Does a Company Blog Actually Work? Measuring the Return on Content with Semalt

In short: most company blogs are abandoned because nobody could say whether they worked. The fault is usually the measurement, not the blog — traffic is the wrong number. This sets out what to measure instead, and how to decide honestly whether to continue. The analytics side is free to open at semalt.com/authorize.

Nearly every business has a blog with four posts from two years ago. It was started because someone said content was necessary, and abandoned because nothing visibly happened. That is a reasonable response to an unmeasured activity — but the conclusion is usually wrong.

Why traffic is the wrong number

This produces a predictable failure: the business writes broad, popular topics, celebrates the numbers, sees no revenue, and concludes that blogging does not work for its sector. What actually happened is that it optimised for the wrong metric for a year.

The four numbers that matter

1. Queries with intent behind them. Not how many people arrived, but what they were trying to do. "How does X work" is research. "X cost", "X near me", "best X for Y" carry intent. An article ranking for five intent queries beats one ranking for fifty informational ones.

2. Assisted conversions. Almost nobody reads an article and immediately buys. They read it, leave, and return later through a brand search. If you only credit the last click, every article looks worthless and your brand search looks miraculous. Look at whether people who read an article convert at a higher rate afterwards — that is the blog's real contribution.

3. Cost per acquired contact, over time. An article costs once and works for years. A campaign costs continuously. Compare them on the same basis: what did this article cost to produce, how many enquiries has it produced since, and what is that per enquiry now? Articles usually look expensive in month one and cheap in year two.

4. Whether it holds position. An article that ranked for a month and faded was topical. One holding position for two years is an asset. The proportion of your archive still ranking after twelve months tells you whether you are building assets or filling a feed.

What to measure per article, and when

Set the measurement rhythm to the way search actually works, not to the reporting calendar:

• Week 2: is it indexed at all? If not, that is a technical problem, and no amount of promotion fixes it.
• Month 1: which queries does it appear for? Usually not the ones you intended — this is information, not failure.
• Month 3: is it climbing, flat or falling? Flat at position thirty usually means the page does not match the intent behind the query.
• Month 6: has it produced any contact, directly or as an assist? If not, and it holds no position, it was the wrong topic.
• Month 12: keep, update or retire.

What makes an article earn its keep

The pattern is consistent across sectors:

• It answers a question a customer actually asked, in the words they used.
• It is specific enough that a competitor could not publish it with their name swapped in.
• It has a named author with a reason to be believed.
• It links to the service page it supports, so the reader has somewhere to go.
• It exists once — not as three near-identical posts competing with each other.

How often to publish

Less often than you have been told, and more consistently. One genuinely specific article a month, sustained for two years, produces an asset base. Four thin articles a month for three months and then silence produces nothing but maintenance.

When to stop

An honest exit test, applied after twelve months of real effort: if no article ranks for an intent query, none has assisted a contact, and none holds a position after six months, stop. Put the budget where it works.

In practice one of those three explains most “blogging does not work for us” verdicts.