It’s no secret that blogging is good for business. Creating quality blog content is a tried-and-true tool for driving organic traffic, raising brand awareness, and showing Google that you’re a leader in the industry. Of course, this often leads marketers to ask a very simple question – how often do I need to blog?

Unfortunately, simple questions don’t always have simple answers. It may seem like basic logic that the more posts you publish, the more potential traffic you can get. The problem is that publishing more posts won’t guarantee that you’ll do well – in fact, too many blog posts can create some unexpected problems.

Consistent content creation is a necessary part of a successful content marketing strategy, but the exact frequency of blog posts isn’t the same for every business. It’s time to weigh a few different factors that impact just how often you should be publishing posts.

4 Steps to Figuring out How Often You Should Blog for SEO

When you wonder how often you should Write blog posts, it’s time to ask a few more questions. There are a variety of factors that can impact just how much time and effort you need to dedicate to content creation.

What are your goals?

Before you start churning out high-quality content, it’s important to consider exactly what you want to accomplish. As we said before, you might have a few goals in mind:

• Grow organic traffic
• Build brand awareness
• Support social media networks
• Create opportunities for backlinks

Each of these goals can influence how often you post. It won’t be a surprise to find out that frequent Posting will generally support all these goals.

In an ideal world, you would be able to build out an editorial calendar chock full of stellar pieces of content and blog every day. Posting good, quality content multiple times per week will likely endear you to search engines and give your social channels more to love. The problem is that you also need to weigh your lofty goals with the next factor.

Do you have the resources to support frequent blogging?

You only have so much time, so it’s important to be realistic about how often you can post. Big companies with massive marketing staffs have the means to churn out multiple posts per week, but the average business doesn’t have the means to blog every day (or sometimes even every week).

It’s important to be realistic about the amount of content creation your team can handle. This factor alone can put a cap on how often you can blog – if you can only handle one new post per week, don’t overextend yourself at the cost of quality or employee burnout.

You also need to weigh your other digital marketing efforts as well. Just because you can dedicate all your team’s time to blogging doesn’t mean you should. Most digital marketing campaigns include a combination of content, paid, email, and other efforts to create a comprehensive plan to support all your goals.

It’s also important to consider when you want to achieve some of your goals and how your resources support that. Blog posting is more of a long-term investment since it can take three to six months for Google to index and rank content – and sometimes it takes even longer. If you need more immediate results, you’ll probably want to dial back on posts and shift resources elsewhere.

What does your target audience want to know?

You can write a lot of blog posts, but they won’t be very effective if you don’t take your ideal readers into consideration. Every post should provide value to your target audience, so don’t try and pump out more content just for the sake of hitting your ideal blogging frequency. It’s important to justify each post by asking yourself a few questions first:

• Does the topic in question address a particular subject that ties into your products or services and helps them head further down the sales funnel?
• Does the post address a change in your niche or industry?
• Will your readers feel like they gained valuable information and had their questions answered?
• Is there enough search volume or general interest to justify writing about this topic?

If you can successfully answer yes to those questions, you’re still coming up with valuable topics and probably aren’t posting just for the sake of posting.

Your competition can also play a role in how often you post. Some industries are less invested in blogging, which can mean a few blog posts a month can go a long way. Other competitors may post a lot of good, relevant content, meaning that you may need to up your posting frequency to keep up, and hopefully surpass, your rivals.

Do you always need to write new posts?

Sometimes the best question isn’t how often should you write new blog posts, but how often should you update your blog? Google loves new content, but there’s plenty of value in writing and maintaining evergreen content that’s built to last. In fact, Backlinko even lists page age as one of Google’s 200 ranking factors because “although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page.”

Long story short, updating posts should be a key part of an ideal blogging strategy. This scenario is a win-win because an update can help you hit you content quota without taking quite as much work as a brand-new post. A blog audit can help you identify which content is performing best, which posts need a boost, and where to focus your content efforts in the future. From there, you can start updating posts to complement your blog posting efforts and maximize your potential for digital success.

What’s the Perfect Blog Frequency?

Unfortunately, there is no perfect blog post frequency. There are too many variables to pick out a single number. Depending on your business, a single post per month can be the right number based on your audience, your resources, and your current needs.

The good news is that whatever cadence you pick isn’t set in stone. You can always adjust your content calendar to accommodate your needs, whether you need to scale back or post more. No matter what you initially decide, it’s important to face one simple truth – your posting frequency doesn’t matter if you don’t create valuable content. Make sure to focus on blog posting best practices to maximize the impact of each piece of content.

• Write with your target audience in mind. Don’t feed them filler info and make sure you answer their questions.
• Integrate intent-based keywords into posts to optimize your post to rank well on Google for valuable keywords.
• Write for humans, not robots. Invest in quality writing instead of simply shoehorning as many keywords in your content as possible.
• Add relevant internal and external links that support your points.
• Write posts that are as long as necessary to thoroughly and effectively address your topic and your readers’ expectations.

Of course, blog posts can’t help your business if you don’t have the resources to write them. Whether you don’t have the team in place or need a team that can create compelling content, it’s time to talk to Aztek. Contact us today to about your content marketing needs or any other digital marketing support.