One question that almost every blogger or website owner will ask this Huntsville web designer at some point is when is the best time they should post content to their website. You work hard to create content for your website or to earn the money necessary to pay for that content, you want it to be seen by as many people as possible. No one wants to post on their website and watch their hard work go unnoticed, especially if there’s any chance that the post might be missed simply because it was uploaded at an inopportune time.
The first thing you should know ahead of time is that there is no quick and easy answer to this question. There are guidelines and questions you should ask but there is no precise template that says you will get X amount of hits if you post at Y o’clock. Still, by thinking about and answering this question you can see real results so let’s dig in.
Think About Your Audience
It is important to remember that you aren’t writing for yourself. Your schedule might be different from the people you’re writing for. You may be the type of person who gets up at four in the morning or at one in the afternoon, but if you know your audience wakes up at eight in the morning then you should be posting around their schedules.
When does your audience go online? When are they interested in what you have to offer? If you run a site with business news for working professionals then you want to get your posts online early on weekday mornings so your work gets read while people are checking the Internet at work. If you really want to engage people during their free time than posting on or just ahead of the weekend is a good approach.
You should also think about different time zones. If you live on the West Coast but you want to reach a national audience then it’s a good idea to try and post at times that are convenient for people on the East Coast. This is especially important when you are blogging from a different country, where you might accidentally upload a time sensitive a day late.
Better Early Than Late
When updating your website you don’t want to get too caught up on the precise time of updates but when you are scheduling an update remember to aim to be early rather than late. You aren’t planning an events like a concert that will only happen once and disappeared, once your content is posted it will be available for as long as your website exists. The only time sensitive matter is what your regular visitors will see when they come to your site.
Imagine that your average visitor browse the web every day at noon. Knowing this information you might aim to upload content at noon every day, but this would be a mistake. If you do upload exactly at noon you are going to miss the people who show up a little bit early, and the fact of the matter is that oftentimes you will run late and when that happens you will miss the people at noon. By aiming earlier than your average visitor you will get your fresh content in front of more people and give yourself more leeway in terms of when you create and post content.
Use Analytics To Guide You
When reading any sort of advice about your website you need to remember that you have a unique site with unique visitors. While there are some general rules that apply to most websites in the end you want to tailor your site to your audience. We could talk about when the average working professional, student or homemaker uses the web but none of that is as effective as looking at when your actual users come to your website.
To learn about when people are using your website you should use what is known as analytics. There are a number of WordPress plugins that can track when people come to your website, how long they stay and other factors that can help you learn about your current audience and plan for your future. If you aren’t using analytics than you are going to just be doing guesswork, when you have the actual facts about how people are using your site in front of you you can make much better decisions.
Consistency Is Key
While it is certainly helpful to try and figure what date and time is best for posting to your website the most important thing in the end is that you actually post your site and continue posting to your site regularly for as long as possible. You could take years to research the perfect time to post a piece of content to the web but in the end there are so many factors beyond your control that go into determining how successful the post is. The best thing you can do is to post content persistently and consistently
Set a schedule you think you can work with and try and stick to it. Even if it turns out posting on Monday evenings isn’t the best time possible if you stick to it and keep at it people will adapt to your schedule and eventually certain updates will be more successful and you can use those to learn and grow.
The date and time that piece of content is posted isn’t nearly as important as the simple fact that it is posted. So while it is worth thinking about these questions don’t overthink them, because in the end the best use of your time is simply working on your website, putting the work out there and then learning what you can from the results so you can do better next time.
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