Creating valuable content is hard and tedious work. Whether running a personal blog, an expert blog or a corporate blog (e.g. for an online shop), you certainly want to see results from your efforts. This raises the question of how many articles per month you should publish to make your blog popular. Today I will try to answer it for you, based on my experience as a copywriter.
How often should you publish blog posts?
In my experience, it is best to publish posts as often as possible. The more unique content appears on your blog, the faster it will start to gain traffic and popularity. This is for three reasons:
Firstly, the more content, the more keywords
Keywords or key phrases are queries that internet users often type into a search engine. By regularly answering them with articles, you will make your blog appear to more users. As a result, it will become more and more recognisable every month.
Secondly, Google likes sites that are evolving
Google’s algorithms favour sites that are frequently updated and enriched with new content. If a site owner cares about its users by providing them with the information they need, Google rewards this. By regularly publishing blog posts, you will make them rank higher and higher in the search engine over time.
Thirdly, by regularly publishing articles you are building a community
While I often emphasise that knowledge of SEO is crucial in promoting a blog, you can’t forget that our audience is humans. A blog is written for people – readers and potential customers – not for search engines. So don’t neglect your readers, but try to keep them engaged all the time.
The fact that it is most beneficial for a blog to publish posts regularly is obvious. However, it is known that it is difficult to find the time to do this, especially if you work full-time or run a business. So what is the bare minimum?
How often should you blog – minimum number of articles per month
There is no predetermined number of posts you need to publish to keep your blog traffic on an upward trend. You can add six posts one month and only two or zero the next month and it shouldn’t cause significant drops in your statistics.
Gaining blog traffic has a snowball effect. Newly published posts don’t pick up a lot of traffic straight away, it’s their power that increases over time.
So even if you take a month or two off from writing, as long as you are systematic in the remaining months, you are unlikely to feel any major consequences.
However, you must remember about your regular readers. How will they react to a break? Won’t they be disappointed and stop visiting your blog?
If you are planning a longer break, since everyone deserves it, it is worth adding such information to the blog. This way, regular readers will know what is happening to you.
However, the break, unless it stretches too far, will not affect the influx of new users from Google. Once written, a blog post “works” for success all the time.
In this respect, one can see a kind of advantage of one’s website and blog over social media. Blog articles, thanks to their positioning in search engines (if correctly optimised), bring in new users all the time and make them familiar with our brand. The lifespan of a blog post is virtually indefinite, as long as the topic remains relevant.
In contrast, the lifespan of a Facebook or Instagram post is very short and is estimated to be only half an hour. After this time, the post is lost in the depths of other content and is forgotten.
So how often should you post on your blog?
If you have plenty of free time, publish even daily. That’s when you’ll see the biggest impact. However, if your time is limited, try to have at least two comprehensive posts a month.
Remember that in order for articles to rank well in Google and gather traffic they should be properly optimised. Entries must have an SEO-friendly design, i.e. include an H1 title tag, header tags (H2, H3, H4, etc.), paragraphs, links, and metadata. The texts should include the keywords I mentioned earlier. So, before you start writing, you should check with the right tools what your potential audience is interested in and what queries or phrases they type into a search engine.
