Is Blogging Dead in 2017? Yes and No

Are you the kind of person that likes to ask baited questions before stepping back and listening to multiple sides fight it out? If so, we have a great question you can ask your business acquaintances: is blogging dead in 2017?

Just type this question into your favourite search engine and you'll see there is no shortage of opinions. One writer says 'yes' while another says 'no'. Others have opinions that don't actually take a stand either way. Connotations founder and managing director Anthony Carter has his own opinion on the matter. He says the answer is both 'yes' and 'no'.

Monetised Blogging Is Dying

A decade ago it was possible to start a blog from scratch and gradually build it into a moneymaking enterprise with a generous income. All you needed was a good topic, the ability to sell ads, and the time to create enough posts to keep readers happy. Website owners who were no good at writing simply contracted with blog writing services. It was relatively easy to monetise a blog back then. That's no longer the case.

To say that the internet is awash in content is to understate the obvious. With so much content out there, it's now more difficult than ever to monetise blogging opportunities. There are still some exceptions to the rule – sites that have tremendous value and enough advertisers to keep going – but the general rule is that starting a new blog in 2017 with the hope of monetising it is probably a bad idea. Monetised blogging is dying under its own weight.

Personal Blogging Is Thriving

The other side of the monetised blogging coin is personal blogging. In fact, personal blogs are thriving around the world. How do we know this? The statistics say so. Consider the number of blog posts and readers just on WordPress hosted sites. According to running WordPress statistics, more than 400 million users view in excess of 22 billion pages every month. Approximately 74 million new WordPress posts generate almost 50 million new comments. The comments alone prove that readers are still interested in blog content.

People who blog for personal reasons are not necessarily looking to earn buckets of cash. They just want to share their ideas with readers. Some of them may enjoy monetisation to a small degree, either through selling ads or creating 'members only' sections of their sites, but they are not getting rich. That's okay. They do what they do because they love doing it.

Blogging for SEO Is Alive and Well

We now come to the crux of the real question people want to be answered: is blogging still a wise strategy for SEO purposes? Carter is emphatic in saying that it is. Using WordPress statistics again, the nearly 74 million blog posts created monthly are completely separate from more than 11 million new pages that site owners publish. The difference in the two numbers clearly demonstrates that site owners are publishing far more blog posts than new pages. They are doing so because their readers want blog content.

For SEO purposes, blogging is a tool that drives traffic, improves SEO performance, creates opportunities to link the company site with social media, and creates a conversation through commenting.

Carter insists that every company with a website should make blogging part of their SEO strategy. Contracting with a blog writing service like Connotations provides the content businesses need for effective blogs without requiring them to dedicate their own staff to writing. If you doubt the value of blogs for SEO purposes, just go back and read those statistics again.