The question of how often do you blog need to be updated has been asked at least a million times and have also been replied a million times over. By blog gurus, gurus wannabe or simply by faked gurus who thinks they are gurus. One of the most parroted answer that you have seen a million times when you read posts about how to improve your blog’s traffic is “Update Daily!”
Other than the Update Daily advise, of course you will also read other good and time wasting advises like Comment on other blogs, Social Bookmarking, Article Submitting, Guest Posting, so on and so forth. While I do admit that some of these advise like commenting in other blogs does bring some direct traffic, most of those advises are quite ill and does no good in terms of really increasing your traffic.
Those who propagate these advises do not tell their audiences that the only benefit you get from social bookmarking sites or article submission are the low quality backlinks you will be getting, not direct traffic. Some might argue that, well, since backlinks will propel your blog up the SERPs, would you not be getting lots of search traffic then?
Oh yes, if those backlinks are enough to break you into the first page of Google Search that is. Have you researched how many thousands of links, whether low or high quality you will need to get to that page? Have you researched how competitive are the keywords you are using? Or do you even know what are anchor text keywords in the first place?
If you have and if you do, then you will understand why all those social bookmarking links and all those articles you have submitted are not bringing you any traffic. You will also understand why all those “XX tips that will bring you massive traffic” are all but bullshit copied time and again by bullshitters who do not understand the real intentions of people who does social bookmarkings and article submissions.
Somehow, I always get carried away and stray from topic, so let’s get back to the question of how often must you update your blog in order to increase or at least maintain your present traffic.
I too use to belief that if you do not update often enough, you will not be getting any traffic increase and whatever you have at present will leave and never come back again. To a large extent, this is true. Nobody wants to visit a blog once too often and see nothing new. Sooner or later, nobody will be checking out your blog again. Do you know the reason why? Your blog has become too dependent on social traffic.
Once you become dependent on traffic that you have garnered through all your socializing efforts, blogging becomes a stressful chore and no more fun for you. You will be trapped into a state of always wanting to please your audience. You feel guilty if you are not able to give your readers their 15 minutes of daily pleasure reading your post. You become their slave. You begin to think you are indispensable. That people cannot live without reading your blog for one day. You think you are a VIB. Very Important Blogger, that is.
Who do you have to share your gratitude with for putting you in such a dilemma? Why, your friendly neighborhood blog guru of course. He was the guy who told you to go socialize, go make friends, go commenting so people will know you. He was the guy who insisted that you should be updating daily or lose whatever you have. Go blame him, or them. They don’t suffer the same fate as you because they are busy getting others or maybe even you, to do the dirty work for them.
Get one thing straightened out. You should not depend entirely on social traffic. If you must, maybe a third of your total traffic is fine. These will give you some consoling comments if you can’t survive without them, to show that you have readers. Where should the rest of your traffic come from? From referral links and Search Engines.
If you update once a month and that post gets referred to by others, your traffic keeps coming and coming without you having to update for the rest of the month. Nail one or two good posts a month that hopefully will get picked up by others who refers back to your blog. The rest of the days, you can have fun with your blog like me, changing colors, re-designing the logo, rant a few and do all the things that having a blog should be fun about.
Of course that is easier said than done. A much easier method, be friends with Google. With him by your side, he will send you traffic even if you do not update your blog for one year. Of course that is taking it literally, but if you have some posts or lots of posts that attracts lots of Search traffic, you can spend many days a month again doing fun things that bloggers should be doing. Like socializing so you can become famous one day perhaps?
You can choose not believe me, but I definitely think you should believe Matt Cutts.
Show me the money, that’s what I say these days. There’s not much money in social traffic while there’s lots to be made in search traffic.
Content is indeed more important than frequency. You get regular, repeat visitors when you update frequently whereas you get irregular and mostly one-time visitors when you concentrate on the content. If you can do both, great. If not, stick with the content.
RT,
In true MMO sense, you nailed it perfectly.
Depends on ur niche and the topic you have focused on. Say me when I write articles I might add 1 every week.
However with the world cup right now I have to add 4 posts a day, every day to preview all games
Yea, sure can imagine it will be a busy month for you.
Hey Costa
I personally update ever two or three days. Having fresh content is a must imho but you have to save time for the never ending task of promoting your blog. Content is king and with each post you need to be targeting keywords for google. There are a ton of free apps and firefox add-ons like Seoquake and Kgen or Webceo that will help you in your efforts. You can pay 30 or 40 dollars for 500 clicks from ad-words but with Research, Hard work and Trial and Error you can get that and way more for free.
I could not agree with you more Costa that people throw far too much money at the lastest and greatest bullshit artist that can mastermind google and get you 250,000 google hits and a number 1 ranking in two weeks.
Follow those who know and work hard at it, It’s not all easy money. We are Bloggers so we need to read other blogs as well, Not just our own.
Philip Strickland
Could have gone on forever, Good job, Great content. Takes allot to get me going!
Well,, one post in two or three days is fair enough for a one man blog show. It will also help contain a blogging burnout
Those who get others to do the job for them (read~guest posts) can afford to be more constant. Then of course, pros with paid writing staffs can have more than a few new post today.
As a normal blogger, posting twice or three times a week will be just nice.
i have come across many sites on top of SERP with posts from year 2009. yes, quality targeted content is what your regulars come a-visting every now and then. blog design, i don’t think so. using logo is so passe. back in the 70s and 80s the use of logo was in vogue. talking about site design, liewcf tech blog is one good example. he is still using kubrick theme.
Lim,
Do you know the reason why those posts are there year after year? Do you think even after years there are no other better posts? No, my friend. If that post makes them money, they work hard to keep the post up there. They may seemed to be doing noting, but believe me, they are doing a lot.
Everyone thinks Liew makes all his money from liewcf dot com. How naive can you guys be. The money does not come from liewcf, that guy has tons of other Adsense and Chitika blogs that he never reveals. He is a very smart guy and he keeps a very low profile. There a reason to it.
Fancy logos and unique themes? Those are my fetish. They don’t make any money at all.
I believe that updating you’re blog depends whether you’re just blogging as a hobby and just want people to read whatever you write but if you’re doing it for monetary gain, I should say that you’re relying on organic traffic and quality of the content would be the key..
In a true sense, it should be organic traffic and the ‘relevancy’ of your contents that will bring in the money.
i did not say that liew makes lots of moolah with just his tech blog. i know liew has many other sites (in fact i know some of them). but what i am driving home is the plain kubrick theme has no “adverse effect” with his many readers. it is the content with the capital C. just like this blog of yours. i keep coming back to read is because of your content – informative and entertaining at times.
even if you would to strip it bone bare, i would still drop by to read its content or probably buy something.
Thanks, that’s comforting to hear.
Wow, and join the likes of Darren Rowse? I consider this a great honor.
Thanks.
Awww.. what a shame, and I was hoping I will be getting lots of exposure and traffic.
LMAO! I knew you did not read my other posts when you made that ‘invitation’
Again, you misread.
When I mentioned Darren Rowse it was because I saw in your blog that he too guest posted for you two years ago, so really, it was a great honor for me to be invited to sit along side him as a guest poster. It was not meant to be sarcastic or anything.
I am not comparing you nor am I qualified to compare you with anyone.
You sound offended. Please don’t be. That’s the way I am. You only need to read between the lines sometimes and not take every thing I write out of context.
Thanks for understanding.