomplish this.
Likewise, you do have the option of utilizing a staff member or a freelance writer to create new pieces.
The problem with this is that it does cost money, which can equate to being a fairly decent chunk of your marketing budget.
Looking at both time and monetary resources prior to committing to your blog posting schedule is important.
Also, you need to enlarge your content production and publishing frequency without sacrificing quality. You can do that by working with professional writers that are trained to write top-notch pieces tailored to your brand’s needs.
Find your next best writer in the WriterAccess marketplace, start for free now!
4. Your Audience Needs
Still not sure how often you should post to your blog? Take into account the needs of your audience.
Do they have a lot of questions about a particular subject that would keep them from buying your product or scheduling a service appointment?
Should they have more information about a topic before they head further down the customer sales journey?
Providing value should always be a big factor when deciding how much content to add to your blog.
Posting for the sake of saying you’ve added something new isn’t good — and Google pays attention.
Quality over quantity should always be a rule to remember.
A strong focus on what your ideal buyer persona would want to read about is certainly something that needs strong consideration.
5. Number of Posts Already on Your Blog
Another important factor to consider is the number of posts already on your blog.
If you’ve built up a considerable amount of content over the years, it might be best to go back and update posts a few times per week instead of focusing on so many new ones.
Why?
Google looks for pages that have been recently updated.
If your rankings for a specific section of your blog or keywords have started to slip, you can start to revive it by adding new context or other information to these posts.
Furthermore, it is important to note that editing existing content doesn’t excuse you from writing new stuff.
Instead, opt to trade out one of your three or four posts a week as a time to edit those aging ones accordingly.
6. New Blog vs. Old Blog
Finally, you want to consider whether your blog is old or new.
If you’re just starting out or have only recently added posts to your website, you’ll want to keep a pretty fast pace at adding new content along the way.
In some cases, this might mean adding a new piece every day or every couple days for the first few months.
This will give Google a range of content to link to and can help with your search rankings.
Additionally, it makes it easier for other websites to link their content to yours, which can increase off-page SEO efforts.
Not sure what to discuss?
Think about the fundamentals for your niche and start writing about them.
Soon, you should have a few content silos that make it easy to add on-page links that visitors can click through to learn more information about a specific topic.
Wrap Up: Blog Frequency and Consistency
So, how often should you blog?
Understanding the answer to this question is an important part of content marketing.
By keeping these ideas in mind, you should be able to find the exact sweet spot for your website in no time — whether that is more often or less often than you’re currently doing now.
Boosting your content and improving your results also requires knowing where you’re currently at.
Our Content Maturity Assessment is a good place to start!
