How many blog posts should we be adding to our website every month?
Introduction
it’s a question that many businesses will have pondered over for some time, that’s to say a lot of businesses will have considered how many blog posts they should be adding to their website every month.
The reason for this is simple, writing a long blog post, let’s say 3000 words, takes a huge amount of time. Just think about all the research, the writing on the proofreading that needs to go into this work, it can be somewhat exhausting.
Now if the content marketing is being produced in-house, then this might mean that you are dragging a member of staff away from their daily tasks, to appoint them to writing a blog post which might take them let’s say two days to complete.
Now if you are publishing let’s say three blog posts a month, this means that a lot of working dates are being lost by your staff, having to write content marketing.
Why writing content marketing is a bit like running on the treadmill?
When we regularly visit the gym, and spend time running on the treadmill, a lot of us will start to lose weight, feel better and improve our general level of fitness.
However, the soon as we start returning to eating fatty foods, such as shoving pasties into our face, we can often see the weight starting to be piled on in a short amount of time.
And this is similar to writing content marketing, if we do a simply superb job, then the businesses search engine optimisation can sometimes drastically improve.
However, if the business the marketing company loses its motivation to publish good quality content marketing, then what can often happen is that the business search engine optimisation starts to go back down again.
So, writing content marketing, requires a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of researching.
And because content marketing takes up so much time, and often means that is the right at needs a vast quantity of strong coffee, most businesses trying to figure out how regularly they should be posting blog posts on their company website.
Well, we hate to say it, but there’s no set formula, there’s not a number of blog posts that a business should be writing. That’s because it very much depends on the level of competition that your business faces.
Level of competition
now let’s give you a brief example, let’s look it’s two very different types of businesses, let’s say one is a caravan park that is based outside of a main city, and the other is a solicitor’s practice right in the heart of let’s say London.
Now the level of competition is massively different between these two businesses.
The caravan park, might have let’s say 10 main competitors locally, that rent out the caravans to holidaymakers.
However, the solicitors practice, in the middle of London, well that is likely to face thousands of competitors.
People in London might want to use that company, plus businesses on a national and even international level might want to hire that company for its services.
Then we simply have the number of direct competitors, let’s say for a solicitor’s practice, there might be 1000 direct competitors.
So, you’ve probably gathered where we are going this, if you want to rank on the first page for caravan parks plus the name of an area, this is likely to be much easier than trying to get a solicitor’s practice onto the first page in a major city such as London.
That’s because the level of competition is massively different, with the caravan park you only have 10 businesses that are investing in search engine optimisation.
Therefore, the level of competition we would describe as weak.
However, the solicitors practice, there are 1000 direct competitors, so the standard of search engine optimisation is much higher.
So, this simply mean’s a company which is just getting out of the starting blocks, and by that we mean just setting up their business, and have therefore just had a new website designed, well they going to have to beat those competitor’s standard of search engine optimisation.
Just as a fighter, let’s say a boxer needs to move up the ranks, to prove that they are the best fighter, the business needs to do the same with their search engine optimisation. Now if you only have 10 businesses to beat, then this means that the scale of the challenge is much easier.
However, if you have 1000 direct competitors, well the challenge is much harder, it’s going to take you much longer, and therefore more content marketing is needed.
You don’t want to be drawing rough sketches, you need to create a masterpiece
this is the best advice that we can offer you, that is when a business starts to write content marketing, they are often solely focused on how many blog posts they need to create.
For example, they may spot that their main competitor, has been a very busy bee, they have published over 100 blog posts.
Now the business then enters the mindset, that their business needs to write even more than that, therefore focusing on quantity.
But here’s the thing, here’s our best advice, don’t focus on quantity, if it comes at the cost of quality.
Because you could be busy working right around the clock, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and writing blog posts one after the other, yet will this marketing strategy work? Probably not, because if you’re just churning out work, writing endless amounts of text, then this work is not likely to be quality.
And also drinking copious amounts of caffeine, while that’s not good for you neither!
No instead switch off the coffee machine, and instead focus on writing quality, don’t focus on quantity focus on producing the best work you can.
We do much prefer longform content
now when we first started, helping businesses to improve their search engine optimisation, it was the case that around seven years ago, that’s when we started, businesses would just be writing let’s say 700 words or less per article.
Now should you be writing articles which are 700 words or less now?
Well, it does depend, if the question can be answered in 700 words or less, then yes, most certainly that will be enough.
However, at the current time writing, which is in 2023, we are most definitely seeing businesses from across a wide range of business sectors, now writing longform content.
So, longform content, we would say is anything above 3000 words, but again you don’t want to be writing complete waffle, which will send your readers into a deep sleep.
Instead, even though you are writing a high word count, the work needs to be interesting, well-written, researched, and most of all useful.
So, whether you’re advising somebody on how to start the divorce process, how to build a summerhouse, all how they can polish their car, normally you can write a article, which is over 3000 words.
So here at this marketing agency we would say that Google’s algorithms prefer blog posts which have a higher word count.
But whether you are writing 700 words, or 7000 words, the work must be quality.
We are aware that we are starting to sound like a broken record when we keep mentioning that the content marketing needs to be quality, but it with very good reason, we want to help you. Far too many businesses actually add content marketing, which is low quality, content thin, poorly written, and what this does is it simply damages the businesses search engine optimisation, sometimes meaning that the business doesn’t recover for many years.
So, your business might have been let’s say position 20 on Google for a keyword, before you picked up the phone to hire a marketing agency.
However, if the marketing agency is not very good at what they do, that’s to say they talk the talk, but can’t walk the walk, well by adding content marketing, which is let’s say content thin, and the agency, might even use keyword stuffing, which most definitely doesn’t work, that business might actually end up on position 60 of Google, rather than position 20 it might have been a week ago.
So, yes you most definitely heard right, a business’s search engine optimisation can actually become damaged by adding low quality content marketing.
Organic traffic
When you create content marketing, a lot of the time the marketing agency will want to improve the organic traffic to that page all the blog post.
However, here is the thing, you want to improve the organic traffic through to a page or a blog post, but you don’t want to have a really high bounce rate.
The bounce rate simply refers to the percentage of people which come to a page or a blog post, and then leave straightaway without visiting another page or post on your website.
Now, we always provide the example of owning a shop, you’re going to want as many shoppers to come into your shop, but you obviously want them to buy product from you. You don’t want to put a special offer at the front of the shop, and then have a mass number of shoppers come into your shop, and for them to find that in matter of fact there’s nothing really with 75% off, so they turn on their heels and walk out the shop.
Now for some of those shoppers, they might be annoyed that they were enticed into the shop, to look at sale items, with 75% off, but in matter of fact you might be no products with that amount of discount. So that shopper might not return to that shop again because they were a bit annoyed that they were walking around the shop looking for discounted items that weren’t on sale.
Now this is kind of similar to writing a blog post, such as how to stop your dog pulling on the lead, and to have somebody come to your website wanting to read that blog posts for advice, but instead of being given advice you’re trying to sell them is dog leads.
So instead of giving them advice on how to stop their dog pulling on the lead, instead the marketing company instead have just decided to sell multiple different types of dog leads. Now as soon as the visitor realises, that the blog post doesn’t answer their question, they are likely to leave your website, meaning that the bounce rate increases. So, this can actually have a detrimental effect on your businesses search engine optimisation.
So the point that we are trying to get across is, if you’re going to write a blog post, make sure that you offer valuable advice, to your shoppers. For example, if that visitor has come to the website for advice on stopping their dog pulling on the lead, then offer the best possible advice that you can. Because they may go then to your product section and actually by a lead that you recommend for that dog.
Will the content marketing need to be updated?
This is a really good question, the reason for that is, you might have let’s say 100 blog posts on your website, but what happens when the advice that you are offering becomes outdated, obsolete and no longer useful to your customers?
This is why, when a marketing company publishes a blog post, they should also keep it up-to-date. Let’s give you a brief example, let’s say that you run a solicitor’s practice, obviously the guidance that solicitors offer, can change from time to time, therefore you should update your blog posts, so that you are offering the most up-to-date advice that you possibly can.
That’s because, if the information becomes out of date, then your website might start to obtain a high bounce rate, that’s because your customers, or should we say visitors to your website, will quickly see that the information, is outdated.
For example, at the top of the blog post, it might read 2017, and throughout the article you might cite newspaper articles, solicitors’ websites and let’s say other blog posts, which have all been written back in 2017, so the reader will quickly see that the information is out of date.
If the reader quickly spots that the article is out of date, they are likely to leave your company website, to seek more up to date information, from another solicitor’s website, therefore your solicitor’s website may get a high bounce rate, and as we earlier mentioned this can be detrimental to your company’s search engine optimisation, if your bounce rate is super high.
So, we would say, it’s important to write quality content marketing, but it’s also important to keep the information up-to-date.
Can you over optimise a website?
We always think of a website a bit like a car engine, and we are the tuning company, it’s possible to tune in engine so that you get much better performance. However, it’s also possible to over tune and engine, to try and get too much performance, and simply put some engines can’t cope and may explode.
With a website, you can most definitely optimise a company’s website, otherwise we would be out of a job, but you can also over optimise a business’s search engine optimisation as well. For example, some businesses start to see the rewards of investing time and effort into their businesses (SEO) search engine optimisation, yet, some businesses can get carried away, they can sometimes over optimise the website, that’s to say, they may see a sharp increase in sales, when the search engine optimisation was going right. Yet, if the company over optimises the website, and a lot of businesses can do this, then the search engine optimisation is going to fail, and the business will start to fall back down the ranks.
How can the business over optimise it website?
Keyword stuffing
we would say that a common mistake, would be to use keyword stuffing, what we would say is never use keyword stuffing, it’s an method that doesn’t work, it’s a sure-fire way of your business incurring a penalty.
But what is keyword stuffing?
Well, let’s say that your company sells surfboards, and you want to sell as many surfboards as you possibly can in a short period of time. Therefore, you start to write articles, but you make the mistake of mentioning surfboards way too many times, the sentences don’t read naturally any more, and instead somebody who is reading the work, will instantly see that you mentioned surfboards an excessive number of times.
This will result in a penalty, that is your business falling back down the ranks.
Instead write really high-quality work, think about the questions that people often have before the by a surfboard, such as what is the perfect surfboard for beginners?
If you sell surfboards, you are likely to have a strong interest in surfboards, otherwise you most likely wouldn’t be selling the product. So, you may have let’s say over 10 years’ experience, selling surfboards, so why not put all of that experience to good use, and right simply brilliant articles, which your customers will find interesting to read, useful and will help them to find the right product.
So, our recommendation would be this, don’t try and cut corners, thinking that you can improve your businesses search engine optimisation quickly, because when it comes to this form of marketing, you won’t see quick results, with organic search engine optimisation, it takes a great deal of time to see results.
So, you do need to be patient, you need to write high quality work, this is the only way that you will succeed in improving your businesses search engine optimisation.
Avoid being spammy
When we’re talking about spam, when not talking about the type this is made from pork meat, no what we’re talking about is a lot of businesses think that search engine optimisation, can be improved with next to no effort, so they try to use spam, such as spun articles, to try and improve the businesses marketing, this most definitely does not work, don’t use spun articles and we most definitely would not recommend using artificial intelligence, that is ai to generate your content marketing neither.
