How often should you post content to your blog or website? This is a common question that has been asked by all webmasters at one point in their career. This is also a topic that plagued me for years before I became comfortable with the advice I am about to give you. Fact is, there is no set formula for posting content. Post as often as you want or as little as you want.
I cannot give you the exact answer to how often you should post content. I can provide you with some useful information that has helped me and other websmasters determine how often to post. Hopefully these can be useful to you as well.
How often do your readers want content?
Since you run a website for others to read, the best answer to this questions should be “ask your readers.” While this is not always practical, take into account your traffic numbers. Are people coming to your website every day looking for new content? Is all your traffic new visitors or returning visitors? How long does it take for one of your posts to become stale (click rates slow to a crawl, social sharing dies down to almost nothing, etc.)?
These are all things to keep in mind when deciding how often to post content. If you give your audience too much content, they could think that you are churning out crap. If you give them too little content, they could become disinterested and start subscribing to a different blog.
Only post what you can handle:
If you are writing your own content, then make sure to space out your posts to something manageable. For instance, if you can post 2 times per week, don’t post 6 if you get some free time and decide to spend it writing content. This will be confusing to your readers. They may also get used to seeing 6 posts per week and demand more content from you, even when you go down to only being able to handle 2 posts per week.
Determine a number of posts that you are comfortable with writing. Then, stick to that number no matter what. If you happen to get some free time and generate extra content, schedule the posts for future dates. Overall, simply do not overload yourself with something you cannot handle. It can cause confusion with your readers.
To comment or not to comment:
You have the decision as a webmaster if you want to allow others to comment on posts or not. For posts where you allow others to comment, make sure that you are available to react in a timely manner. By this I mean make sure that you do not post an article and then leave on vacation where you are unable to respond for a few days. This is an extension of above (only post what you can handle) as you want to make sure that you can keep up with responding to comments.
Age of website and traffic numbers:
Let’s play the numbers game. If you are a new website and only post 2 articles per week, you will logically take more time to establish yourself than if you post 4 articles per week. If you are an established website and decrease from 4 articles to 2 articles, this could be a sign to Google that you are unable to deliver fresh content like you used to.
While these may sound confusing, keep in mind that there is no real set answer for how often you should post content. A general rule is to post as much as you can handle and your audience wants to see. Everything else will work itself out.