Blogging does more than just demonstrate expertise and build trust. Your blog is a key component of your site’s SEO. It brings in traffic, drives conversions, and generates leads.
Each post not only represents an update to your site but adds content for search engine crawlers to stumble upon and index. Search algorithms include a “freshness” factor when determining the relevance of results. This means that your site decays as more time elapses without a fresh post update.
Here are three things that you’ll notice if you stop blogging completely:
Overall Traffic Falls
Your site simply won’t place as high without new posts. As a result expect a steady drop in traffic. After several months of zero blogging, sites report a 32% drop in overall traffic. While these extreme percentages follow months of inactivity, even skipping one regularly scheduled post won’t do you any good.
Organic Traffic Suffers
Using the case study from above, it was found that organic traffic fell by 42%. For most businesses, organic traffic is their primary source of traffic.
Leads Take a Hit
It has been shown that higher blogging frequency has a positive correlation to more leads and conversions. In other words, the more you blog the more customers you’ll see. No blogging results in a 28% drop in conversions over several months.
Whatever your blogging frequency, the most natural and effective way to increase your traffic and conversions may be to increase your posting frequency. Nevertheless, missing a scheduled post or giving up on blogging is sure to take its toll.
Be sure to create a backlog of enough posts so you can still prove your site’s relevance and freshness even if you fall on hard times or get too busy to blog. Your site and your profits will thank you later.
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If you don’t have the time, inspiration or energy to blog consistently then Sticky can help. Our Strategic Blogging service can help you post new content every week without you doing a thing.
