Blogging Value Over Volume?
I now consider some of this information outdated. Some of it might be useful for creating a social flagship blog where making money quickly, or at all, wasn’t a major goal. But it is not really applicable to creating money making niche blogs which require an entirely different approach.
Maki at DoshDosh wrote this article, Strategic Blogging: Creating the Right Content to Achieve Your Income Goals, where one of the strong takeaways was to provide value over volume in a blog. There have been a number of other articles around, before and since, that encouraged bloggers to go slow, to not blog as often, and so forth. Of course, I’m seemingly taking a contrarian view here on OpTempo where I’m building content quite quickly. However, I agree with Maki’s point in his article. Here’s why.
You Have to Build It First
Maki’s point on slowing down posting frequency works well for a mature blog like his. He has many well written anchor articles that will bring in search and referral traffic on a consistent basis. He’s secured a very good position and can select the writing and posting style he wants while retaining his readership.
But, what if you’re new to blogging and don’t have an audience? Can value over volume writing work for you?
In my experience, you have to have considerable content to have a blog indexed well in Google. New once-a-week blogs will be buried in search results because those sites get fewer Googlebot visits. Google seems to place a lot of emphasis on the growth and update frequency of a site. So, reason #1 to build a lot of content is to improve Google search results.
Secondly, having a lot of content, even if it is supporting or even throwaway articles, builds the stickiness of your site. By having a lot of articles and making them easily accessible, you give visitors more options and more reasons to stay on your site.
Lastly, having content encourages returns to your site. You can’t digest everything on DoshDosh in one sitting. You have to go back to his site again and again to read and reread his articles. If anyone can read your best stuff in 15-30 minutes why should they come back frequently? They won’t unless you’re a very extraordinary writer with very unique information.
But Quality is Still Important
However, you can’t just throw anything out there. You can have a few throwaway posts, like many of John Chow’s infamous ’fine dining’ posts, but, overall, the quality has to stay high as you build up your content portfolio.
My own formula begins with 20-30% high quality anchor posts. Next would be 60-70% supporting posts which, in addition to good but not great posts, might include follow-ups, link posts, promo posts, niche news, reviews, polls, and other stuff that’s of good quality but not your absolute best stuff. 10% or so can be throwaway posts although they shouldn’t be absolute junk. Think entertaining and light.
Once you have a portfolio with about 100-200 posts you should be seeing readership growing and Google search hits growing. At this point you’ve built your base and you’re ready to decide on your next strategic steps.
What are your thoughts on the “Quantity vs. Quality” debate? Leave me a comment with your thoughts and ideas.
No comments yet.