Daily Posts, Or Less?: How You Can Choose the Best Blog Posting Frequency
According to Letter.ly, 7.5 million blog posts are published every day on the internet, which is evidently a humongous number.Several factors influence the number of posts you publish, including the topic, the goal, the length of your post, your target audience, and your calendar.
Ideally, publishing blog posts daily is highly desirable. But there are pitfalls in this. Bloggers, and even readers, suffer burnout due to a high pace of blogging, or there’s poor content. Hence it’s advisable to publish at a measured frequency, aligned with strategic blogging goals ,and a focus on the target audience.
In this post, we’ll look at how frequently you should publish your posts and offer some advice on determining the ideal cadence for your blog.
Problems With Posting Blogs Daily
The Tired Blogger.
Despite our desire to post blogs frequently, it’s almost impossible to post every day.
More than anything it leads to a very undesirable side effect called blogger burnout .
Posting something fresh, entertaining, captivating, and helpful every day for several years can feel like a chore after a while. Particularly, if you have other obligations (family, work, social life etc). And especially if you are the only one doing the content writing.
Missing Out Search Volume.
Moreover you tend to miss out on high search volume keywords when you do daily posting. The only alternative left for you is to settle for long-tail keywords ,which may not be huge in search volumes.
And that is a significant demerit to go by, in case you’re aiming to ramp up your SEO rankings fast.
Rising Content Costs
Content costs increase with higher number of posts per day. You need more content writers on your team, and probably VAs to take on other jobs like formatting.
According to Webfx.com “If you’re wondering how much to budget for content marketing, the average business invests 25-30% of its marketing budget into content marketing. For reference, companies with less than $5 million in revenue (and a profit margin of 10-12%) invest 7-8% of their revenue into marketing.”
Compromised Quality of Posts.
More importantly, you must remember that your content quality should not drop as a result of your excessive publishing.
The content’s quality invariably comes first.
Offering information on a regular, high-frequency schedule is less important than providing high-quality content. Quantity is a close second in terms of importance.
Outstanding content may set you apart from your competition, allowing you to rise to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) and thus attract clients.
Specific Advantages Of Posting Frequently
While admittedly there are drawbacks in publishing daily, there are still some incredible benefits of posting blogs everyday.
Let me expalin
Better Crawling Rate
Crawling is an algorithmic process. In Google’s own words, “computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often and how many pages to fetch from each site.”
If your website receives a lot of traffic, it’s likely that the content is relevant and user-friendly.
High-quality content-rich sites will be crawled more frequently.
As a result, updating your content will give it a more recent publication date, making users more likely to visit your site.
Search Engine Indexing Of Your Pages
The process by which a search engine adds web information to its index is known as indexation.
A page is indexed by Google if the Google crawler (“Googlebot”) has visited it, examined it for content and meaning, and saved it in the Google index.
Pages that have been indexed by Google can be found in the search results (SERPs).
This is accomplished by “crawling” webpages for keywords, metadata, and other signals that indicate whether or not content should be ranked.
Inevitably what emerges is this; regular updating and publishing of fresh content generates faster indexing.
Enhanced Engagements From Audience.
Adding more followers to your blog is one of the quickest and easiest ways to attract people to read it and notice it.
Your content will interest readers long after it is published if you take the time to research, create, and post it.
This results in something desireable called blog engagement.
Blog engagement is defined as the various means by which people can interact with your post.
Engagement occurs when readers leave comments, share your content on social media, and return to your site to read your next piece.
Frequent posting improves your blog’s weight and ranking immensely.
More Traffic From Visitors.
According to studies, the more frequently you update your blog, the more traffic it will acquire.
Fresh content is invariably given higher priority by Google, so if you want to garner more attention from the search engines, publish new content on a regular basis.
Your Blog Visibility Increases.
Having your blog appear high in search results is the pinnacle of visibility.
This visibility may seem to be very technical and difficult to attain initially, but when you work on it regularly, it slowly becomes a reality.
How do you achieve that?
Well,you should have no trouble if you design your site and content in a way that genuinely seeks to help users and provide them with a nice online experience.
Improved Alexa Ranking.
Alexa Ranking is a popularity metric used in comparison to other competitor sites. It is based on the traffic to your site, and also the visitor engagement and it is calculated over the last 3 months.
With regular publishing, or daily publishing the Alexa ranking improves significantly.
Generally Alexa Rankings are more accurate for values between 1 to 100,000 where, Alexa ranking of 1 is considered the highest.
What Experts Say About posting Daily
Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse says “I’ve spoken about this over the years many times on ProBlogger. The more posts you publish over time, the more doorways you present readers with to enter your blog.1 post a week means you’ve got 52 doorways at the end of the year – daily posts means 365 doorways at the end of the year. This means people are more likely to see your content in RSS readers, in search engines, on social media etc. Over time this adds up. For example, here on ProBlogger today I’m publishing our 7001st post! That’s a lot of doorways!”
Neil Patel.
Neil Patel believes “Obviously, high-quality content matters and you can’t afford to push out tons of low-quality posts every day. You’ll only get lost in the noise of 1.2 million types of content published every day.”
Rand Fishkin.
Rand Fishkin adds “One aside I would say about publishing frequency. If you’re early stage, or if you were trying to build a career in blogging or in publishing, it’s great to publish a lot of content. Great writers become great because they write a lot of terrible crap, and then they improve. The same is true with web publishers”.
What’s Writer’s Burn Out?
What is the definition of writer’s burnout?
Burnout occurs when a person is overworked and stressed for an extended period of time.
It’s not the same as writer’s block though.
When you’re short on ideas for content, and you’re staring at a flashing cursor and a blank page with worry , that’s writer’s block.
But if you’re dissatisfied, worn out, hate writing, and wonder if you’re a writer at all, you’re experiencing writer’s burnout.
Writer’s burnout lasts much longer than writer’s block and is much more difficult to overcome.
Remember, it’s exhausting to do a lot of mental work. And writing frequently(or daily) requires a lot of mental effort. Funnily writers can get mentally, physically, and emotionally drained by overworking.
And you can get burned out physically like an athlete, just by writing!
Often a burnout is attributed to perceptions of unfulfillment when your payoff and rewards that you’re awaiting, are delayed for prolonged periods.
So how d’you overcome this burnout?
Having multiple projects running at the same time is a smart strategy to minimize writer’s burnout. That’ll keep you from getting bored with any one of them.
Reader Burnout . Oops!
We’ve heard of writer’s burnout alright, but what’s reader’s burnout?
Lets face it. Readers love content that is entertaining, informative, provocative. And most importantly- valuable.
But experienced bloggers will tell you that even if the content is good, it must be given finite time for the reader to assimilate.
Essentially, between one post and the other, the reader needs time to chew and digest you content. Otherwise you run the risk of planting reader-boredom on your blog, which is a precursor of reader burn out.
The reader literally gets over saturated with your content. Because of high frequency of postings.
Often, when you post content daily, it becomes a predictable routine for the reader. As a result he doesn’t miss you any longer.
Ideally, your reader must miss you. And not dismiss you.
And this concept of the reader missing you is recommended not for an ego trip or feeling pricey. But simply because that interval of absence helps the reader absorb, and value your content more.
So it’s best to publish content with a certain space between posts.
Of course there are blogs that publish daily, or multiple times a day, and yet thrive.
But remember, the trade-off is between adding value that takes higher precedence, and posting everyday.
Potential Impact On Social Signals By Daily Posting
The engagement—likes, shares, and comments—that your content receives on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are known as social signals.
Search engines and your social media followers see these social likes, shares, and views as an indication that your content is useful and relevant.
Though Google says that social signals are not a ranking factor, we do know that indirectly these signals do matter for ranking. Likes, shares, and views often help to make your posts socially more visible.
But when you publish your posts too frequently (like daily), your readers are likely to suffer burn out.
Because honestly, expecting your readers to read excessive content daily can be asking for too much.
Readers, then, tend to avoid your page.
The result is fall in visitor traffic, and drop in social shares. This sends an adverse signal to the search engines,finally affecting your rankings over time.
Low-Value Content Due To High Publishing Frequency
When you create content too frequently in the early stages of blogging, there is a risk of ending up creating low quality, or thin content.
This happens because of work over load and multiple distractions that lead to ‘quality compromises’.
If the content carries factual inaccuracies, and poorly explained sections that do not please the reader, your article is considered low quality or thin content.
Aside from that, there’s probably a lack of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT) as well. And EAT occupies a position of primacy in the search engine criteria for ranking your content.
Of late,the Google EAT factor has placed a default emphasis on helpful, high-quality content. The objective is that your content must always enrich your site’s visitors and offer them value.
But in low quality posts, the main content (MC) reflects truly poor effort in creating content.
For instance, on the given page, there could be insufficient amount of content, which means that low-quality pages show very little text in the primary body of the content, and it’s neither concise nor thorough.
Among the major factors of thin content could be distracting advertisements that divert the reader from the MC unnecessarily.
All this is ‘off putting’ to your reader and so it’s best to pace your content publishing suitably so that you create top-notch content for your readers.
Remember, quality content is magnetic and invaluable, regardless of the language, visuals, or packaging.
How To Write Faster For Frequent Publishing
Why this sudden talk about fast writing?
Well the thing is, in case you need to publish content fast, you need to write it fast too.
So one of the best ways to create more content is to have a plan in place for writing fast, without getting tugged and pulled by diversions.
Here’s how you solve this:-
1. Content Calendar.Create a content calendar with ideas for future articles.
2. Calls To Action Begin with the end in mind and think about the CTAs (Calls To Action) you want your readers to take. A call-to-action (CTA) is a great way to get your user to do the next step. And the goal should be to make a purchase, get in touch with you, set an appointment, or join up for anything.
3.. Research In Advance. Research usually distracts a lot during your crucial writing time. So research first, and then write. To overcome that, use an egg timer to keep your research to a maximum of 15 minutes at a time. Or you can even use the Pomodoro technique.
4. Use A Template. To save time writing and to improve your post, use a template for the post. It just becomes a pre-decided , permanent framework for your posts. Starting with a template is probably the easiest way to save time when creating your next blog post. A template can help you organise your thoughts, but more importantly, it can assist your reader stay on your blog article for longer.
In most cases, a template should include the following:-
▪A problem statement.
▪A solution.
▪A call to action.
5.Don’t start editing until you’ve finished your first draft.
6.Avoid the desire to modify your content when editing.
7. Speech to Text Software.Try using a speech to text software to accelerate your content creation.Speech to text software, commonly known as automatic speech recognition (ASR) software, identifies patterns in sound waves and correlates them to speech phonemes using speech recognition technology. It then converts them to text.
Because of the widespread use of ASR software, transcription services that utilise it have become significantly less expensive. Whatever your budget, you’ll be able to locate a tool or mobile app to meet your transcription demands. In fact, there are a lot of them that are completely free.
Eventually, this technology will assist you in writing your blogs more quickly as well!
Tips On Quality Of Content
Writing high quality articles invariably stresses out most bloggers. Particularly when it is done over a prolonged period of time. Of course, despite the stats of failures, there are bloggers who do write and publish every single day, and still thrive at their trade.
But for the larger number of bloggers, frequent publishing takes a toll on the quality of articles.
What do you do to improve quality then?
Well here are a couple of suggestions for maintaining high quality of content.
Research For Posting Frequently
The primary goal of research is to provide readers with accurate and current information. Your article gains more credibility if you do successful content research.
The main purpose of research is to deliver reliable information to readers. But that’s not all; they’re also looking for something new.
So, to obtain information and stay current, I recommend reading a lot in your domain and following other blogs in your profession. We all want to comply with that old blogger’s adage, “content is king.” But I would say ‘well researched content‘ is king.
However, conducting research is easier said than done,yet it’s highly possible if you put in the necessary effort to know your content.
It eventually offers tremendous value to your audience and accelerates the growth of your blog.
Target Audience
Knowing who you’re writing for, in essence, enables you to develop content that your readers will relate to, and find useful.
So Understanding your target audience and their pain points is the best way to truly know them.
So, I recommend that, instead of using a topic expert as a reference, it’s more preferable to use your reader (target audience) as the source of inspiration.
And what difference does that make?
Well, that’s when you’ll realize that you’re writing for the specific person who will actually end up reading your article. However, this is only achievable if a target audience is clearly defined.
Keywords.
Keyword research in SEO usually entails searching for, analysing, and then utilising keywords to further satisfy your online audience.
This optimization strategy is based on the actual search habits of web users. Importantly, effective keyword research tools allow bloggers to focus on popular topics.
Most crucially, they can increase their profitability by tapping into linked markets.
No wonder, targeting low competition long tail keywords is one of the best approaches to optimise keywords.
As a result, if your site is optimised for long tail keywords that match the preferences of potential buyers, you should expect increased sale conversions.
Solve Problems
SEO experts and statistics state a lot about the appropriate length of your posts.
But here’s the interesting thing.
The length of your post actually does not matter so much really. What matters is solving problems for your audience.
Your audiences love to be served with solutions that address their crucial pain points.
Small wonder then that there’s a spreading awareness about Google’s is likelihood to offer a higher ranking to a short post of a few paragraphs. If it actually solves users’ problems.
And what’s more, once that’s done Google will even send you more traffic filled with people having similar problems.
Add A Great CTA.
You want to get the most out of your blogging efforts with each blog article you publish so that you may convert your blog readers from “unknown visitors” to “concrete leads”.
Remember, these leads have the potential to become future purchasers. In this case, a call to action (CTA) is employed.
Think about what you want your readers to do when they’ve finished reading your post.
It should ideally be :-
▪To make a purchase.
▪To contact you.
▪To schedule an appointment.
▪To sign up for something.
One way to do this is to encourage your website visitors to buy something while they’re still on your site.
Eventually you’ll note that a CTA has the potential to enhance audience engagement.It also imporoves the search engine’s assessment of your posts.
That’s because of better social signals emerging from enhanced engagement, due to a superb CTA.
Frequency Of Posting And SEO
On average, sites that produce blog articles on a regular basis have 434 % more indexed pages than sites that don’t publish consistently.
Additional content gives users more reasons to stay on your site, which can improve the amount of time they spend there.
Consistent Publishing of Content
Consistent publication appears to increase site traffic and lead generation. That isn’t to suggest that quantity always takes precedence over quality though.
Remember how thin content may become a quality issue?
While having a large library of content is advantageous, each blog- post must be well-written and relevant to your audience.
But what if you create four posts in a month and then don’t post for four months? That’s also not a ‘SEO-smart’ option either.
What’s the best way to deal with this then?
Well, the answer is simple.Work on projects that you are enthusiastic about. You will never lose interest if you write about your passion because.
Indexing By Search Engines
There’s an interesting connection between frequency of posting and the response from search engine web-crawlers.
Web crawlers, robots, bots, or “Google bots” are high-tech programmes that search the internet for websites.
These web crawlers “index” a site depending on a number of search engine-determined algorithmic variables.
When you make a change to your website, the search engine notices and adjusts your site’s rating accordingly.
The more frequently you update your website with new articles, downloads, and web pages, the more often a search engine will visit it.
Fresh Content And QDF
Google’s Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) is another ranking mechanism.
The name is self-explanatory, and in a literal sense, it means that newer content will take precedence over older content in search results.
In literal terms it means: ‘requests for search results that are up to date’.
QDF can dramatically alter the appearance of a search result, and it can also happen when search phrases change their meaning over time.
Have Strategic Goals For Publishing Content
Blogging has taken on such an important role in business that, around 76% of B2B marketers generate leads through blogging alone.
And according to HubSpot,you can create valuable, high quality content for our customers only if you invest in a blogging strategy.
Now what’s the implication of this backdrop for us?
What this implies is that,even if you publish every day, your frequency will only be successful if your posts are in line with your blog strategy.
If you don’t have a big-picture blog strategy , you should work on it first before thinking about how often you should post.
Eventually, I suggest, the frequency of your posts should be manageable for your audience.
And how do you do that?
Here are a few steps to establish your strategy for blogging:-
1.Define your objectives.
2.Conduct some market research on your target market.
3.Make a list of potential topics and keywords to target.
4.Make a content schedule.
5.Create incredible content.
6.Create a plan for content distribution.
7.Take an early lead for social media marketing.
8.Make a plan for email marketing and list building.
Finally Should You Publish Daily? Or Less?
Evidently, it is crucial to have a blogging strategy in-order to publish regularly, but it is also critical that this frequency of publishing be properly understood.
When I say this, I’m also acknowledging that some bloggers do regularly publish on a daily basis.
No doubt, for someone who is able to sustain such a frequency of publishing daily, there are multiple advantages.
However, bloggers who are unable to maintain a daily publishing schedule, face much greater drawbacks.
So, how can you break the impasse between frequent publishing and everyday publishing? How do you characterise frequent publishing as a strategy for achieving great results?
So here’s the thing:
After much investigation, it appears that there is an unwritten rule that dictates you should publish blog posts in a 50/90 ratio. That is, 50 posts in 3 months (90 days). Alternatively, you may publish 100 posts in 180 days.
Experts believe that this is when Google’s algorithm responds to your content for raising your rankings in the SERPs.
It detects that critical mass of frequency of your posts and rewards you with higher rankings.
So the recommendation is that for the first 90 days, the frequency of publishing should average a bit more than 1 post in 2 days.
And after you’ve published 50 posts in 90 days, you can afford to reduce your frequency to 2 posts per week.
This way, a lot of new bloggers have gained traction with search engines and have been able to ramp up their rankings.
Related Posts:
The Real Truth About Knowing Your Target Audience Well
6 Unbeatable Techniques To Get More Blog Followers
Failproof Checklist Before Publishing Blog Posts (11 Points)
Key To Writing Blog Posts That People Want To Read
Conclusion
Despite our best efforts, it is nearly hard to post a blog every day. More importantly, it causes burnout, both to the blogger and the reader, which is a very unpleasant side effect.
One critical element that’s likely to suffer is your content quality. It must never deteriorate as a result of your excessive posting. So, make sure you use effective keywords, conduct excellent audience research, and content research to maintain content quality.
However by frequent publishing, search engine crawl rate does improve. If your website gets a lot of traffic, the implication is that the content is probably relevant and user-friendly. Eventually, sites with high-quality content will be crawled more frequently.
But one indisputable fact is that the reader requires time to eat and digest your content, between each article. If this finite time is not offered to the audience, it’s also known to result in reader burnout. As a result, it’s best to publish content with calibrated time space between posts.
So finally what’s the verdict on posting blog articles daily?
Well,after extensive research, it appears that there is an unwritten code.It says that for best results, you should publish blog posts in a 50:90 ratio, of posts and days.
Hope you decide your frequency of posting based on this article.
Please comment and share your views in the comment box.