Blogger working on laptop creating a blog post

Depending on where you look online you’ll see very different opinions about how often you need to update your blog.  Digital agencies sell SEO and digital marketing packages that don’t even include blog post generation as part of their services – so do you even need to have a blog on your website?  We’ve done the research and we’ve done the actual work and here’s what we’ve learned.

How Often Should You Post to Your Blog?

First, let’s answer this question: Are blog posts important or necessary?

Go away, I'm blogging meme

Well, you’re reading one now.  So, if this post didn’t exist would you be on our website?  Technically, blog posts aren’t necessary – unless you want to drive organic (non-paid) traffic to your website.

To truly understand why blogging is an important part of almost any internet marketing plan you need to have a basic understanding of search engines and how they work.  Search engines are somewhat simple in that they view web pages by the text or code that is placed on them.  They don’t “see” the images, videos and layouts that you and I see.  In other words, if your website doesn’t have pages that contain text then Google doesn’t really know what your website is about. Therefore, Google doesn’t know what products or services your business provides.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Okay, so all I need to do is create a basic website about my company, products and services – and make sure that my web pages have a lot of text on them, right?

Yes, that’s a great start!  However, Google has evolved a lot over the past several years and as part of that evolution it has focused heavily on making its search engine extremely difficult, if not almost impossible, to manipulate – but also on making search results useful to users.  I mean, why do we use Google? To find the things we are looking for!

Google has adapted its algorithms to meet the desires of its users and that’s why online marketing needs to focus on providing answers and solutions versus the old school methods of keyword stuffing pages in an effort to “trick” your way to the top of search results.

This is where blog posts give you and your company the opportunity to make Google AND your potential and existing customers happy! 

A blog gives you a platform to educate and communicate with your audience – and it does so by allowing you to use words, which as we mentioned above, tells search engines what your website is about and what your business does.  Boom.

Yes!  You should probably have a blog!

Informative, well-written blog posts tell search engines that your company sells widgets while telling your customers which widgets they should buy.  Win and win.

Alright, so you need a blog – but how do you know what to write about and how often do you need to write?

I don't know meme

Finding topics is easier than you think!  One of the easiest ways to come up with blog topics is to consider what your potential clients would type into a Google search. If someone were looking for products and services that you offer what would they search for?

Also, what would they type into a search engine if they didn’t even know they were looking for your product or service, but your product or service could help them?

If you can’t think of these topics yourself, then consider listening to what your current customers and sales leads ask you.  Answer those questions in blog posts.

Professional SEO companies take blog topic creation to another level by performing research on your website as well as your competitors’ websites. They use their findings to determine what topics are already being searched for and create optimized blog posts based on that research.  Frankly, that isn’t a process you want to try to complete yourself.

Digital marketers probably don’t need to know how to build the widgets you sell and you probably don’t need to know every technical aspect of content creation.

So, if you’re running out of content ideas because you’ve asked and answered all the questions you can think of then it might be time to outsource some of your blog post topic creation and writing.

Ok, you’ve got content ideas – great! But, how often should you update your blog?

Drum roll …

…according to blogging data from HubSpot’s 13500+ customers … the more frequently you post to your blog, the better.

Say what funny meme

That’s right!  Businesses that posted 16 or more blog posts per month received significantly more traffic than those that posted less frequently.  In fact, businesses that didn’t post at least 5-10 per month didn’t have any significant increase in traffic over those that posted less.  Here’s an image directly from HubSpot’s blog post about this topic:

Impact of Monthly Blog Posts on Inbound Traffic from HubSpot

Credit and full blog post here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks

If you have a few minutes then check out the post on HubSpot because it provides a lot more data that supports their conclusion.  It’s just too much to cover here.

It’s clear that you need to be posting to your blog at least weekly and it’s probably best to post a few times per week.  I’m sure you’re thinking, “Uhm, I don’t have time for that!”  That’s okay – we can help.

Sixteen blog posts per month!? Yep! That’s how often you should update your blog.

And, this is how you do it!

The most effective and affordable way to generate a high volume of consistent blog posts is to outsource at least some of the topic and content creation.  Here at ClickFirst, we even outsource 50% of our blog writing – and it’s our job to write blogs!  Seriously.

Do you want to hire one person who sits in a cubicle researching your competitors and keywords, creating topics and writing?

If not, you need to consider outsourcing.  You will never affordably produce the amount of content you need in order to stay competitive in digital marketing without paying an outside expert to handle some of it for you.

Of course, there are plenty of topics that only you or your employees can write about effectively.  No one knows your business like those people who are a part of it.  So, it’s probably not wise to completely abandon writing your own posts, but by using a blog creation service (like ours – which you can learn about here) you can affordably and efficiently keep your blog updated and keep the inbound traffic to your website flowing and growing!