In this post we will discuss the importance of posting frequency and whether it is better to post more often or less often.
Building a Readership
Blogercise is all about building a long-term sustainable website that actually delivers something to your readers. We are all about building sites that people will chose to come to because the site is good, not because you’ve tricked visitors onto your page.
So, from a reader’s point of view the most important thing is not actually whether you post once a week or twice a day, you actually want to concentrate on posting quality content regularly. Let’s look at these two points separately.
Regular posting
Regular posting helps to build a relationship with your readers. If they know that there is a post waiting for them each morning they are far more likely to check their RSS feed, or pop over to the site every day. If they know there is a new post each Friday afternoon (a time when many office workers are spending a little more time than normal on the Internet!) then they will get into the habit of checking your site.
If you post very irregularly then they will not when to check your site. Perhaps every now and then they will think to have a look but eventually they will give up. Similarly if you stop posting for months at a time then don’t be surprised if your readership drops away very very quickly. I’ve learnt this the hard way!
If you can, post once a day, if not then pick one or two days per week and publish on those days. You don’t have to write the posts on those days, in fact I’d advise you to build up a small backlog to ensure you always have a stock of posts ready to publish on your regular days. Of course from time to time you might have such a scoop that you just can’t wait and common sense should always override any ad hoc rules you may have around running your site, but in general a regular pattern will help build up a readership.
In time you can change that pattern, although normally this will be to increase your posting frequency.
Quality Posting
I would advise not posting just for the sake of it. Sure, some well know bloggers seem to get away with posting up their weekly eating habits but 99% of us just don’t care about that stuff. If you don’t have a lot to say then start off with a weekly post until you get into your stride.
Google makes no secret of the fact that they want to rank good sites at the top of their search engines. So sure, there are lots of SEO tricks and tactics that one can use to make a rubbish site punch above its weight in the rankings but as time goes on Google will get better and better at understanding semantics – ie Google will read your site more and more like a person does. This will ultimately mean that it is the good sites that will rise to the surface and finally the ones that have played the game will sink into obscurity.
Of course we aren’t there yet and unfortunately getting to the top of Google’s results can sometimes be as simple as being the first to register a domain and less about having a good site with good content. But I think Google will only get better at this and if they don’t then another search engine will and they’ll gain ground. After all, we’ve all ended up on a site that is clearly engineered to make a fast buck and reached straight for the back button. Don’t be one of these sites.
By positioning yourself now you will be setting yourself up for long term success and creating a site that can bring in an income for many years to come.
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