With over 600 million blogs on the web today, it’s hard to stand out in the crowd. So, “how often should I blog to ensure my voice is heard” is a hard question to answer, but important to your business goals to figure out.
There’s no definitive answer that works for every business. Your ideal editorial calendar and frequency of blog posting depends on a number of factors including the content marketing strategy you’re working towards.
New blogs require a different blog post frequency than established blogs do. For some, publishing at least 1-2 new blogs per week is required to reach their goals, whereas others only need new blog posts 1-2 times a month.
This number of times per week to write that’s ideal for your target audience depends on where you are in your business. Let’s look at a few factors that determine how many blogs to post per week for better blog traffic.
How Many Blog Posts Per Week Before Traffic Arrives?
When starting a blog, it can be tempting to post as often as possible in the beginning. At this point, you’re eager to see results like your traffic numbers beginning to climb.
However, it’s important to remember that quality trumps quantity when it comes to SEO for blogs. Valuable content is king, and out-wins blogging frequency every time. Even when your blog is new and you’re tempted to publish several times a week, your best approach is to focus on creating high-quality content that will engage and convert your readers.
It’s better to focus on writing a few high-quality, well-researched articles each week (or even each month) versus churning out more low-quality posts in the hopes that the number of posts will help. The truth is, low-quality posts will not get you the results you desire and will end up being a waste of your time.
How Many Blogs To Post Per Week Once You’re Established?
Once you’ve been blogging for a while and have built up a following, you may find that you can get away with posting less often. This is because you’ve already established yourself as an authority in your industry and have a loyal readership who looks forward to your content.
At this point, you may find that 2-3 posts per month are sufficient. But if SEO is your focus, you should base your blogging frequency on the keywords you’re seeking to grow and the depth of content expertise you want to show Google.
The decision to slow down blogging based on having some established SEO isn’t as simple as it sounds. It really comes down to your content and SEO goals. If you have the time and resources to publish more frequently, you may find that your audience appreciates it.
It’s also worth noting that as your blog grows, you may need to dedicate more time to promoting your content. This is something to keep in mind as you consider how often to blog.
How to Determine How Often You Should Blog
Now that we’ve looked at a few factors that affect how often you should blog, let’s dive into how you can determine what frequency works best for you and your business.
The first step is to assess your SEO goals. If organic traffic is on your list, you need to consider what keywords are driving visitors to your site. Does it align with your current blogs? What else are you hoping to achieve with your blog? Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can start to consider how often you need to publish new content to reach those goals.
For example, if your goal is to drive organic traffic to your website, you’ll need to ensure that you’re publishing new content on a regular basis. Freshness is a critical score with Google and you can’t take advantage of freshness opportunities if you’re not blogging on a regular basis.
That said, if you’re hoping to build relationships with other businesses in your industry, you could consider posting less often and instead focus on building content partnerships and social media sharing with these businesses instead of writing new content.
What About AI?
It’s totally true that AI is changing the blog writing experience for most people. But does that mean you need to write more often or use AI for your writing? Not at all. In my SEO practice, what I will tell you is that AI is a great brainstorming tool. It helps with idea generation and reduces time lost staring at a blank page not knowing what to write about.
But, using AI to write your articles has it’s drawbacks for the short and long run. The big no-no is using AI for any content creation that you want to “own” and potentially trademark in the future. The yet unanswered question is if you use AI to create your content, do you really own it? If the answer is determined to be no, you don’t own it, then you also wouldn’t be able to trademark an idea that’s not technically your own.
So if you’re a content creator and you have aspirations to write a book, create a course, or do something on-brand for your business that you want to trademark, use AI wisely.
Does it Change the Opportunities for Blogging?
Not necessarily. If you’re in a YMYL (your money, your life) industry, AI is not yet capable of writing authoritative content that includes research and well-cited data for sensitive topics. This includes health care, financial, or anything else where the details of the content need to be correct or else it could cause harm to someone. (You can read about YMYL here.)
Everything written by AI must (and I am saying MUST) be closely edited. You can’t trust sources or data without confirmation.
And then there’s Google’s E-E-A-T score that really does matter for your business.
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust and it’s the proof you offer Google that you’re the right person based on your life/experience to speak about a specific topic.
In other words, it’s your street cred and it’s your proof based on your life experience that you are qualified to write on a specific topic. Think about this for a second: if you had a leaky pipe would you feel more confident taking advice from a licensed plumber or from a neighbor down the street who read a blog or two about plumbing? Most of us want advice from professionals.
And that goes for mommy bloggers, food bloggers, reviews (tell me you actually installed the app and I’ll trust you more than if you’re listing what strangers said on Amazon)… you get the idea.
So AI is changing the game, but you are still the expert. And in Google’s eyes, content written by human beings, in their lane of expertise, will continue to be served highly in search. Here is Google’s official policy.
And that means, it’s still in your best interest to write new content regularly on your website. 🙂
Blog Posting Schedule
Once you know what your goals are, take a look at your current blog posting schedule and available resources. How much time do you have each week to dedicate to blogging? Do you have a team who can help with the writing, editing, and promoting process?
For most people, posting every day is unrealistic. If you don’t have much time to dedicate to blogging, keep your focus on quality over quantity and only publish what you can manage. There’s no magic number, take your time to create quality content that converts.
The next step is to look at your audience. What are they looking for from your blog? How often do they want to hear from you? You can use surveys, social media, and Google Analytics to get a better understanding of what your audience wants. And always look at search engines and organic results to see what is naturally ranking highly in search. This will give you a good idea about what you want to write about and what’s missing from your content strategy/library.
Once you have a clear understanding of their needs, then you can begin to consider how often you should publish new content.
Competition & Gap Analysis
Finally, take a look at your competition. How often are they blogging? What type of content are they creating?
Gap analysis looks into the specifics of what your competitors are writing about that you have yet to cover. By regularly looking at your gap analysis, you will see opportunities for new blogs to cover. While you don’t want to copy your competition, it can be helpful to see what’s working for them.
You may find that they’re publishing several times a week and seeing good results. Or, you may discover that they’re not posting very often but their articles are getting a lot of engagement.
Once you’ve taken all of these factors into consideration, you should have a better idea of how often you need to write new blogs for your website. Remember, there’s no magic number when it comes to blog frequency. It all depends on your goals, audience, and resources.
Optimizing Older Content
Even if you’re focused on creating new content for blog traffic, it’s always wise to go back and optimize and refurbish your older articles from time to time. This includes updating the article with new information, adding new images, and then re-promoting the content to ensure that it reaches new members of your target audience.
Optimizing older content is more important as your blog traffic grows and your content starts to age. Evergreen articles are important to your brand, but they should always remain relevant to your target audience as well. As times change, it’s important to make sure your content is still relatable and relevant.
One red flag to watch for is when your high quality content starts to drop in SEO ranking. Any drop in SEO rank should be explored and is often a sign that an older piece of content is either losing relevance or that it needs a refresh. When you experience a traffic drop, that’s the sign to focus on updating older content to ensure it remains relevant and high-ranking.
By regularly optimizing your older content, you can ensure that your blog is always providing value to your readers.
So, How Often Should I Blog?
We’ve discussed why the question of how many blogs to post per week is a difficult one to answer. If you’re still wondering “how often should I blog?”, then you are a prime candidate for an SEO audit.
An SEO audit will help you determine how well your blog is currently performing and identify areas that need improvement. Once you have a clear understanding of your blog’s strengths and weaknesses, you can start to develop a blogging strategy with new topics for blogs and an optimization strategy for older pieces. Both of which will help you achieve your SEO goals.
Related content:
Content Creation Services With An SEO Focus
Need help with your content strategy, blogging or social media? We can help. Reach out today for a complimentary call with our team.
Updated: 7/8/23
