Forget Blogging Frequency
This has been on my mind quite a bit lately, so it's good to see someone talking about it. I felt compelled after last month's Refresh to attempt posting more frequently to see if it did anything for our SEO. I don't waste a whole lot of mental energy on SEO, and since my mood in the past month has turned inward, I just didn't get around to blogging much. According to Eric Kintz's article, Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore, I shouldn't worry much.
I agree with every on of his points — No. 6 in particular. A number of blogs moved off the radar for me when it became clear that quantity did not mean quality. "RSS fatigue," as Seth Godin puts it, set in for me probably the same week I first started using a feed reader to collect feeds. I just don't have the time of day to keep up with all of them and if the quality is not there, it's almost easier to just ignore my feeds altogether. It's as if the bad ones ruin the entire batch. If I had to describe the perfect amount of posting, if would be John Gruber's Daring Fireball. His posting is not all that frequent, but the quality is such that I always refresh his feed to see if there is anything new. If there is, I almost always go read it immediately.
#7: Frequent posting threatens the credibility of the blogosphere
Uh, yeah. I know of at least one local SEO company that will have one of their copy writers blog for you.
#8 - Frequent posting will push corporate bloggers into the hands of PR agencies
Or SEO companies. See above.
#10 - I love my family too much
Amen to that!
So, good news to would-be bloggers like myself. Don't stress about it, know your audience, and write what you know.
Phil Hertzler | 07.16.06 | 6 comment(s)
Reader Comments
Rick, do people really read the content on company blogs or does the blog just become part of the SEO’d fabric of a site? I agree with you that it’s borderline, if not completely, unethical, but if site owners see the same (or better) conversions by having someone else blog about their subjects and users don’t know, or notice the difference, is it worth the trouble?
Posted by Philip Hertzler from Richmond on 07.22.06 at 11:56
Phil,
I strongly believe that people read the content of comapny blogs as logn as they are well-done. Search engines like blogs that are user-friendly, not just SEO friendly.
A good example is the Lumber Liquidators blog. It’s written just for SEO purposes by and SEO company and the reader really doesn’t get a lot from it (perhaps that’s why it’s almost impossible to find the link to it from the Lumber Liquidators site). As a result, the search engines don’t pay a lot of attention to it.
Posted by Rick Whittington from Richmond, VA on 07.23.06 at 9:37
That brings up a good point too about linking in general. If linking is part of your SEO strategy, a poorly done blog, or one that doesn’t have useful or relevant content isn’t going to inspire a whole lot of links.
Posted by Philip Hertzler from Richmond on 07.24.06 at 8:36
Check out this crap:
http://flooring.lumberliquidators.com/public/aggregate/95950
This is Lumber Liquidator’s “blog” which is really just a world news RSS feed disguised as a blog. This isn’t linked from their site, and now you know why.
Posted by Rick Whittington from Richmond, VA on 07.24.06 at 10:58
Yeah, not useful content at all.
Posted by Philip Hertzler from Richmond on 07.24.06 at 11:06
Phil,
I think that SEO companies that blog for their clients is actually unethical. I mean, visitors to a web site think the company is producing the content. That’s not how I want to do business.
These SEO companies (and the one you allude to here in Richmond) that blog for their clients don’t know half as much about the stuff they’re blogging about as the company itself. Companies should generate their own content and not focus so much on SEO—good search results happen when good content is produced.
Posted by Rick Whittington from Richmond, VA on 07.18.06 at 9:04