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Must... Blog... Every Day... (A Case Study on the SEO Benefits of Daily Blog Posting)
"Must come up with fresh, relevant ecommerce and online marketing blog entries daily..."
"If only I could only... reach... my Utility Belt!"
Okay, maybe the challenge of daily blog-authoring isn't as dramatic as the struggles of TV Batman against Catwoman and his other foes, but hey, it ain't easy.
As you can see by my own blog-posting frequency at Timberline Interactive, we're not setting a perfect example. You know how it is -- bubbling pots on the front-burner need your attention. Even when you're ready to write a timely and important post, doesn't it pay to perhaps spend a few days refining and polishing it?
But new evidence strongly demonstrates the SEO and traffic-building benefits of regular daily posting -- that's every day daily -- are very compelling. In fact, when social media blogger Justin Kownacki reasoned that fewer, longer, more carefully written posts might be a better strategy for him than shorter, daily posts, he kept careful track of the results.
It wasn't pretty. His page views declined 36% in a matter of four months. His Alexa traffic ranking, relative to other websites, slipped from about 162,000 to over 245,000.
What Kownacki's data doesn't show is whether the fall-off was related primarily to declines in organic search visits, but that's the conclusion drawn by Bruce Clay in a related post.
The lesson here: Google and the other search engines are on a constant, minute-by-minute scouring of the web for fresh, high-quality content. Google treats blog posts and news posts as a special type of content, often rewarding them with high rankings right out of the gate, then (unless external links argue otherwise) usually letting them sink in the rankings as they age.
Also, there's value in timely posts that match emerging topics newly on the minds of web searchers. For instance, when I blogged months ago about the new "Google would like access to your location" message, I was one of the first to address it in a blog post. The piece garnered tons of traffic from people trying to figure out the implications -- and I'm still number one for such searches.
So, fellow ecommerce geeks and social-media folks, I know it's a grind, but brew yourself a fresh pot of coffee and roll up your sleeves. If your blog is worth writing at all, it's worth writing daily.
My personal experiment? starting today, I'm going to start writing brief daily posts (well, five a week), instead of my current every-week-or-so schedule. After a few months, I'll share the results, with a special eye toward whether the daily posting schedule boosts search-engine traffic.
Read more:
- Bruce Clay: Blogging for SEO - Strong Evidence Suggests Daily Posts
- Justin Kownacki: What I Learned from Blogging Weekly Instead of Daily
By the way, Kownacki plans a follow-up experiment: Blogging three times a week, in hopes that it's the happy medium that improves his personal workflow, and also has a neutral to positive effect on traffic. We wish him the best of luck and thank him for sharing his experience!
Comment
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Comment by Vincent Harris on August 17, 2010 at 2:44pm -
How do you define the quality of a hit? If you are searching for clients you want people to reach your blog on certain keywords. In that case, daily blogging can be probably very usefull. The other point you are bringing up is timing of posts in relation to emerging topics. I find that a very good point. Any experienced blogger will have noticed the value of a well-timed blogpost. Off course, blogging is creative writing, but isn't it great to discover that there are actually certain "laws" that rule blogworld. The question that comes to my mind now is obviously, are there any other laws which could help me structure my blogging?
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Comment by Robin on August 17, 2010 at 1:51pm -
That seems to be most difficult to measure when it comes to the tools is the quality of the hit that comes to the site. Not sure how you do that other than mean the length of time they stay on AND how many times that same person comes back which is impossible b/c we all use other peoples computers. I just get harder. LOL.
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Comment by tom funk on August 17, 2010 at 1:02pm -
Yes, Rajj and Robin make good points. Justin's case study leaves out some pretty relevant pieces of information one could get from analytics: Is it really search traffic that is declining? And can we measure the quality of the traffic, either by looking at bounce rate, or perhaps site goals like inquiries or sales? That will be something I try to address after my own little experiment plays out!
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Comment by Raji on August 17, 2010 at 11:16am -
Hey Tom, I was kind of along the thinking of what Robin wrote below. What is your opinion? Do you think those that were coming back were more visitors that were "sticking" vs. going to the page but soon leaving b/c it wasn't what they were searching for?
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Comment by Robin on August 16, 2010 at 11:39pm
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Daily blogging is VERY hard and time consuming b/c you have to do the research THEN write something compelling. You have to give to those that love to write (clearly I am not one of them). LOL. This is a a very interesting post Tom b/c I have not read anything addressing this issue. I would have thought the opposite of what the results where but proof was in the pudding. I wonder though if his readers where (after the drop) more of his foundation and core readers who will stay no matter what OR just search engine traffic that bounces.
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Comment by tom funk on August 16, 2010 at 3:21pm
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You're right, Robert -- if it's a strict question of quality vs. quantity, or if daily posting is going to drain the love of writing, there's no point. And if we attract only hit-and-run visitors via SEO, who never come back to read future posts, there's also no point. Maybe the happy medium will be four quick postings a week and one longer, more ambitious one a week.
Also, I'm optimistic one can focus on coming up with popular topics that people are interested in, and searching for -- without it being mere "blogging for SEO."
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Comment by Robert A. Burns, II on August 16, 2010 at 1:56pm -
I guess we all have different purposes.
Great post, Tom. I can't wait to see your results.
I think, however, that even if your results confirm your suspicions that more frequent posts do better in terms of SEO, I don't believe I will change my blog schedule.
I can't allow myself to blog for SEO; I have to stay committed to what it is that got me blogging in the first place: a love of writing. The minute I shift my focus to blogging for the ideal search engine placement is the moment that my writing has begun to pander to the whims of the Google spiders and bots.
Just my $.02 cents, however. I know that I'll personally enjoy your more frequent postings going forward! :)
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