Did you know that Huffington Post publishes over 1,600 articles per day? Don’t let those stats scare you. These folks have a full staff of writers and editors that cover many topics that appeal to a very large audience. Typically, from my research, I have found that most companies and consultants will say at a minimum once a week. If you are a small business owner and can't keep up that frequency, once a month is acceptable but make sure your content high-quality - even Google agrees with this one.
What does Google say?
When it comes to SEO, Google and other search engines prefer frequent posts to sporadic ones. However, high-quality content matters most and will rank much higher in Google than a ton of low-quality, high volume posts every day.
Posting for sheer volume does have some inherent value. However, if your posts do not rank high in quality, it doesn’t matter how visible Google allows you to be. Your content must be informative, well written, and engaging, otherwise, you will not receive a good return on traffic.
What about word count?
According to Forbes, blog posts containing over 1,500 words are 68% or over more likely to be shared on Twitter, and over 22% more likely to be liked on Facebook compared to shorter posts. On the downside, longer posts are more difficult to write, and often readers prefer shorter content that is easier to read.
In order to perform well in search engine rankings, a minimum of 300 words is all the content you need. Why is this? A blog post needs at least 300 words to incorporate longtail keyword research and other critical SEO optimization into content to be recognized by search engines to rank. We also recommend that you include your keywords in the first 100 words of your post.
Here are three great reasons for writing a 300-word count blog:
Easier to maintain a regular schedule.
Easier to read.
Shorter posts + greater frequency = more visibility.
So, where do you start? Here are a few tips.
Define your business goals and create a content strategy to attract your customers and engage with new prospects. In other words, define what your audience needs to know about your product/service, and don’t be afraid to use emotional marketing to motivate them to take action as a result of reading your content.
Track your social media channels and Google Analytics. Posting a blog post just once on your social media accounts won’t give you a huge boost in traffic so try and repost a couple of times throughout the month using a different caption or image. This helps in the longevity of your blog post and you may manage to pick up a few new followers. Search engine rankings on the other hand are much more stable. If you manage to rank on the front page with evergreen content, you’ll probably stay there for a while.
Solicit your audience’s demand and reflect on your resources. Email marketing is an effective way of distributing your blog posts through a newsletter or monthly update. Be careful about how often you share information and track your results. An increase in unsubscribes may indicate your sharing too much. A high click-thru rate validates your audience is reading and is interested. Don’t be afraid to ask your audience what topics they are interested in. This is your best resource for new material!
One of the key factors in blog posting is to keep your core audience in mind. These are the people who actually take the time to read the information you provide and will most likely engage with you when sharing your posts on social media or email.
Need some help getting started? At First Wave Marketing, we specialize in making digital marketing easy for our customers. Contact us today for a free consultation.