So a couple of weeks ago I was blogging about how my search traffic seemed to be flat over the last few weeks. I decided to do a 2-week experiment to try to see if posting frequency or posts with targeted keywords would have a bigger impact on increasing search traffic. For the week 2 weeks ago, I posted 5 new posts during the week, but didn’t worry about targeting keywords in the post title or in the post itself. Last week, I only posted 4 new posts, but I made more effort to target keywords and phrases in the post titles and the posts themselves. Here’s a graph of search traffic over the life of this blog:
BTW, I promise my writing isn’t as terrible as it looks in this graph 😉 As you can see, there’s been a nice steady increase in traffic till the middle of April, and has been fairly flat since then. The last two weeks at the end are with the red lines under the graph.
So two weeks ago I posted 5 times and didn’t worry about targeting keywords or phrases. I had 767 visitors from search the week before, and it fell to 705 2 weeks ago. Now since 2 weeks ago included Memorial Day, that affected the search traffic a bit, but didn’t account for all of the drop.
Last week, search traffic rebounded nicely, up to 804 visitors from search, which was the 4th best week here ever for search traffic. And that was with only 4 new posts, but I made an effort in each post to target keywords and phrases in the title and post.
So what can we learn from this incredibly unscientific experiment? It seems that targeted keywords and phrases do a better job of increasing search traffic than simply posting more does. BTW in case you were wondering, overall traffic last week was up over 50% over the previous week. So the fewer posts with targeted keywords and phrases resulted in more overall traffic as well.
Writing this from the Huntsville Airport, so I hope to see some of you at the B2B Forum this week!
That actually comforts me, ’cause even though I REALLY wouldn’t have time to write 5 times a week, I can sure research more accurately on keywords about those 2 posts I manage to squeeze in. Hooray!
That’s so funny Mack, because for the past year I’ve been saying traffic = quality (keywords/content) over quantity (number of posts) based on my own testing and observation of 1,000+ blogs. Thanks for sharing Mack!
Yeah I noticed that as well if you start to focus on keywords and having a set strategy for your blog. If you can just concentrate more on keywords and high search terms rather than just posting you will see a very high increase in traffic.
Hi Mack, That’s interesting and I will think about that for our weekly blog posts. I use keywords in the web page design, but don’t always maximize keywords in what the audience reads. I will make a more concerted effort going forward.
That’s such a pain because if your blog titles are just descriptive or funny they will get no search traffic…
Great test! Keep in mind the keyword rich posts will gain in traffic over time so the first month may not be as great of a gain as months five or six for those same posts. I expect that your keyword rich posts will win exponentially in the long run.
This is not an experiment and gives absolutely no value to either side of the argument. This is merely a post on your activity and what happened over the last couple weeks.
The only thing I see mentioned of value that pertains directly to the ‘test,’ is the fact you said it’s an “incredibly unscientific experiement.”
I hope this doesn’t come off as an attack on you. It’s not. I don’t think this is a post that should be shared as an example of any results for the difference for post frequency vs. using keywords. There are too many variables, and almost all are unmentioned, to accurately build any argument for either side.
Hi Mac,
Targeting kws in your post is down to a science now. Look at the HuffPo or Demand Media for algo-driven blog posts that hit the keyword of the day.I do it too. Remember when the 13th Zodiac sign popped up in the news? I wrote a post about it and it landed big traffic. The trick is to utilize the current trend while staying on message.Check out my example: http://alterimaging.com/blog/social-media-marketing-zodiac-case-study/
@mattfox Matt it’s a recap of my experiment. Sorry it had zero value for you, but I learned a lot from doing it. Which is probably the biggest point I was trying to make: Experiment with your own blog, that’s how we learn.
@TweetJuliaG Julia try it and see what happens with your search traffic. I will admit that it sometimes seems a bit contrived and ‘less authentic’, but can actually be MORE valuable to readers if you optimize correctly.
@mattfox I have to agree with Mack here. Technically, it is both a test and an experiment. Matt, I interpret your point is that scientifically, you would have low confidence in the data and ideally you would have a more controlled test.
I believe that perfect is the enemy of better and applaud Mack for his efforts. You have to start somewhere and I am sure the learnings from the process are greater than that of the data.
@MackCollier @jamimullikin Using the results from this to form any opinion is like a proctologist root around with his fingers and then tell you you have an ear infection. While he may have the medical expertise to deduce that conclusion, the entire time he was rooting around, he was looking in the wrong end.
This “testing” is a commonly flawed in the blogosphere and becoming more frequent. They have a tweet worthy title like “What impacts search traffic more, keywords in posts or post frequency?” This implies some sort of conclusion others can rely on as usable evidence. In the end, the resulting data is nothing but assumptions based on the author’s opinion.
I agree it’s an experiment. That’s all. As you look at the information you’ll realize there is not enough statistical data to draw any substantial conclusion to any results here.
When I first started in direct marketing, a split test on any ONE variable was a 1000 piece minimum. Usually we’d run more just to make sure BEFORE moving onto the next split-test variable.
In this experiment, there are dozens of completely different variables and not enough traffic to support a conclusion. And, the variables the post title are based on are two completely different variables that may not relate.
Mack, I’m glad you ran the experiment. You have insight into your blog more than any of us here. For anyone else that reads it though, this should not be taken as conclusive evidence either way. Keep up the good work.
Why users still make use of to read news papers when in this technological world the whole thing is presented on web?