Blogging is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic and connect with your audience online. You know that if you publish quality content regularly, you’ll transform your brand and skyrocket your profits.
Yet…
Blogging can often be a vague process when surrounded by lots of unanswered questions.
How often should you blog? How many posts do you need to publish to get traffic? And how do find an ideal publishing frequency that suits your company?
We’ll help you answer all of these questions in the rest of this article.
So, let’s get to it.
Does Blogging Frequency Matter?
Brand awareness through social media is essential if you want to convert more loyal prospects. SEO is also one of the most effective strategies for businesses of all sizes to attract targeted clients.
Want to know the secret to succeeding with both?
Create helpful, quality content on a consistent basis.
If your competitors are publishing more quality posts than you each month, it becomes harder for you to keep up with them in the SERPs. They’ll get more brand recognition and quickly establish themselves as authorities in the industry.
However, going too fast is also not the solution…
The blogging workload may negatively impact your whole company if you start neglecting other aspects of the business. For example, you may find yourself focusing too much on writing while you ignore your customer service duties.
That’s why finding an optimal blogging frequency is a must if you want to grow with any digital marketing strategy.
Is There an Optimal Frequency That Works for All Bloggers?
An optimal frequency allows you to be consistent with your content marketing plan while your business grows. Also, it doesn’t exhaust your budget or slow your overall progress in any way.
But here’s the thing:
It’s impossible to find a content publishing frequency that works for all companies. Simply because some industries are more competitive and saturated than others.
Company size also matters because you can’t expect a small business to match the frequency of big brands publishing multiple blog posts every day.
So:
You need to make a content schedule by looking at what your competitors are doing and what results they’ve achieved.
Check out some of your closest competitors’ blogs to learn how often they’re publishing new posts. Once you get some insight on that, try to top that number by writing a few more articles each month.
For example:
If a competitor publishes six articles a month, writing eight blog posts monthly might be an excellent way to stay ahead of them in the long run.
Should You Post a New Article Everyday?
We get asked this question a lot when helping businesses develop their SEO plans.
The truth is…
While blogging is one of the most effective online growth strategies, you don’t have to do it every day to succeed. We’ve helped brands make remarkable progress with only a couple of articles a month.
But that doesn’t work for everyone…
Businesses are different in their objectives and the industries they compete in. In some cases, we’ve seen companies pump out new content every day and fully dominate their markets.
So:
Before you try to catch up with that, you need to be honest about your resources and what you can do.
Is your company big enough to persist with a daily blogging schedule in the long run?
How Many Blog Posts Do You Need to Get Traffic?
We wish there were definite answers to such questions. But unfortunately, Google doesn’t work this way.
There are different reasons why websites don’t rank at the top. So, you need to consider domain age and competition when asking this question.
For instance:
You can start to get some organic visitors if you target low-difficulty keywords in your articles. Covering unique topics with good monthly traffic may also put you at the top of the SERPs quickly.
However:
New sites are often untrusted by Google and have to go through an observation period before they start ranking. During this time, you may publish dozens of articles and still not get the traffic you deserve.
What can you do about that?
Patience and persistence.
The great thing about Google is that your efforts are never overlooked.
An article could rise to the top in any day and double your traffic. So, you shouldn’t worry about results at the moment. Just keep creating awesome content and let search engines notice you.
How to Create a Realistic Blogging Schedule for Your Business
Let’s go back to the example of established brands that publish new posts every day:
Have you ever wondered how they’re able to do that?
It’s simple…
They’ve developed a solid content marketing schedule that maximizes their productivity. It details all the things they need before and after writing any content piece.
So in this part, we’ll help you do the same. You’ll learn how to create a blogging schedule that matches your needs and ensures the best SEO results:
1- What Are Your Marketing Objectives?
Your marketing objectives determine how you should carry on with your blogging plan.
If you’re focused mainly on organic traffic, blogging frequency and publishing times shouldn’t matter as much. Google will index your pages as soon as the robots crawl them.
However:
If you want to target social traffic or grow your newsletter list, you might want to set specific days to publish your content and precise times to send your campaigns and maximize open rates.
So:
What objectives do you want to achieve with the content you’re writing?
2- Which Topics And Ideas Will You Cover Your My Blog?
Now that you know what you’re aiming at, it’s time to pick some keywords to target in your blog.
Stay away from high competition topics that have already been covered by every major brand in your industry. Instead, make a list of ideas focused on keywords with low monthly searches. And make sure they’re interesting to your target audience.
Next:
Create a blogging calendar to make your schedule easily accessible for you and your team. If you don’t already have a tool to do that, we recommend using Google Sheets or Trello.
Finally:
Add all your ideas with keywords and notes to your schedule. Then choose your publishing dates and assign the work to your team.
3- Which Days of the Week Will You Be Publishing Your Content?
Setting specific dates and times to publish your blog posts helps you stay on track. It’s an excellent way to stick to your plan and evaluate your progress in the long term.
Keep in mind that:
Writing isn’t the only task in the blogging process. You also need to edit the work and format the article by adding images and links. So, be sure to factor that in when making your content calendar.
The best days to publish blog posts are the days where you get the most exposure and traffic. Different studies have been conducted to determine the best days and times.
Here’s the best answer for that:
Mondays and Tuesdays get the most clicks and social shares as more people will be surfing the net.
As for the time, early morning between 7 AM and 1 PM seems to be the time that gets the most audience interactions.
Now, remember:
If SEO is your only objective, publishing times won’t make a difference. You can post dozens of articles in one day and not publish again for the whole month. Search engines will still index your newly published pages as soon as they discover them.
4- Who Handles Your Content Writing and Publishing?
You can be disorganized when it comes to publishing times or the platforms you want to target. But if there is no one to produce and publish your content, you’ll never make any progress.
Now:
Depending on your challenges and business needs, there are different answers to this question.
If you have a lot of experience in the industry and some free time to fill, you can use that to be more productive and write blogs.
An in-house writer could also be an excellent choice if your company is big enough to afford a full-time content writer.
Or…
You can hire a freelancer to create your articles and publish them once you revise their work. This option will cost less and ensure that you never fall behind on schedule.
5- How Will You Distribute My Content?
This goes back to the first step in the process, which is specifying your marketing objectives.
Although SEO is the main aim here, there’s still room for you to drive some direct traffic from social media and email marketing. You can set up social profiles for your business on different platforms and publish your new content there.
Email marketing has also proven to be an effective digital marketing strategy in many industries. You can send your newly published posts to your email subscribers and keep them engaged with your brand.
Also:
You can develop an outreach strategy to build backlinks for your website and get quality traffic from relevant industry sites.
Conclusion
If you’re just getting started, don’t pressure yourself into finding the perfect blogging frequency. Be consistent with your content plan until you find the frequency that suits your business needs and objectives.
Want to transform your brand with highly targeted SEO traffic?
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Get started today by generating a full SEO report for your business using our Free SEO Analyzer Tool. Don’t hesitate to contact us or give us a call at 773-789-8636 — so we can discuss your project needs.