What Day Should I Post? How to Find Out with Google Analytics

When you first start blogging, it can be really hard to figure out the best blog post schedule. What day should I post? How many times per week? It can all get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly.

Luckily, there’s a way to find out what day of the week your blog is most popular! And that’s a pretty good indication of when you should publish a blog post, because it means your readers are ready and waiting for you to publish content on that day.

So how do you find this elusive information? With Google Analytics!

Start with an Inconsistent Schedule

Yes, really.

Consistency is key when it comes to blogging, so it seems a bit weird to tell you to post inconsistently, right?

The thing is, if you’ve chosen arbitrarily to publish a blog post every Monday and send an email to your list every Wednesday, your traffic is going to spike on those days because you’re giving people a reason to go to your blog.

We want to find the day that’s most convenient for them to visit your blog, not the day that you want them to visit it. To find that out, we have to flatten out your data a little bit.

To do that, spend a few months publishing blog posts every day of the week (even the weekends). I don’t mean that you have to write 7 blog posts per week for several weeks (though if that’s your jam, go for it!). Instead, be consistent with how many blog posts and newsletters you publish each week, but change up the days they go live. That’s going to give you a more even spread of traffic, since there isn’t one day every week that you’re pointing people to your website more than others.

Then, Ask Google Analytics

Once you’ve been publishing inconsistently for a month or two, it’s time to consult Google Analytics for your most popular day of the week!

To do this, log into Google Analytics and go to Customization > Custom Reports and create a new Custom Report. Title it something like Most Popular Day of the Week.

For Metric Groups, add a metric. Type in and select Pageviews (just plain Pageviews, not Pageviews with another value). Once you have that selected, go down to Dimension Drilldowns and add a dimension. Type in and select Day of Week Name. You can also select Day of Week, but it’s going to give you a number instead of the name of the day, so Day of Week Name will be easier to understand.

Once you have those two selected, click Save, and it will redirect you to your custom report! From there you can change the timeline of your data and sort by most and least popular days of the week.

I recommend seeing the results for the length of your inconsistent blog schedule, so it gives you a really wide range. Then sort the results by Pageviews (it should already be sorted this way), and it will tell you what your most popular day of the week is!

Take the Results with a Grain of Salt

Once you have your most popular day of the week figured out, decide whether or not that will be the day you publish a new blog post.

Does that day of the week work well for your content creation schedule? Or would it be a pain in the ass to publish a blog post on that day of the week?

In the end, do what’s best for you and your schedule. Google Analytics is a really helpful tool, and you should absolutely keep the results in mind, but don’t let them dictate your blogging processes.