There is a reason that the flow of users on the internet is referred to as “traffic.” Just like traffic on highways and interstates, internet traffic has slow times and rush hours, peaks and ebbs. During the summer, internet traffic is fairly steady, as the younger generation (which comprises a good deal of total internet traffic) is free from a set schedule, out of school and home from college. However, now that the fall is here and kids are back in school and schedules have been set, we here at Promoting Group would like to offer you a few tips for making your blogging and website updating plan coincide with the reinstated internet traffic rush hours.

If you are planning on updating your website or blog, it may be smartest to do so first thing in the morning (before school) or between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, when most students return home from school, for youth-oriented websites. For websites geared toward an older crowd, updates should be held off until later in the evening, after work and dinner hours are over. Most adolescents check their emails and favorite websites upon returning home from school, while adults tend to check their favorite websites towards the end of the day, when they are beginning to unwind. Updates that are fresh tend to garner better results on search engines, and while adults will quickly glance at updated websites during breaks or lunch hours at work, they will linger over website updates later in the evening, when they have more time.

This schedule is not limited to website or blog updates either. If you regularly send email blasts to a large number of people, sending these emails after school or work means that the emails will land in the top of user’s inboxes when they finally log on.

To sum up, keep your target audience in mind when updating websites, posting new blogs, or sending email blasts. For youth, updates and emails should be scheduled to appear when children return home from school. For adults, updates and emails will be best received in the early evening. Websites that are updated in the middle of the day tend to get lost in the shuffle of the day, so make sure to keep your schedule fresh and in sync with internet rush hour!