Blog Post SEO Time to Impact
Firstly, let’s assume that your blog post is SEO-friendly; it has an assigned, keyword-based search intent, its SEO taxonomies are in place and it is properly SEO-integrated with the main website. The second thing to say is that by “impact”, I’m referring to organic Google ranking – not its value to your website or other impact measures.
“What we found is it’s quicker and easier to rank on YouTube over Google, but in the long run Google produces more consistent SEO traffic (even with the algo updates).”
What triggered this post was a recent graphic from NP digital which I thought was interesting. I’m not sure I entirely agree with it as it might apply to Ireland – but it’s interesting.
Based on a Blogger SEO Survey
In this context (for now, I’m ignoring the Youtube bit!), the graphic has to do with the average time and ramp to a blog post’s maximum potential impact. It was based on a survey of 30 businesses, each with 10,000 blog subscribers or more – not typical of an Irish SME’ blog.
The Ramp to Organic Rankings
The graphic shows that one month after the blog was posted, it had close to zero organic visitors, two month after – a marginal improvement, three months – it started to look interesting at approx. 5% of it’s 12 month potential, months 4 – 8 – flatlines at about 15% of potential, month 9 – up to 30%, month 10 60%, month 11 70% and in month 12, it reached 100% of its potential.
That’s interesting as a ramp curve, but of course, there are many dynamics that could influence it. Was it edited during the ramp time, how competitive was it’s market, what was its media make-up etc… A follow-up question might be – for how long can it hold its 100% potential position?
More than Ranking Just the Post Itself
But there was one metric that was ignored in the survey; the post’s impact on the rankings of other website content to whom it contributed topical and link authority. For example, were there internal anchor-text links to other pages, did it add to silo content authority, what was the html structure of the post etc…. These impacts can also be measured, but the test criteria would have to be strict and specified.
In Conclusion – Set your Expectations.
Be Patient – but Activate Your Blog
In conclusion, many Irish SMEs started blogging only to eventually give up when results failed to materialise. Blog posting needs to have a clear and measurable purpose. It needs to be SEO-empowered and integrated. It needs to be of value to your target audience and it needs to have a value to you that is expressed in what you want the visitor to do next. You need to post regularly and you need patience. If it’s done well, give it the time to find its place in the search results.
PraxisNow can manage your blog for you using our new SIBM (SEO-Integrated Blog Management) service. Our aim with SEO is to reduce Neil Patel’s organic traction lead time and still use AI-assist – but not exclusively, to create high quality content for you. It’s highy efficient and it’s cost-effective.
