One of the most important pieces in the puzzle of blogging success not only depends on the quality of its content (or blog posts) but also relies on how often you publish those on the site.
So, if you are struggling to find out exactly how often you should blog to bring the maximum result, then keep on reading as I will clarify all the doubts you might have on the ideal blogging frequency.
I was told years ago when I was new to the blogging industry that bloggers should only focus on the quality of their blog posts, quantity should come in second priority.
They advised us that If we can write only one high-quality post a week or month, it is OK. But I have gradually understood, it is not the case anymore. The post-pandemic era of Covid-19 in 2021 has brought more challenges for content writers and bloggers. Writing one or two high-quality articles a month isn’t sufficient any longer.
Many content marketers are now publishing content at a rapid speed with more than 12 articles per month. Although, It’s not a standard rule and does not apply to every blogger.
However, the trends clearly show a clear picture of the quantity and frequency in which blog posts should be published each month to receive more organic traffic.
How often should you publish blog posts on your site?
According to various surveys, 11 blog posts a month is the average blogging frequency across all publishing websites irrespective of their company size. However small blogs with single writers should publish at least 8 posts per month to move the needle forward, otherwise could witness slow growth in organic traffic.
To be honest this is an oversimplified answer to this question. In reality, the question is much complex and needs a deeper explanation.
So the optimal number of blog posts you should publish depends on a lot of factors including the niche of the blog, the blog post length (as some topics require a longer form of an article), the audience type, the amount of time you can invest, and last but not the least, your expectations from the blog.
Every blogger’s content writing and publishing schedule is different. Some prefer to write and publish once a month, like Brian Dean from backlinko.com and some publishers like Huffington (usually, publishers under the news category) like to crank up as many articles as possible.
At their initial stage in 2013 HuffPost (formerly, Huffington) were putting out 1 post every 58 seconds. These are the two extreme scenarios and obviously would not work for all bloggers.
Brian Dean claimed that he got over 200k organic monthly visitors by putting out only 38 articles. That is roughly 1 blog post every 4-6 weeks. Although, I don’t like the idea of publishing less often (I’ll come to that later).
Various surveys on finding the ideal blogging frequency
Last year in 2020 HubSpot analyzed a large set of blogging data from over 13,500 companies to figure out the pattern in their blogging frequency. The result they come up with is very interesting and shows a clear correlation between organic traffic they receive and their content publishing frequency.
They said high-quality blog posts are the most important SEO factor in boosting brand awareness and search engine traffic. According to the survey data, companies that aggressively put out fresh and relevant content with over 16 blog posts per month receive 3.5 times more organic traffic than others who publish less than only 4 posts a month.
But, we also need to keep in mind that the majority of these companies have enough writers to spread out the workload. So, it might be very tempting to pump out as much content as possible, but that doesn’t work in our case. Because Google not only loves new and fresh content but also counts on the quality.
Google prefers fresh & quality contents
In my blogging journey, there was a time when I got the temptation of putting up as much content as I possibly could. Because many respected bloggers from the industry said so, at least back then.
But the result was not satisfactory, as I learned that publishing more blog posts significantly reduces the overall quality of the content. Also, more content doesn’t necessarily equal more traffic.
In fact, after the recent core updates from the last few years, Google is constantly prioritizing more quality content that is well written and satisfies the searcher’s intent. They call it Query deserves freshness or QDF, and it plays a major factor in ranking newly published content.
Thus, it is safe to assume that to make a successful niche blog we must put out quality content with enough quantity. By enough quantity I mean over 15 high-quality articles per month, as suggested by the survey data.
You just have to have good content with enough volume to rise above the millions of blog posts published each day. However, as the only writer of our blogs, publishing over 15 high-quality 2000+ word articles could be a little unrealistic goal to achieve.
Plus, most small bloggers are not writers by profession. Thus, the writing time they take also increases by a considerable amount. With all of the restrictions, one who pumps out a lot of lackluster content won’t see any good return on investment.
Without well-rewritten content, and without providing any value to your audience, figuring out how often you should blog is pointless. If you have the money to spend then surely you could, and should publish as much as you can afford, by hiring freelance or full-time writers.
Unfortunately, I believe most new bloggers who have just started blogging are not very capable of investing that amount of money in producing consistent content.
The survey result also shows some data on the relation of the number of posts a company publishes with its size. It showed that a company with more than 10 employees publishes around 11 posts per month.
But on the contrary, companies with 11 to 25 employees or even more also publish on average 11 blog posts a month. It seems like 11 blog posts are the sweet spot that ensures the volume it needs to get Google’s love without compromising on the content quality.
What is the least number of blog posts you should publish each month?
From my personal experience, I can tell you that publishing 8 blog posts per month are essential to moving the needle forward.
Otherwise, you will be witnessing a painfully slow growth of your site. Try to produce 2 good-quality content every week. I think with so much time in your hand, writing 8 high-quality blog posts should not be that harder.
So, here are some quick takeaways.
- The more you publish blog posts, the more organic traffic you will get.
- Try to produce at least 8 blog posts per month. That is 2 posts a week.
- Never compromise over quality, otherwise content quantity won’t work.
- Try to maintain a publishing schedule for better time management.
- Most of the traffic you would get on your site will come from the old blog posts. The content you write today will bring traffic later.
- Incorporate some call-to-action in your post. So that your reader could engage with the content.
How many posts should a blog have to make money?
All right, let’s be honest here. Making money with blogs is the main driving force for most professional bloggers. It is what keeps us motivated to grind relentlessly towards our goal of becoming financially free and live a boss free life.
Monetizing the organic traffic from various search engines and social media channels with ads or affiliate promotion has been the biggest way of converting those inbound traffic into revenue.
Therefore, one thing is very clear, more traffic means more profit. But, is there a way to know how much an average niche site would earn with its total number of existing blog posts?
Well, I think yes we could. Recently I came across a video from the income school youtube channel discussing just this. They show an estimated revenue that a niche site could make with 10, 100, and over 500 blog posts respectively.
According to their calculation and observation on the sites of their group members, it is pretty clear that 50 posts are the bare minimum for making any sort of revenue out of a site. The survey conducted by HubSpot I mentioned above, also analyzed the impact of total blog posts on inbound traffic.
The data shows websites that have published over 400 blog posts in their entire lifetime receive twice the traffic as compared to the sites with fewer blog posts. However, having a large number of posts does not necessarily mean more leads or paying customers.
Because there is also a considerable difference in how some B2B companies go after their content publishing frequency. The data shows B2B publishers that write content for business-oriented customers have significantly fewer blog posts on their site.
This is because of the in-depth research they need to do to produce high-quality content that could potentially convert the inbound traffic into paying customers. B2C informational blogs don’t need to produce such content. Take niche sites like Kivabe-Guide and others for instance.
We don’t necessarily need to conduct original research to write blog posts. Because we are not serving content to any business-oriented audience. Thus, we can put out blog posts that don’t demand much time to produce.
Another interesting fact about Google is how they treat new sites. We have repeatedly seen Google not trusting over a new site until it reaches a certain content threshold.
Usually, after publishing 50-70 blog posts, you could see a significant ranking boost and traffic. Publishing persistently seems like a trigger point for Google to treat content from a newly created site as a legitimate source.
This is where you need to take your current publishing schedule into account and restructure your content calendar to meet the goal as soon as possible.
Conclusion
Writing and publishing quality blog posts consistently might get a little harder for those with limited resources. But to succeed in this super-competitive industry, we must produce content with the right balance of quality and volume.
With so much information and advice, it is easy to get demotivated if you can not keep up with the pace most survey results suggest about the ideal blogging frequency. Even if you can write one blog post a month, it is still better than nothing.
Thus there is no exact answer to how often you should blog. Publish as much as you can, and don’t compromise over the quality of content. This is the ultimate goal we (small independent bloggers) need to be focusing on.
