If You Post It, They Will Come, Part 2

Several months back, I said, If You Post It, They Will Come. Not too long ago, I added a fancy archive graph to the footer of RailsTips. When I saw the curve of the posts per month graph that I added, I was instantly reminded of the if you post it, they will come article I wrote here.

I took a screenshot of both the Google Analytics pageviews graph and the posts per month graph I added to the RailsTips footer and merged them into one image, which you can see below.

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It is pretty hard to miss the dramatic climb in pageviews when I began to post more often. 8-10 posts a month is about 2 posts a week. 2 posts a week means about every 3-4 days, I spend an hour or two organizing some thoughts to share in an article. Not a huge commitment, but it made a huge difference on RailsTips.

So the Relationship Between Posting and Traffic is Directly Proportional?

The other thing that I note from the picture above is my traffic when I wasn’t posting consistently. It stayed shockingly even for several months? Why? Wouldn’t my traffic go up and down directly related to how much I post? Not quite.

As a blog sits on the internet for longer, you begin to gain more traffic from searches and referrers. The picture above shows that even in months I didn’t post at all, my traffic only dipped a little. Also, random months where I posted a lot, my traffic didn’t spike. It is almost as if readers could tell when I got serious about posting consistently good content and respected that by hanging out on the site more. Kind of interesting.

How Much is Too Much?

How many posts per week is completely dependent on what type of content you post. Lighter content and links, that are only quickly scanned, could be posted everyday and not be overwhelming. On the other hand, content like RailsTips, which is a bit more in depth, should probably be posted no more than 2-3 times a week. Those are my thoughts. Could be wrong, but I’ve found it to work wonders for me.