Quality vs Quantity

One thing that is for sure no matter what your blog situation is that quality is always more important than quantity.

Quality always wins.

If you pump out the content but it lacks good structure, lacks readability, lacks clear messages, lacks correct spelling, and lacks overall, people are not going to want to read as much.

You need to provide value to your readers in one way or another. Now what value consists of is  largely an opinion and depends on who your audience is.

Maybe you have a blog where you share funny memes, which some people may find absolutely no value in, yet your audience loves what you blog about. It all depends.

Find a happy medium…

That said, it isn't all about quality.

Yes, if you had to choose quality versus quantity, you should probably go with quality. It is better to put out one good quality post a week than scrap together two shoddy posts. However you want to find a happy medium.

Of course you don't want to spend days on end trying to perfect every bit and piece of a blog post.

How "good" your blog post should be is judgment call that comes from a bit of experience. If you are new to the world of blogging it may be tempting to re-read your blog post over and over again trying to make it the masterpiece you dreamed of. Oh, well maybe this paragraph should be moved here and this sentence would be more perfect if it was there, and so on. Don't spend a ridiculous amount of time on things like this.

It Depends Where Your Traffic Is Coming From

Something else that is going to make a big difference on how frequent you should be publishing is where exactly your traffic is coming from.

Is your blog mostly focused on SEO and getting traffic from search engines like Google?

Is your Instagram account driving traffic to your blog?

Do you have a massive Facebook following that is visiting your blog?

The source is important

If your blog is getting most of his traffic from search engines than there isn't really any specific frequency that you should be pumping blog posts out at. The reason being because people are coming to your blog after searching for keywords in the search engines… They aren't actually following your site and waiting for new blog posts to come out.

As I will go over in a bit, the search engines don't give a crap how often you publish.

HOWEVER, if you're driving traffic to your blog from social media then it is much more important. This is because you have a "following" that is waiting on your every move. They are following you for a reason. They like specifically what YOU have to say and you don't want to leave them hanging, waiting in pain and agony for your next blog post.

If you have a following then it would be best to publish on a regular schedule so that people know when they can expect new posts from you.

The same type of thing goes with email marketing. While it is different from social media, you still have a "following" so to speak. Your following is your list of subscribers that has consented to stay up-to-date with emails coming from you, which might be emails telling them about new posts on your blog, depending on how you go about it. 

But how often exactly should you be blogging if your traffic is coming from social media? Well… There are still more variables at play. Your niche also matters.

Why Your Niche Matters

Your niche is your particular subset of the market in which your blog is focused. It is your target audience that is, or at least should be, a group of people in a particular market.

The reason I say it "should be" is because it is advisable to choose a somewhat narrow niche, rather than having your blog be about every and anything. You want your blog to have a particular focus… Not just be some random blog that you talk about whatever comes to your mind. While that may work for people who are famous celebrities, most people don't want to hear a bunch of random ideas coming from some person who they don't even really know.

Do you talk mostly about cats and cat toys on your blog?

• Then your niche would be cat owners. But not just any cat owner, specifically owners that care enough about their pet to try to make he/she as happy as possible by supplying them with toys.

Do you blog about Little League baseball?

• Then your niche is probably going to be dads who have young sons that play baseball. Because let's be honest, the kids that are playing that young probably don't care much.

Do you have a blog about new women's fashion?

• Then your niche is going to be women that like to stay up-to-date on the hottest new fashion trends.

Do you blog about diabetes and weight loss?

• Then your niche is most likely people who have diabetes, are worried about the negative health effects that will come from this disease, and are wanting to make a change.

These are obviously just some very general and broad ideas, but I think you get the point.

How does this effect the optimal publishing frequency?

It can make a big difference. Some niche markets are going to be hungry for frequent content while others it won't matter so much.

For example: If your blog is about weight loss and you are trying to take your followers on a journey with you, providing them with tips and advice over the coming 6 months or so, then you're probably going to have to publish some pretty frequent content. But there are a lot of other niches out there that wouldn't require so much.

This is something you kind of just have to guess on. There is no right or wrong answer. Just think about your audience, as if you were someone following your own blog, and think about what you would want from it. Would just one post a week be fine? Would it be better to do two?

Google Doesn't Care!

I mentioned earlier that if you have a blog where most of the traffic is coming from search engines like Google, it doesn't really matter how often you publish.

Google doesn't care. Google doesn't give a shit.

Sure, publishing 5 quality posts a week that are going to rank well in Google and bring you traffic is going to be more beneficial than publishing one quality post a week, because obviously you're going to be getting more traffic by publishing more frequently and ranking for more keywords. But what I mean by "Google doesn't care" is that the frequency isn't going to affect your ability to rank.

And... Like I mentioned earlier, you don't have a following that is waiting for new content.

So in this case you just want to do what you can. If you only have a couple hours of free time a week then just publish one blog post a week. If you have more then do more.

The Google Ranking Factor that Loves New Content

There are over 300 (I think) different metrics that Google uses when ranking content. 

One of them is called the QDF, or query deserves freshness, ranking factor. What this does is gives new publishings an edge up when it comes to ranking.

So for example, a new blog post might outrank and older blog post even if it is not as good by Google standards, simply because it is newer.

This would make you think that publishing more frequently is going to help you out more. HOWEVER, this factor only comes into play if you are blogging about… 

• Recent events or hot topics
• Regularly recurring events
• Frequent updates

Most of us probably are not blogging about any of these things so this really doesn't matter.

Content Length Can Be Important... Especially for SEO Blogs

The length of the blog posts that you are publishing is also important. 

You don't want to fill your posts up with a bunch of "fluff" just to make them longer, but generally speaking a longer blog post is often a more valuable one because there is more information provided.

But don't get the wrong idea. This doesn't mean that every blog post should be crazy long. Your goal is to provide value to your readers and it is not all the time that a 3000+ word blog post is going to be necessary. It all depends on what you are talking about and how much length you think it requires.

I'm definitely not saying that a 1,000 word post is too short. Even a 750 world post can be fine at times. Getting too low will make it harder to rank.

For SEO

If your blog is getting traffic from SEO, as in getting traffic from Google, then there is an additional reason why longer content could be better.

The reason... Because you will rank for more keywords.

When you write a blog post and target a specific keyword with the help of a keyword research tool, there are also a number of other keywords that you will rank for as well... Google does all this automatically. It is Google that decides what the keywords are, you just kind of help feed the Google bot your targeted keyword when you go about your targeting for each post you write.

Since a longer blog post has more words, it makes complete sense that there could be more potential keywords to rank for.

So if you do run a blog that is focused on SEO then you may want to consider writing longer content, which means that you would likely have to cut back on your publishing frequency when compared to writing shorter posts.

But again, there is no set length that a post should be. This depends on the topic you are writing about as well as your audience. If your audience is on the younger side, such as high schoolers, then they probably are interested in reading too long of content. But if your audience is a bunch of Doctorate holding scholars, they might be more interested in more in-depth information.

Conclusion: The Answer Is There Is No Answer

So as you can see the answer to the question, of how frequent you should be publishing blog posts, is that there is no answer.

It all depends.

Where your traffic is coming from, your niche,, etc. are some of the things you should consider when trying to decide on a blog publishing strategy. And there are probably other things that might be worth considering as well.

But... Although there is no good answer I would still recommend setting a goal for yourself and sticking to it. This can be beneficial to your success.

Set a Goal - Ex: I'm going to publish 2 blogs a week

Not only might a consistent publishing schedule make your audience and followers of your blog happy, if you have a following, but another big reason why this is important is because it makes you accountable.

There have been many studies done showing that setting goals is important when it comes to achieving success.

If you just say... I'm going to publish a blog post whenever I feel like it… You are not holding yourself accountable and likely won't get much done. But if you do a little thinking and find that you should be able to have time to publish two blog posts a week and make this your goal, then you are going to be able to easily hold yourself accountable for such.

You've probably heard the importance of setting a goal with diet and weight loss. This seems to be talked about a lot when it comes to getting in shape, but it applies to a lot more than just that.

So set a goal 

It doesn't have to be perfect. Maybe you think you should be publishing twice a week but you are only going to have time to publish once a week. Just do what you can.

I know that a lot of people are running blogs on the side, with hopes to get them to generate some good income eventually, but as of now still have to work full-time jobs and such.

Just do what you can.

But anyways… I hope you found this post at least somewhat helpful and informative. I'm sorry I couldn't give you a clear-cut answer to the question, but it is what it is.

Blogging for Google traffic? This training will help.

Leave comments or questions below 🙂

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