How Often Should You Post On Your Blog?
In the early days, spammers would post on their blogs frequently - sometimes every 15 minutes. And for awhile it may have worked - until it was abused too often and search engines realized they were being tweaked for better rankings.
A clue? Few people can post that often, day in and day out. As well, the content of the posts left something to be desired - a post every 15 minutes sounding like a commercial was nowhere near the spirit of blogging.
As you can imagine, many of these blogs were caught, and it’s rare to see a blog posting that often in the search engines.
But today the question is still valid for different reasons. Rather than trying to trick search engines, we might wonder if visitors could be overloaded by too many posts; on the other hand, if we post too infrequently, search engines won’t give us the attention we so obviously deserve.
This is because search engines go for relevance - the key to blogging’s power. A search engine like Google needs to balance keeping current with not checking too often (they only have so many computers, you know).
So the balance is that a site that rarely updates (like a ‘regular’ website) gets visited less often. One that adjusts frequently (like a frequently changing blog) gets visited more often - the search engine’s attempt to be the standard for “what’s out there” in action!
So, how often to post? I’ll mention the same thing I’ve been mentioning since 2005 in my first edition of “Top 10 Tricks To Conquer Your Niche With WordPress“: when you start out, try to post frequently to get attention - after a month or so, you can slow down.
Of course, there are other factors to look out for - the content needs to be good. If you find yourself writing substandard after the first week, a daily post is NOT for you. Better a blog you’re proud of than sticking to a death march of daily posts, and the blog suffering because of it.
As well, are you writing for search engines or people? If your articles are for people, realize they aren’t likely to read daily. However, if the content is good, you will get daily folks (after all, people read the paper and watch the news daily). The key is to write quality, but don’t make every day’s reading necessary (avoid ‘continued tomorrow’ style articles).
Ultimately, the issue will always be quality, not quantity. Try to get your blog to a level you’re proud of by writing the articles you’d like to read. And if possible, write frequently. After, all, more posts will get you noticed; better posts will get you an audience. But more AND better posts will get you both!
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