There have been multiple studies done to determine when is the best time to publish your blog posts. While some people think they have it all figured out because of those studies, others aren’t experiencing the same results. The truth is it depends on what kind of company you are running, who your readers are, and so much more.
The best way to determine the best time to publish your posts is tracking your website on Google Analytics. Google Analytics can track your website’s traffic and help you learn about your website’s audience. Knowing who your audience is will help you know when to publish your blog posts.
As for those who need a starting place on when the best time to publish your blog posts, follow these guidelines.
A study done by KISSmetrics, Dan Zarrella, Search Engine Land, and HubSpot informs you of when to publish a blog post for traffic, comments, and links. Here’s what they came up with:
To get the most traffic to your blog post, publish on Mondays at 8 am PST.
To get the most comments, publish on Saturdays at 6 am PST.
To get the most inbound links, publish on Mondays and Thursdays at 4 am PST.
It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of publishing your posts at the peak times. Yes, you’ll get more visitors, comments, and inbound links, but your post will also have a higher bounce rate. This means that it can get buried with all of the other posts coming out around the same time. Writing quality content can help your post to stay on top.
A study done by TrackMaven found that it’s better to post your content on social media at non-popular hours. This is because at popular times, people are less likely to read multiple articles because they only have a time for a few. At unpopular times your post could get a lot of social engagement and shares. So if you want lots of engagement and shares for your posts, post from 6 pm to 9 pm PST.
These methods have worked for some people and done nothing for others. If you don’t know use it as a starting point to find out when you should publish your blog posts. Then experiment beyond these guidelines to find out what works best for you and let us know in the comments!