The Right Frequency for Blog Posts: How Often Should You Publish

Once a day? Once a week? Or only once a month?

How often you should publish a blog on your blog is certainly one of the most controversial questions among bloggers.

Because the quantity of articles you are going to publish in a certain period of time will have lots of consequences for your blog.

And also in your personal organization. The more you’re going to publish new blog posts, the less time you’ll have to do the rest.

So what is the right frequency of blog posting? 

Posting more, brings you more

It is natural to think that posting more blog posts will increase mechanically the number of visits on your website.

A study from HubSpot has shown that  websites publishing 16 articles by month receive 3 to 5 times more traffic than those who publish between 1 to 4.

Again, it looks logical. If you provide more information, you’ll be more likely to gain new visitors as you can reach more people interested in what you’re saying.

→ more articles = more possibilities to visit your blog = more visitors

But is it that simple? Of course no: the formula is limited.

It’s not because you’re publishing 50 articles a month and another blogger 10 that you’ll receive more visitors?

Why? Because in blogging, quantity isn’t the only key criteria.

Constant quality is required

Posting more, will bring you more, it is said earlier. But it does not mean that to have a successful blog you should publish every day.

The most difficult part in blogging is not really about the number of articles you can write and publish every day.

In one afternoon, you could easily write 4 articles if you wanted to. However, what would be the quality and relevancy of those?

Posting lots of articles of poor quality, will be more harmful to your blog than posting fewer articles of great quality. 

Your audience will stop going to your website because even though you are talking about a topic that is interesting to them.

They would know already that you won’t answer the problem well because your articles are usually too shallow.

Plus, Google is always improving its SEO algorithms to better assess the quality of your articles. So, you might think that you will go up in SEO by publishing a lot, but on the contrary, you might score very low in SEO because of the poor quality content you are offering.

I usually publish once a week. I could post more but I guess having this content calendar gives me enough time to write something with enough quality. 

Plus, I can allocate my time to do other things that I like in my blogging journey. Setting up partnerships with brands, doing public speaking, and taking care of my travel vlog channel, etc.

I also like writing around 1,500 to 3000+ words articles because the topics I am dealing with cannot be answered with a tweet. 

If it is not needed to write a long article because you don’t have that many interesting things to say or because the question can be answered quickly. 

Well, don’t waste your time and your readers’one. Just tell the information and your reader will be happier to have it fast. We will all thank you for answering shortly.

Make sure to subscribe if you want to know when I will be publishing a new article.

The frequency of publication depends on your blog topic

Depending on your blog topic, the frequency of your posts can vary a lot. 

Let’s say you have a blog that gives news of lifestyle icons. Well, because of the various things that can happen to them. It is much easier to create articles every day about this particular topic.

However, if your blog is about a very precise niche or requires professional competencies to deal with the subject. 

That offers less possibilities of writing about it. Publishing often new content will not be easy because the information could be dense and would take days to compile it. Then several days again to popularize it to your audience.

You are a psychologist. On the side, you love writing and you decide to set up a blog to give great advice to your readers. 

But because you are tackling mental health and the consequences of bad information would be disastrous to your audience. You will need more time to verify your sayings and publish your articles. 

Let’s say your blog is about agricultural bioengineering. You want to teach people how to produce their food at home with the highest quality to create greater environmental impact.

Your articles will be very specific and will attract a very specific audience. Which I am sure will ask for great quality content. 

And sustaining such a high level of content will consequently impact your blog post’ frequency.

But should you care because you are not posting every day like other blogs? No, not at all. 

This does not mean at all that your blog won’t be successful. On the contrary, you will have better readers. Looking for useful and rich content that you are going to provide them.

So, they will trust you more because you have done the work of providing quality content and you will be able to connect with them more.

And you will earn greater revenues thanks to partnerships, online products that you are going to sell, coaching with readers who want to get your expertise, etc. 

Focus on the quality of your articles, so that you can express your expertise and bring more depth to your work.

So, right from the beginning, select a great topic for your blog (you can read this article if you need help). 

The topic should be large enough so that you can often publish new content about it. And narrow enough, so that you can be an expert and target a specific audience.

My topic is about Online Business (large topic), I write about Blogging (niche topic) and I can write years about it without running out of ideas.

I also choose to narrow my topic to blogging as a business in the Philippines so that people can easily identify my blog and I’ll be seen as an expert in my field.

Which means that the next time someone is looking for advice about blogging, they will come to my blog. 

Plus, it helps me target the people I am writing for and in a virtuous circle, will help me to create better posts for them.

My audience is: people from the Philippines or English speaking countries with great interests in online business, digital marketing and blogging. 

They are self-employed, employed, freelance or part-time millennials or older. Maybe working in the marketing industry, creative, or have a business and want to go online with it.

And they want to create their own blog and earn revenues from it.

I write for them, I write for you. And the quality they are waiting for, should matter much more than the frequency of my blog posts.

Post often for your SEO

However, with my long advocacy of the quality over quantity. 

I am still encouraging people to post as much as they can. Only if they keep a certain level of quality.

It is known that search engines such as Google enjoy the consistency and the freshness of content on a website. 

Which is why one of the key successes in blogging is to publish new content regularly. 

The more, you’ll be publishing new articles. The more, there’ll be information on your website. And the more, search engines would know that your website is still active and being updated.

Which is going to attract more visitors and therefore, improves your traffic and SEO.

Website with tons of traffic will be most likely pushed in the first results by Google, working like a virtuous cycle.

I have already talked about SEO but if it is your first time hearing it, you can read this: Basics of SEO.

Another tip, rather than publishing new content, you could just update your old posts.

Keeping the freshness of your content throughout the time by updating it regularly is very important (when it’s relevant to do so, of course). 

A web page that encounters changes from time to time would be better seen by search engines than those which are less updated.

So, more than just publishing your blog posts. You’ll need to update some of them from time to time.

It’s maybe a lot of workload but it’s terribly effective in the long-term.

Use Social Media for your Blog Posts

Publishing articles on your blog also means relaying them on your social networks.

This is critical because social media are powerful channels to promote your content.

However, every social network has its own rules.

You’re not going to publish your content on Facebook as much as you would do on Twitter.

Based on Coschedule blog, here are some numbers that could help you out:

• Facebook: 1 post per day;
• Twitter: 15 tweets per day;
• Pinterest: 11 pins per day;
• Linkedin: 1 post per day;
• Google+: 2 posts per day;
• Instagram: 2 posts per day;

Those numbers are recommendations and should be applied carefully.

But, they express well the philosophy behind each platform. For example, Facebook doesn’t really like the overbid of posts whereas Twitter is the founder of those.

More than that, posting a new post with a new article every day would be impossible as an individual blogger.

So, it is best to post alternative content that would help your social media accounts being active without having the need of publishing a new article.

By alternative content, I mean infographics, pictures of your achievements, little news and updates that happen in your field or in your industry.

You could even post something from a blogger you admire and deals with the same topic as you, etc.

Which is why bloggers used some pictures, captions, memes or other types of short content. It allows them to keep some activity on their social media.

Keep in mind that: it is better to be consistent and publish one post every 2-3 days rather than posting 5 the same day and nothing much after.

In the end, how often should you publish a new post?

You got it: there’s no perfect answer to that.

Publishing fifteen articles per month or more, would help you build a performing blog. Combining with SEO techniques, that will be constantly boosted by the freshness of its content.

But this is a strategy that requires a strong investment of your time to ally quality and quantity.

In the end, the most important is: being consistent.

It’s best to publish 5 great and awesome articles per month and keep this rhythm for the long run. Instead of targeting 20 articles per month, not respecting your calendar and even, rushing them.

I hope you found this article useful, don’t hesitate to ask more questions in the comment below 🙂