You are probably already aware of the fact that inbound marketing, through writing quality content, is one of the most effective ways to generate more website traffic and therefore more subscribers, leads and active clients to your business.
Today I am going to answer the question of how often you should be adding content to your blog for SEO, engagement and ultimately more sales.
One of the key mantra’s for inbound marketing is to blog often, and the reasons for this are compelling and the research is even more eye opening.
Higher Search Engine Rankings, more shares and more authority links
The main reasons as to why you and your team should be writing new blog posts regularly is to provide:
- the greatest opportunity for higher search engine rankings (SEO);
- more social media shares; and
- providing you write quality content, you are likely to gain more links from authority websites, which is one of the top goals of any SEO strategy.
More subscribers, engagement and sales
But when it comes to bottom line results, the reality is your company will be able to generate more traffic which results in more email subscribers, resulting in more engagement and ultimately more sales.
Statistics from Hubspot to put things in perspective
Here are some stats from hubspot painting a pretty powerful reason for you and your team to blog more frequently.
Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost three and a half times more traffic than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.
Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about four and a half times more leads than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.
1,200 posts per day – how are you doing?
In an eye opening article by Steve Rayson, titled ‘The Future is More Content: Jeff Bezos, Robots and High Volume Publishing‘, Steve outlines how The Washington Post now publishes 1,200 posts per day.
In addition, he suggests that the online marketing expert, Neil Patel, pushed out more than 800 articles in the last 12 months alone.
What was interesting was the volume comparison of social shares.
Essentially, the more your write the more your content gets shared, the more traffic that hits your site, the stickier your website in Google’s eyes and the better your Search Engine rankings.
Clearly we all need to blog more frequently, but in reality we all have time constraints.
So here are the top 5 ways to become a more frequent blogger and increase your SEO rankings:
1. Create a regular blogging schedule
Creating a regular blogging schedule is one of the best ways to remain consistent with your outreach.
Your new schedule will help you remain consistent and hold you accountable for certain content at certain times of the week or month.
A great way to stay on top of this is to lock it into your daily or weekly schedule as if it were a meeting with a top client. You just have to get it done.
Even narrow down the exact time of the day when you know you are most focused and productive. For a lot of business people, arriving in the office 1-2 hours before everyone else, provides the necessary quiet time to pump out a new article.
What is your ideal time of the day? Schedule it in your diary and make it a reality.
2. Brainstorm ideas with your team on possible blog posts
Even if you don’t have a team and you are on your own, brainstorming content ideas is one of the most productive things you can do.
Some of the tools you may want to use when brain storming ideas are:
- Google Trends
- YouTube Search
- BuzzSumo
- Run some competitor research
- Use a mindmap to sketch out your ideas
- Ask your client base
- Check out your FAQ section on your site and expand on some of those questions
- Ask your support desk what common questions they get asked
- Research the table of contents of relevant books in Amazon
- Jump over to Quora and see what other people ask
As an example, each of the 11 points above could be there own article that could expand to 600-1,000 words easily.
Personally, I love to use my Mindmaps and when researching content for videos, I use the YouTube auto suggest when typing into the search engine.
3. Always have a notepad full of blog post ideas.
I’m a big believer in the Getting Things Done (GTD) mindset, and one of the productivity tools is to always have a list of items you can start or move forward during certain times.
For example, you might have 20 minutes available before a meeting, allowing you to pull up your list of blog post ideas and start working on pushing a new blog post. Even if you add 20 minutes worth of ideas or editing, you are still pushing forward and getting it to the next stage.
Without having your notepad (Evernote is brilliant for those working from the cloud), it is easy to get stuck and not in a position to take advantage of a short downtime.
Once I have a list of ideas, I like to jot down 3 key thoughts I’d like to discuss in each article. Once I have the outline, I can then turn each headline into a question to get into the flow of writing (see point 4 below).
4. Start with your most frequently asked questions
If you are truly struggling with coming up with ideas on what to blog about, then start by writing down your clients’ most frequently asked questions.
This is by far the most useful thing you can do if you haven’t already created a set of FAQs on your website.
In fact, even when you come up with a series of blog post ideas, the best thing you can do is turn each headline into a question and then simply answer it.
The human brain finds it much easier to answer a question than just begin writing.
If you have ever found yourself staring at your blog post title and not being able to think of how to start, turn it into a question and see how you go.
For example, let’s say your blog post title is ‘Top 3 benefits of trading Forex’.
The first thing you can do is to turn it into a question.
What is the number 1 benefit of trading Forex? Then simply start answering that question. What is the second greatest benefit of trading Forex and so on.
I like to explain it to clients like this. Imagine if a client called you up on the phone and asked you that question. You don’t have time to go and do your research. As the respected authority on the topic, you should know the answer without having to think. It should roll off the tip of your tongue.
This strategy may work brilliantly for you. It takes a little more work, but truly speeds things up and helps get the ball rolling.
5. The more frequently you write, the easier it gets.
Writing is one of those tasks that for many is like pulling teeth. One client of ours refers to writing as ‘beating his head against the wall’ as he finds it that exciting.
In all seriousness, writing regularly will help clear out all the cobwebs and get you into the flow of writing.
Even if you just start off with writing your journal on what you have done each day. This is probably the number 1 way to get into the flow of writing regularly.
I wanted to include this quote, not to get you to think about a career in writing, but instead to hammer home the point that good writing requires more writing.
You are not expected to write as frequently as Stephen King, but build content writing into your routine so your mind gets into the habit of writing.
Promoting your content for better SEO results
On the Profile Booster blog, we like to write one article a week. But that really is just the beginning. You need to think proactively about the promotion of your content. The promotion of your content will account for around 80% of the overall success of your new blog post.
It goes without saying, but you must get your new content out there. It doesn’t matter what medium you use, but your new blog, video, infographic or podcast needs to get engagement.
Once you have written your content, your job is to begin promoting it.
Start by writing a few useful social media tweets and scheduling your content that way. On the Profile Booster blog, we like to use CoSchedule in order to schedule our social media posts. This allows us to promote our posts on a specific schedule for the next 30 days.
Which social media channels should you use to boost your SEO rankings?
There is no perfect rule here except to say you should be using the social media channels where your target market are hanging out.
If your target market loves Twitter, then be sure to create a few different tweets to get your content out there and have a few images to complement your new post.
Leveraging your hard work
Have you considered turning your new blog post content into a video? If appropriate, consider turning your new blog post content into a useful video.
Posting content to YouTube provides such a powerful backlink. You also want to include the video on your new blog post page. This provides your viewers the opportunity to consume your media by the written word or visually. Now you are providing the best of both worlds.
In order to rank, you need to blog frequently
So in summing up, the world’s biggest websites are blogging a LOT.
Your job is to find the happy medium. Speak with your content manager, take inventory of all your staff who can actually write content and map out a schedule that is perfect for you and your team.
What blogging schedule have you found to work best for you and your team?
