Posting frequency can have a dramatic effect on the number of visitors your blog attracts. Does that mean you should post shorter, more frequent pieces and give up on the more time-consuming pieces?
Not necessarily.
I’ve been paying closer attention to my visitor stats, and I’ve noticed that days when I don’t blog, my traffic falls off considerably, sometimes as much as 50 percent. If I go for two or three days without posting, my visits plummet to maybe 20 percent of what they are during a “good” period.
You may say that’s intuitive, but I didn’t expect it to have such a drastic effect. After thinking about it for a bit and doing some reading, I’ve come to a couple conclusions.
The smaller the site, the more dependent it is on traffic from current posts.
I probably don’t have enough material here (yet) to attract lots of search engine traffic. My stats bear that out. I get very little search engine traffic; most comes from direct links. Larger sites that draw lots of search engine traffic are less dependent on the traffic brought in by the latest post. Visitors can find useful material on their sites, even if its months or even years old.
RSS feeds drive visitors to your latest posts only
Since I’m still unable to get feedburner working, I have to guess that many of my visitors are coming through an RSS reader. These visitors are notified by their RSS reader whenever my blog is updated, so they’re likely to visit soon and read the latest post. They’re less likely to browse through the site and read older posts.
Think for a minute about the sites you read, especially those you read via an RSS feed. Do you typically browse the archives of those sites? Or do you visit the posts that are in the current feed? For most people, it’s the latter.
Post post post I don’t mean that you should post daily, or several times a day, necessarily. Certainly each time you post you’ll attract a certain number of people to read your latest. However, if your users are used to, and expect, more detailed posts, they may balk at the short-shorts you’ll need to turn out to post more often.
If you can write good posts AND post more often, that’s great. Don’t sacrifice your post quality, however, just to turn out more posts. Your readers will notice, and it won’t do you any good in the long run.
Attracting the OTHER traffic
If posting more often can attract more people to read your current posts, then what do you do to get people to read your older material?
Post post post!
Yes, keep posting. Frequency isn’t as important here as quality of the content. The more content you have, and the better it is, the more reason people have to visit your site. If you have a terrific article that’s a year old, it will still attract readers!
Help people find your good stuff
Post a list of your best work on a separate blog page. Help readers to find your good stuff. You’ll note that I’m not doing this one, but you can look for it to become a feature of the blog soon.
Of course, you have to identify which posts are your best. Your stats can be helpful in that; check and see which pages are getting the most visits, other than your homepage.
You can also ask your readers for feedback on what’s been especially good. Alternatively, you can showcase work that you want people to find when they visit.
Include internal links
Include links to your older posts within your newer ones. This is one of the easier ways to encourage visitors to get deeper into your site. It’s also one that I don’t take nearly enough advantage of.
Some sites will even do weekly or monthly recaps. Depending on the number of posts you have, weekly may not be practical, but a monthly “best of” might be something to consider.
The first rule of attracting traffic is to provide good content. Post as often as you can while still maintaining the quality of your blog. Then, use a few simple techniques to encourage your visitors to delve more deeply into your site.
I’d be curious to know what others’ stats look like. Do you see the same sharp drop in visitors when you skip a day or two posting?