The No-Blogging Experiment Is Over!
Posted on July 4, 2016
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!
Now, with that out of the way, let’s look in more detail at what happened to this site.
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.
Dustin W. Stout
July 5, 2016 (4:23 pm)
Excellent work here Robert. A bold experiment with solid reporting on results. I definitely couldn’t do it. Although my blogging has been less consistent as of late, I do start to panic a bit if my blogging volume steeps below 2/month. lol
Robert Ryan
July 5, 2016 (4:30 pm)
Hey Dustin, good to see you around these parts again – has been a particularly quiet time as of late ;)
Ye, it was hard to stop blogging completely as I knew it wasn’t a clever thing to do but wanted to get a solid chunk of time with no new content added to the site so could have a good idea of how the lack of blogging would impact traffic.. 2 posts a month is understandable with time constraints but I’m going to aim for one a week minimum (but I also have a lot of ground to make up now).. Shall see if I can somehow revive this site – phase 2 begins!
Julia
July 5, 2016 (5:53 pm)
Great post and insights! This is why I’ll never take a vacation from blogging…not even for a holiday season! :P Blogging (2-3 posts/week now) brings in 90% of my organic traffic, and maintains a traffic worth of over $50k monthly for me. Regular, useful content creation, optimizing and publishing is WORTH it. :)
Robert Ryan
July 5, 2016 (6:07 pm)
Hey Julia, cheers for stopping by and chiming in – after the long winter here it’s nice to have some life back hehe :)
Ye, a steady regime of 2-3 posts per week is probably the sweet spot. For some businesses that amount may not be feasible but if the time or resources are there then it’s a wise investment, as you know. Onward and upward :)
Jennifer Murray
July 6, 2016 (4:43 pm)
Bold experiment so kudos to you for stepping out to prove that regular, smart blogging does in fact pay off. Great post!
Robert Ryan
July 6, 2016 (10:33 pm)
Cheers Jennifer, was a dirty job but somebody had to do it ;)
On a daily basis I’m espousing the importance of blogging to our ongoing SEO clients so was hard to not blog myself but wanted to make sure that the regular blogging regime had some merit (and I think it does without doubt now). Hopefully this will serve as a useful resource to others in the future because like you said, smart blogging does pay off.
Thanks again for stopping by, appreciate it..
John C
July 7, 2016 (10:38 am)
Towards the beginning g of the article, you mention you didn”t do any blogging “or SEO” for this period of time. What else did you stop doing that may have had an impact on these results?
Robert Ryan
July 7, 2016 (11:25 am)
Hi John, cheers for the comment and question.
So, basically for the 8 month period I did nothing on site (bar updating plugins/themes to keep the site afloat) or offsite to support/maintain/grow this site. My social activity pretty much ceased and in effect the site was just freewheeling. Nothing was done that may have had a positive impact on results and as for negative things I’d say the complete lack of posting & online presence were the most significant.
Anyway, cheers for stopping by, appreciate it..
Richard
July 8, 2016 (3:09 pm)
One of my blogs had daily 250-280 visitors. Then I stopped publishing articles for 7-8 months, traffic dropped to 40-75. Now I started again and traffic is slowly improving.
Robert Ryan
July 8, 2016 (3:16 pm)
Hi Richard, cheers for reading and the comment. Good to hear the results aren’t just limited to me and like yourself, the traffic build up is on again!
Ninja Team
March 22, 2017 (9:22 am)
Looking forward to you firing up the blog machine again. Your blog kingdom must grow from now on.
Jesus, this post is too good of an idea that I might steal it sometime in the future. Can I?
Robert Ryan
September 11, 2017 (8:23 pm)
Glad you liked the post and/or idea and feel free to lean on it if you wish ;) Just checking out some of your plugins now, like that See You one, bit of fun..