I have been on the hunt lately for some information that would help my posts stand out and encourage greater interaction with readers. I compiled a list of stats that I thought were helpful and wanted to share them with you!
The best days to post
Research has shown that best day to publish a post is Monday (Source). This is when blog posts receive the most traffic and views on average. However, articles published on Saturday seem to get the most interactions and comments. This is most likely due to people having time to pen comments.
The best time of day to post:
Eleven am EST seems to be the best time of day to post if you want the most traffic to your blog. This could be blamed on lunch, as people’s minds are probably less concentrated on work and more on what they will eat within the next hour or so.
On Saturdays, the most comments were shown to take place at about 9am EST. If you can’t post at 11 on Monday or 9am on Saturday, shoot for somewhere between 9:30-11am.
Optimal blog length
There has been much debate about the optimal length of a blog post blog length as during my research for this article I came across everything from 1000 to 3000. However, the majority agree that the sweet spot is somewhere between the two at 1,600 (Medium).
It should also be noted that the average word count of top ranked content in Google is between 1,140-1285 words (SearchMetrics)
A post this length takes a reader an average of seven minutes to read and that seems to be the optimal time limit. After seven minutes many readers attention for the work dipped.
Here is a great article from Neil Patel about creating lengthy evergreen posts and why it’s important to have them. An evergreen post is one where the content remains relevant long after it was initially published, hence it is evergreen.
Optimal post frequency
An article from HubSpot showed that when organizations posted sixteen times or more per month they received 3.5 times more traffic. This was in comparison to those that posted four times or fewer. The key is interlinking your content. In 2015 a study noted that 75% of most companies’ blog views came from links within the post.
Many bloggers will tell you that one day they noticed a huge increase in the blogs traffic. Although, I didn’t find much concrete evidence to support this most bloggers stated their notable increase in growth came after they reached the 50 mark and again after 100 or more posts. There truly is no magic number to blogging success as it varies for each writer. But there are many factors that come into play when discussing page views and traffic. If you are consistent, patient and include post optimized material, your blog is bound to increase in views.
Optimal Blog Title
Blog titles that had between 6-13 words were noted to get the most consistent amount of traffic and hits (Source: HubSpot)
Best Way to Grow your blog
It was shown that higher-income bloggers used paid promotion 10.3 times as often as lower-income bloggers and they focus on growing their email list significantly more as well. High income blog earners rated email growth as 192% more important than low-income earners.
Seventy percent of bloggers who earn over $50K per year from their blogs are active or very active promoters of their blogs. This is in comparison to only 14% of lower-income bloggers (Source).
The most popular blog type
The top three most popular blog types written by successful bloggers (making over $50K)were lists, how tos and case studies. Whereas those that earned significantly less tended to focus on opinion pieces, product reviews and roundups. Although, both blogger types focused on lists as a primary method.(Source).
Also, shorter sentences were shown to increase content readability by 58%.
Blog post that do the best
Blog articles with images get 94% more views (Source). This isn’t surprising news but posts with some sort of media, photos, charts or video, seem to do exceedingly well when compared to those without any visual enhancements. But did you know that 55% of all keyword searches in the United States return at least one video and 44% return images.
All of this information is of course all relative to your audience and niche. Apply what you’ve learned, but ensure to tailor the information for your blog. Experiment with different post days and times or article lengths. Here are some things to keep in mind when writing.
- Keep an eye on your blog’s analytics so you can determine what days and times your readers like to receive information. Use a chart like the one included in this post to keep track of your data.
- Don’t forget to interlink your posts
- Make sure you’re saying something important on your posts. Don’t write just to reach a certain number of visitors, but make sure you are speaking to your audience and telling them something they need to hear.
- Of course you always want to choose qualify over quantity when posting, it’s much better to post 4 great quality post packed with information over 16 posts that are obviously not well though out or put together. Your readers will recognize the care and time you put into writing your articles and trust you all the more for your efforts.
Think about this, 94% of people who share posts do so because they think it will help someone else. (Source) People are coming to you for solutions. Remember why you started blogging and the audience you seek to help with your words. Focus more on your impact than your numbers and you can’t lose.
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