Blog Frequency

[Studio33]

Hi,

We have a new blog, we write 4 blogs per month and have been posting all 4 in one go at the same time per month.  Would it be more beneficial to post the blogs 1 per week or does it not matter?

Also, is 4 blog 250 word blogs per month enough or should we be doing more?

Thanks

Andrew

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Andrew - You've received some great responses! Have any of them answered your question? As Dan mentioned, you can mark more than one response as a good answer

[essekia]

Hi,

My first comment here, so forgive me if this is too absurd.

First of all, on the matter of posting all 4 blog posts at once. Since you insist only upon the SEO part, I would suggest posting one per week as that would prompt Google to index your site at least once a week whereas posting once a month might make Google think- this guy posts just once a week, why bother indexing every week or every day . And the freshness of the blog at any point of time is more than when you post every month.

For the second matter, posting good content more frequently is always better for SEO and for conversion. If you don't have time to write content, you can always get original content by crowd-sourcing the process. Recently I came across this website called Iwriterdotcom which offers content for low as $1.25 with ability to choose different levels of skilled writers.

You can also try other crowd-sourcing platforms and also having guest bloggers is a common practice. There are so many ways to get good content. You can post an interview with an expert of your field. Or ask a set of 10-15 standard questions to a list of say 5-10 of your friends who are involved in your field.That gives you a lot of perspectives and opinions, which you can summarize and use for your blog post.

The list goes on. Getting quality content is limited only by creativity. Be creative and think of ways to get good content without much effort on your part.You need not always think of making up the whole content thing from scratch. Just steal ideas with some courtesy just like asking questions to the right people in the right way.

Hope this is of some use.

[djlaidler]

Hey Andrew,

I would suggest having a category regarding small business and news within your blog, yes... I would also suggest having a category for your product, discussing a feature per post loosely marketing it to your visitors. Have a section to discuss new features you are working on (if you are happy to do so), also request feedback about other features are of interest. Ideally you want a few different sections, this will offer you a number of ideas to write posts on, but also it will diversify your content.

As for "taking great content from elsewhere on the internet and adding it to my blog" I highly recommend against it. However, you can re-write the content (perhaps, combine the details of more than one post).

Duplicate content is a world of hurt you don't want...

Cheers,

Dan

PS> If your question is answered by any of the great responses above I urge you to mark it as 'Answered'. You can mark more the one response.

[Studio33]

Thanks Dan, great answer particularly about the bounce rate, this is not something I had considered.

As you are someone who is clearly experienced in blogging what would your thought be if I started to a) blog about small business and news that interests them (as these are my main users) and b) what are google's rules on me taking great content from elsewhere on the internet and adding it to my blog.  Is this encouraged or frowned upon?  If its frowned upon where do other website owner get there content from if they don.t have the time or skills to write it?

I am very very new to bloging as you probably have guessed and any tips from you would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Andrew

[djlaidler]

Hey again,

There are five main SEO benefits to running a blog, but writing it for SEO purposes you are only going to take advantage of three and in fact one that will actually go against you.

They are (in no particular order);

• Increasing the presence (size) of your size. A 10 page site with up to 50 blog posts a year starts to look more substantial after 6 months.
• Long tail keywords. The more you blog and talk about tips around your business, less common phrases and uncommon topics will be used to describe things and topics. These terms and topics will rank well due to there unique nature, driving more traffic.
• IMPORTANT Engaging content will encourage people to share it earning you the best backlinks of all, natural ones.
• IMPORTANT Engaging content will also have people read on. This will do two things, increase the average time spent on site and reduce the bounce rate. Time spent on site is monitored by Google by collecting data on when users click on your site from the search results, return to Google, and click on another. It is an important factor as is it not easily manipulated by people. Engaging content and good usability are the main ways to improve this. Also by improving your content it will decrease your bounce rate and you will have more visitors clicking on your product pages potentially diving more sales. Having uninspiring content will potentially harm your efforts as visitors will come to your blog and leave quickly, indicating to Google that the site is low quality.
• Freshness of content. Google will crawl your site more regularly with fresh engaging content. Fresh content on its own can be automated, engaging content can not.

I understand this is not an easy thing to hear (I pitch clients this all the time), but a quality blog is worth the time.

Your subject (online invoicing) may not be the most exciting topic, but there are still ways to making it exciting, think outside the box. Think of your audience,  you only have to make it interesting for the people who are already looking for online invoicing. Make it interesting for them.

Hope this helps.

Dan

[Studio33]

Hi,

thank you all for your great answers.  The issue is that the blogs are for an Online Invoicing website so they are not very interesting to read, they are for SEO purposes only really.  They are readable and natural and there for people to read, but unfortunately the subject is just a bit dull

[StevenHowe]

In addition to the 2 great answers form Dan and Matt, I would say: TEST!

But also: Define your objectives.

Then TEST some more.

Take a look at who is reading your blog now, segment them into demographics that make sense to what you're trying to achieve: are they social? What geographical location are they in? What languages do they speak? What other blogs do they read? Are they repeat readers? Are they a frequent commenter? Do they subscribe to your newsletter? Are they customers? etc.

Does any of this data match up to what you are trying to get out of blogging?

If so, great, carry on doing what you're doing and keep testing.

If not, figure out some strategy to bridge the gap, which may or may not include when you publish the articles.

[MattAntonino]

That really depends on what you're blogging about.

If you're blogging news, anything "hot" or any type of search that will hit the QDF (query deserves freshness) triggers, it will matter when you post.

According to Portent:

"The Quality Deserves Freshness algorithm favors fresh content over old content, but only for search phrases that are seeing rapid growth in query volume."

http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/agile-seo-using-qdf.htm

If you're not writing about something time sensitive or with a good number of queries, it depends more on your current audience.  Let's say you post 4 times and then nothing - people don't get into the habit of checking you.  As Google has told us that not as many people are using RSS readers, it's up to us to keep our name in front of readers to remind them to come visit us and say hi.

So by that rule, I'd spread them out - post on Tuesday and Thursday every week.  Call that the blogging schedule. Everyone will know that on Tuesday they need to come read your site.  Same on Thurs. They won't forget you're there but you'll create a pattern in their minds and win thought-space.

So focus on what you're blogging about and your readers, rather than pure SEO - how do you want the blog to be read?  (Some sites won't have regular readers -just search readers. In that case, if QDF doesn't matter, publish them all as soon as they're done. All your job is then is to get as much content online as possible as fast as possible.)

[djlaidler]

Hi,

It seems like you are running this more like a chore than a beneficial blog.

I would suggest posting when the post is completed (not necessarily all at the one time). I would also create content without being to concerned on length.

A blog should be a naturally occurring organic site OR component to your site. Post as often as you like, there are no rules to how often as long as you post occasionally to ensure fresh content.

Remember SEO is not simply a set of rules, focus on generating content to excite and/or educate your visitors and the rest will follow.

Hope this helps!

Dan