Does Blogging Impact Inbound Traffic and Leads

November 06, 2012

Collective Measures
What kind of impact to inbound traffic and leads could you achieve by blogging?

My previous blog post was about my top takeaways from the Blog Planning and Execution session I attended at PubCon Las Vegas 2012.

I had not planned on blogging about blogging again, until I came across the HubSpot – Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000 Businesses last week.

A couple slides really jumped out at me – the impact of monthly blog posts to inbound traffic and leads.

Impact of Monthly Blog Articles on Inbound Traffic

As you would (should) expect and is supported in the graph above, the more unique content you create, in the form of a blog post, the greater opportunity you have to increase traffic.

Below are HubSpot’s reported findings, which include additional findings on the impact of inbound traffic from blogging:

  • Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5 times more traffic than companies that don’t blog.
  • Small businesses (1-10 employees) tend to see the biggest gains in traffic when they post more articles.
  • An average company will see a 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50 articles.
  • B2C companies see 59% increase in traffic after growing total blog articles from 100 to 200 total.

So, does all this blogging translate into leads? – What is the ROI? That has always been the BIG question.

Impact of Monthly Blog Articles on Inbound Leads

The data HubSpot received and displayed in the chart above clearly shows an increase in leads. Here are their reported findings:

  • Companies that increase blogging from 3-5 times/month to 6-8 times/month almost double their leads.
  • B2B companies that blog only 1-2 times/month generate 70% more leads than those who don’t blog.
  • Companies with over 200 blog articles gain greater than 5 times the leads than those with 10 or fewer.
  • The average company with 100 or more total blog articles is more likely to experience continued lead growth.

We always encourage our clients to increase the amount of unique content they create because it provides additional opportunities to increase inbound traffic from search engines to social opportunities. Blogging is a great medium to embrace.