How Often Do You Need To Update Your Blog

How often should I blog?

Frequently, but updating your blog posts is better in my opinion!

I get asked this daily question:

Or,heya Jen, how often should I update my blog posts?

The most common question I'm hearing for SEO in 2021.

The simple truth:

The more frequently, the better!

This tip is crucial for SEO in 2021.

Blogging frequency is so important, I included it in my Top 5 SEO Tips.

If you're not updating old content, you're missing out on traffic.

It really is plain and simple as that!

Why I now prefer updating my old content than posting new blog posts

You put a lot of time writing your blog posts and not all, but many are your bread and butter for getting traffic on your website! These top ranking blog posts slowly lose their appeal in google search results.

Perhaps you've had a blog post that was getting a thousand views a day from google search results, but now it only receives less than thirty! You can refreshen these blog posts and make them great again!

It's actually easier than thinking 🤔 of new content for a new blog post.

A word from the wise. Make sure you're not bogging the same content.

Beware of keyword cannibalization!

What's keyword cannibalization? When you're writing multiple blog posts/pages that are competing against each other. If you have too many pages that are cannibalized, it will slowly poison your website. Google does not know what to rank and your site gets "watered down" for the authority of the topic. I had a client that hired someone to blog for their website and after years of duplicate content, the entire website fell from search rankings from the first page to the fifth etc. I took a look at his site and saw that the person that was blogging for them was lazy and just copying old posts from years ago and publishing them as new. Very sneaky, lazy, and unethical! However, the client confronted the blogger and she promised to stop duplicating old content. I checked on the site in the near future and the blogger was still doing it!

Related Post: How to Update and Refresh Meta Titles and Descriptions FAST

Besides, the blog posts that were getting a lot of traffic were from posts you put a lot of effort into and probably enjoyed writing,

Here's my analogy of blog freshness

Did you know your blog freshness and SEO go hand in hand?

You need lots of great high quality content and it needs to be pruned like a rosebush 🌹 by updating the content, adding new information, not just creating new blog posts.

Don't let your rosebush become overgrown and uncared for 🥀 .

(Did you like my analogy? Hopefully if you do have rosebushes and a green thumb, you go out and tackle that chore today too. – wear gloves🧤)

If you want to drive traffic to your site I'll tell you the trick for combiningblogging frequency for SEO benefits. (below) 😃

It's true, blog posts that rank well in Google have these five traits in common:

Blog updated often
High-quality content
Sharable content
Fast loading
Mobile friendly
In-depth content
Great user experience

If your blog has all 7 of these characteristics, your blog is going to be booming with traffic! Unfortunately, these 7 traits take a lot of work to make happen.

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Just getting "into the mood for blogging" can sometimes be your biggest obstacle!

Just dive in there 🏊‍♀️ already!

Content to add to old blog posts:

Just adding new content is great. 👍 Adding updated content that's newsworthy is even better! The recommendations below not only update your content but also enrich it for a better user experience. I recommend you add some of the following that may apply to your blog post or page:

Images – maybe an update on your progress using a product
FAQ Schema – Adding new relatedquestions with answers
In-depth content – Naturally sprinkle in related keywords
Videos – Embed your Youtube Videos into the related content
Add a story – If appropriate write why you wrote this post
Add related links to higher authority sources
Add bullet points – such as what you're reading 😉
Add H2, H3, H4, tags to break up your text and add readability
Freshen up theMeta description

Related: Free WordPress Plug-ins to Speed up your Blog

You need to blog as often as you can (keeping quality in mind)

Don't blog for the sake of having a new post

As a matter of fact, STOP publishing short blog posts. Google calls short blog posts "thin content". There's not much text for google to "grab on to" and analyze. Adding more text creates a more in-depth blog post, making you look like an expert! Not only that, but your content also becomes more trustworthy too!

When someone finds your blog post that answers their question and many more related questions, they may actually bookmark and share your page.

If your blog post does not have all five traits, you're just going to be wasting your time and your dedicated reader's time. Your blog post most likely won't rank well in google either.

When you take the time to write a new blog post, you want to make sure it lands on google's first page. Taking your time to write a well-written blog post that someone will actually learn something from and want to share – that's your best bet. If you can make this happen, run wild and update daily! If you can't, take your time with your blog post, even work on it throughout the week to develop the blog post into that high-quality slam dunk.

How often you should update your website's blog

Related: How to Add SEO to your Blog Post

The trick for combining frequent blog post updates For SEO benefits

It can be overwhelming cranking out a fresh new blog post every day, so don't! Just rewrite/update the old ones. I have some tips on how you can combine a frequent blog post strategy for maximum SEO benefits.

Blog about one mainkeyword and naturally add long-tail keywords – Let your blog post have one specific question and answer it from all aspects. This helps you concentrate on one topic rather than getting overwhelmed about sub topics.
Link to related content in your blog post – If you have a blog post about "How to use instagram for your local business" write another blog post "10 Creative ways how to use instagram for your business." Now link these blog posts together and you're cooking with fire!
Go "in depth" on one topic – As you see on this blog I have many posts about instagram, this casts a wider net for SEO. The more content I have about the topic, gives me my website authoritative points for being a social media maven.

Why You're Not Getting Search Engine Traffic

Related: 10 Reason's why you're not getting Google search engine traffic

Freshness?

Websites that update often, (once a week) sends a ranking factor to Google to come back and crawl your content regularly. This can help your other blog posts gain momentum and boost their ranks. I have also experimented by slightly rewriting an old blog post and republishing it – changing the time stamp. The blog post that was once old was new again and gaining lots of blog traffic like it once did.

Stale content?

Yuck! 🤢 Who left that blog post in the refrigerator for two years?

Ya, it's kinda like that. Joking. Ok I admit that analogy was lame.

You need to take those blog posts out of the refrigerator and make meals out of them or throw them away (delete them if they're outdated and not helpful)

Blogs that have not updated in a long time (1 year or more) usually see a decline in blog ranks. However, this is not the case if your content is being shared on social media! If you're constantly promoting your content, you might even see an increase in traffic.

I hope I helped answer how often you should blog for your business. Remember, the more high quality content you have, the better chances you have receiving organic google traffic to your website. Having a blog that has hundreds of high quality posts also ensures you gain a boost in website traffic. Overall, a good rule of thumb is to publish/update at least one high quality blog post a week.

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Difference of opinion

There are many set blogs that recommend publishing new posts daily. Sure it seems amazing, but may not fit with your website. If you have a news website such as a health news site, yes you should update often. However, if you're a small mom and pop donut shop, you're probably not going to update daily.

"But I don't have time to be blogging or updating old content."

Well guess what? I do have the time to update your blog posts… hire me already! (I'm an SEO expert in San Diego.)

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BTW. Thanks for reading.

Got questions? Leave me a comment down below!

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