image: UrbanWomanMag

Successful blogging is all about posting exciting new Content isn’t it?  That is what everyone does if they want to attract traffic, build visitor numbers, and impress Google, right?  It’s a lot of hard work, but it pays off, right?  Well, yes it does, but how often must you post new and exiting articles to achieve your goals?   I have been blogging now for nearly two years, and I’ve been blogging my little heart out to build up this blog.  It’s been fun, but it is hard work, and I think I have been successful up to now.  But the pressure to keep producing high value Content is always there.  Over the life of this blog, I have seen how posting each new article boosts visitor numbers, or at least maintains my stats and prevents them dropping.

What is even more useful to know is seeing how not posting regular articles really sees you’re your stats graphs heading down in the wrong direction. Aaaaah!  Pressure!

Recently I have been thinking about this need to keep publishing, because a few weeks ago, I suddenly and unexpectedly became a full time student again!   Talk about switching focus!  So now, I cannot spend all day keeping this blog growing with well researched, high value new Content every few days.   I love blogging, but now I simply do not have the time to do everything I used to do.   But… this is an opportunity to share with you what I have learnt about the frequency of posting from my experience of building up this blog from day one.  That is what I did, and on day one I knew….nothing!

How Often Must You Post Articles on a New Blog?

Frequent new posts and articles are good, but only publishing high value Content is much more important.  Of course I am only talking about the sort of blog where the aim is to build traffic numbers with the aim of eventually making some online income.  That is how this blog started out, and it’s now beginning to make some money for me, and definitely more than just covering expenses. This month so far I have made $225.  I know that is not the fortune that the shysters and hustlers spin at you to get you to ‘buy my Course, or software, and you will make zillions in a month’. But $225 a month is a start, and real money in the bank that I have earned from ‘nothing’ – from just learning how to blog, building up great content, and recently starting to use Affiliate Marketing.

Side Note: the only people who make a fortune with those ‘get rich quick’ sales pitches, are the guys who are trying to sell you their over-priced products – with hugely over-valued (often worthless) ‘bonuses’ that just add insult to injury.

Back on topic:

New Beginner Blogs Need to Find Visitors…Somehow.

No one will ever come to your blog if you don’t publish High Value Content that people really want to know about.  Or, if they do happen to find your blog by accident (no one knows you when you are new), you need to be able to interest them enough that they stay for more than 10 seconds, maybe return again, or even tell their friends about this wonderful new blog they have found.  How do you do that? By only publishing Content that people want to know about – and that means CONTENT that people are either looking for, or find useful, or is interesting.

How do you know before you start writing that your topic is something people want to know about? Easy, check out:  Keyword Research Part 1 and Keyword Research Part 2.

You must provide Value to your readers – pure and simple.  If you do that, the people will come.  And when people come, Google notices and rewards you with higher placement in Google Searches and more people find you, and more people come – Easy… sort of.

OK given that your articles are all riveting, how often must you come up with them? I see from my stats that in my first 3 months of blogging, I published 6, 8, and then 7 articles per month.  In that time, using the Google Analytics stats (notoriously mean), I got 2 visitors in the first week!  How did that happen??  They must have got lost and found me by accident, or maybe they were friends of mine. In the first month I had a total 70 visitors, which I thought was quite amazing.  In the second month I had 137 unique visitors.  In the third month I had 197 unique visitors.

In the 6th month I had 1,426 visits, of which 1,135 were new visitors, and the average number of page views per visit was 2.17, so my page views were 3,094 for that month.

By then I had published a total of 36 articles.  I recommend that new bloggers aim to post 6-8 high value content articles per month.   More is better, but targeting Content to high ‘Searches per month’ by using keyword research is essential, especially when your blog is new.

There Is No Doubt That High Frequency, High Value Posting, Attracts Visitors!

In Nov last year, I wrote and published 14 High Value Content Articles.  I wrote a Guide to the Weaver WordPress Theme, which is the theme this site uses. I just kept plugging away until I’d been through all the Weaver Theme options.  So, in three weeks I posted 14 High Value Content articles, and my visitor numbers leaped.  Also my Alexa Rank improved amazingly.

On the other hand, in September this year, there were some family matters that occupied a lot of my time, which meant I only published one article for the whole month – yes, only one – it shocked me too when I realised that.  But anyway, the effect was quite dramatic.  All my stats graphs turned around and started heading south.

I’ve turned them around again by posting a few articles.  Not very high value, I’ll admit, but of some value anyway.  However, now that I will not be able to post as regularly as usual, I expect my visitor numbers to dip, or plateau, but not plummet. That is what I am hoping will happen, anyway. Why? Because now, I have a LOT of articles that attract many visitors to this site every day.  These articles are all done and dusted, still relevant, still useful, and still providing value information for Beginner Bloggers, and more advanced bloggers too.

Note: please continue to visit me here… and tell all your friends….:)

Posting Fluff Will Turn Off Loyal Fans & Turn Away New Traffic

There is one thing I will not be doing. I will not be writing low value, filler articles with weak or no content, just in order to publish something – anything.  If I have nothing worthwhile to say, I will say nothing rather than disappoint my many loyal visitors by posting rubbish.  In my reckoning, you are disrespecting your visitors if you start publishing fluff articles, just to keep filling the space, instead of writing ‘proper’, useful content.

Have you had the experience where a really great blogger starts to run out of original ideas or new content and they start to waffle-on about what their mom did last week – or how they are ‘restructuring’ – or how they are re-thinking their business model?  It’s disappointing, isn’t it – well I think so.  So, we will see what happens to my visitor numbers from now on, over the next few months.

I will not be abandoning this blog, far from it. I will be checking in every day, and replying to comments, and fixing glitches etc as I have always done.  But the content frequency will go down, but I promise you, not the value.  This blog will always be very important to me, and I will be posting whenever I have time to think about real and useful Blogging ‘stuff’ – I’m currently readjusting my brain to meeting Student Assignment Deadlines, writing academic essays (who would have thought….) and studying so hard I barely have time to eat.

So now you are up to date with my news, and I hope you will understand that I have not abandoned this blog when you see that new articles have become less frequent.

What? What am I studying?  Ha! Psychology and Counseling ….so pretty soon I’ll know how to mess with your minds…he, he….you have been warned….and.. when you need a bit of ‘sorting out’ you will be able to get special ‘mates rates’ for my psychotherapy services….but only if you sign up my email updates of course (just kidding).

Just click the link below, and in a year’s time or so, I’ll be in the business of Psychotherapy and Coaching – and you will get special discounts!  Now where did I put that essay……hmm…Conflict Management – tricky!

Take care, friends… What?….I’m going to be a shiny new counselor soon and have to practice the lingo!