Since the release of the Google Helpful Content Update last month, an algorithm that rewards content that gives users a satisfying experience, we’ve seen plenty of data showing the value of having genuinely helpful blog content for your audience and website visitors.
If your business operates in an industry that is frequently changing and has plenty of news each day or week, your posting frequency will vary from the average small local business. Everyone with a small business site, all the way to corporate-level organizations, will need to determine their posting frequency based on a number of factors that we will outline in this article for you.
This blog post breaks down the facts that will help you determine how often you should post in your industry and the types of content currently ranking well on Google.
What is a Good Posting Frequency?
Based on our research, posting content one-time per week, four times a month was a good amount for most websites before 2022. During this year and after the recent Google updates, posting three to five times per week became a much more effective way to see increased traffic from your content.
But, this number is not set in stone. Typically, successful sites that post the most content get higher rankings. A good example is Search Engine Journal, which posts on average 15 times a day, or Neil Patel, which publishes 2 blog posts per week.
Before deciding on the posting frequency, make sure to research your competitors. Identify the top ten biggest players in your industry and see how often they are posting content. Understanding this will give you an idea of what kind of blog content you need to produce and how much you’ll need to post to one-up your competition.
Factors to Consider
When deciding how often to post content on your website, there are several crucial factors to consider. These indicators can help you determine whether you should post more or less per week.
Content Goals
Your blogging frequency should be dictated by your business goals. What is it you want your posts to do? Do you want to increase brand awareness and attract new customers? Do you want to establish yourself as an industry authority?
Producing quality, valuable content tailored to your goals can increase your traffic and boost your brand reputation as a leader in your niche.
Audience Needs
Focus on what your target audience would want to read about and post often to satisfy their needs. Are they always looking for new information? Do they have a lot of questions on a certain subject that can stop them from buying your product or using your services? Answering these questions will give you an idea of how much weekly content you should provide.
If you are in an industry where people don’t necessarily need to read a lot of content, and the content you provide is extremely helpful, posting once or twice per week may help you increase your traffic. However, if you have an engaged audience and a newsletter with lots of subscribers, you should be posting several times a week to meet their needs.
Industry Niche
Some industries are more competitive than others. If you’re in a niche with an abundance of new ideas and resources, where everyone is fighting for the top position, you’ll want to post as often as possible.
On the other hand, if you’re in a low-competitive industry that doesn’t require up-to-minute information, you can allow some flexibility with the frequency of your posts, but only if your blog content regularly provides genuinely helpful content to your readers. High-value blog content is a must since Google is paying more attention to content authority and relevance.
If you are in an industry niche that doesn’t have a lot of blog content on Google, this is an ideal opportunity to get ahead of the competition. If you provide enough quality content you will gain authority in your industry and rise to the top of Google’s search results, making it difficult for others in your industry to catch up.
Available Resources
It’s one thing to want to add three new blogs per week to your website, but it’s another thing to get it done. If you have enough resources, meaning a team of professional writers who can quickly produce quality content, then you can post more frequently. But if it’s just you creating content, and you’re spending too much time on research and writing, you might not have space in your schedule to achieve your posting goals.
Orbit Media reports that most bloggers spend two to three hours on an article. Still, most bloggers spend an average of six hours writing a blog post. You also need to consider your review process and the time it takes to get new content approved and published.
You can always create fresh content with your existing resources by updating old blog posts or working with guest bloggers.
The Number of Posts Already on Your Website
If you’ve built a considerable library of content on your website, you want to make sure that you’re updating those blogs on a regular basis. But, more importantly, you need to create new blog content to rank even higher in search results. This way, you’ll have enough old content for Google to index and plenty of new valuable content for its latest update to promote.
However, if you’re just starting to build your content library, you will want to keep a fast pace at adding new blogs along the way. For some businesses, this might mean adding new posts daily or every couple of days for the first few months. This will give Google a wide range of content to link and can even help with your search rankings. Additionally, other sites can link their content to yours, which can improve your website’s off-page SEO.
Conclusion
Align your posting frequency to your content goals, and make sure your content is well-written and genuinely useful. Figure out how often you should post content by analyzing your competitive audience or by checking the types of questions your target audience is looking for on Google.
If your goal is to increase organic traffic and grow your business using your website, you want to make sure that you’re following the best content writing practices and keeping up-to-date with Google’s latest algorithms.
And finally, one thing we can tell you for certain is that no matter how often you post content, even if you have analyzed your audience, and figured out how often you need to post if your content is not truly valuable and accessible by all of your visitors on all mobile and digital devices, the content you spend your valuable time creating will not produce the maximum results you could see if you have the foundation and blog elements set up correctly.
Please reach out to us at admin@wp100.io to learn more about how content creation works and to find out what condition your website must be in for content to be relevant or helpful to you, so you don’t get penalized by Google.