Maintaining and constantly updating a legal blog with new posts isn’t easy. Keeping a regular publication schedule just makes it that much more difficult.
The good news is that Google and the other search engines don’t seem to use a strict posting schedule as a ranking factor – law firms that publish on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week, come hell or high water, don’t seem to get ranked higher than firms that publish an equal amount of content at random intervals.
The bad news is that you should still set a schedule and stick with it.
Here’s why.
More Blog Posts are Better
One of the strongest rules in the legal blogging world is that the more often you can post an article, the better. Blog until it hurts, they say. A study by HubSpot once found that companies that publish more than 16 blog posts per month got 3.5 times more web traffic than company sites that published fewer than 4 posts per month.
The reason is pretty simple: A high number of indexed pages on your site can boost its ranking. High rankings mean more visitors. More visitors can mean more business.
Sites that host a blog have more of those indexed pages: One study found that blogs increase page counts by 434%.
The takeaway is apparent: You want to maximize your blogging output to see the best results. A great way to keep your blogging output high is to set a publishing schedule and then to stick with it. The benefits of the schedule truly shine through when the schedule is thrown away. Not having a posting schedule to follow quickly leads to procrastination, delays, and, inevitably, fewer posts.
A Schedule Inspires Discipline
The same conclusion can be reached from a different approach.
Setting a publishing schedule for your legal blog inspires discipline. When you put “publish a blog post” on your schedule or daily planner, you are far more likely to follow through than if you follow a vague mantra of “I should write a blog post this week.”
Bloggers who set a schedule tend to stick to it and publish articles. Those who don’t set a schedule tend to publish less often.
With a schedule come more posts, more indexed pages, better rankings, more web traffic, and more business.
You May Develop Loyal Readers
Keeping a regular posting schedule – whether it is certain days of the week or at set intervals every month – can also lead to loyal readers in a way that a haphazard schedule prevents.
This point is remarkably simple. People who are interested in what you blog about will look for new posts to read. If you publish on a regular schedule, they’ll know when to visit your site. If you publish randomly, they won’t.
The repercussions are significant: You could lose web traffic by keeping readers from becoming regular readers.