251 days, or 8 months and 7 days.
That’s the amount of time between this post and the last blog post. You don’t need to be an online marketing expert to know that that is way too long a period to have between posts but I wanted to run an experiment of sorts to see what would happen if I let the blogging slide? Would the site become a no go zone? Would the business take a dip? Am I right to continually beat the drum to clients about the importance of blogging? Well, the experiment is over so read on to find out how this site fared with the blogging hiatus!
The No-Blogging Experiment Is Over
The first thing to say here is that for me blogging isn’t a chore and so to stop doing it for so long was the hard part but I really wanted to see how no ongoing blogging and SEO would impact the site and organic traffic to it.
The second thing to say is that it was a calculated experiment. If there was any risk of a significant downturn in overall business I wouldn’t have done the experiment (or, I would have stopped it). The reality is that we have a few sites that rank nicely and so throughout the entire period we were just as busy as before – but this site, my baby, did take a drop and so, like they say for all the cool experiments – do not try this yourself!
Here Come The Stats!
So after 251 days of no blogging here are the key takeaways from the traffic stats, charted below.
Overall traffic to the site saw a major decline as it fell by 32% compared to the previous 251 day period. This is a hefty drop but one that I kind of expected to see with the lack of blogging. Now, I’m going to have to reverse that trend – phase two of this experiment if you will.
My reason for beating the drum about ongoing blogging and the importance of it for SEO were hammered home harshly in the following stat. Organic traffic dropped by a massive 42%. Without fresh blog content your site will quickly fall out of favour with Google. It’s important to continually stoke the coals and, as we do with our ongoing SEO clients, post at a minimum one new article each week. As you can see from the graphic this was the biggest decline over the period.
The site goals, as in people who visited the contact page fell by 15% and overall site conversions by 28%. When it comes to brass tax and the bottom line that is what should make businesses start to see the importance of ongoing blogging. If this business wasn’t buffered by other sources of leads and enquiries that 28% drop could have been a body blow to the operation we have going on here. Thankfully, it wasn’t as we’re up about 300% by coming in like a wrecking ball and continually honing and refining our craft.
To Blog Or Not To Blog, No Longer A Question
If ever there was any doubt about whether or not blogging is important to your business I think the above makes a compelling case as to why it is vital. The drop in traffic – and ranking for my main keyword of “WordPress Developer” from 1st to 6th – shows that without putting in the time in the SEO gym you’ll slowly start to fade from Google search results. One thing I can tell you, speaking from first hand experience after this experiment, it’s not nice to fade from Google search, it pains. And so, I’m going to fire up the blog machine again and start the march to top – currently occupied by one of our other sites ;)
Share The Results On Your Site
If you’ve found this experiment interesting then copy the code below to share the No Blogging Experiment results infographic on your site! Thanks for sharing!
<a href="https://robertryan.ie/the-no-blogging-experiment-is-over/"><img src="https://robertryan.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-No-Blogging-Experiment-Stats-What-Happens-SEO-With-No-Blogging.jpg" alt="The No-Blogging Experiment Stats - What Happens SEO With No Blogging" width="600px" border="0" /></a><br/><small>Infographic from: <a title="Robert Ryan - WordPress Developer" href="https://robertryan.ie">Robert Ryan</a></small>
How To Rise In Google Search
So, how am I going to get to the top spot on Google (or at least 2nd spot as there’s tough competition in the 1st spot) I hear you ask? Well, I’m going to practice what I preach and implement the game plan that we go through with our ongoing SEO clients: find keywords, track keywords, write content, share content, report, repeat. In follow up posts I’ll go into more details about each of those steps so make sure to come back for that – you know you want to!
If you’d like to get in touch to see how we can help your business online then contact me here, despite the nasty looking stats above – we know what we’re doing and are good at what we do.