I had a conversation earlier this week with a business owner who wanted to use the blog section of his new website, but was worried about whether he’d be able to blog enough.

How often did he think he needed to post? Three times per week, he’d been told. And he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to keep that pace, so he was afraid to even start.

I assured him that while 3x per week is often suggested as the minimum threshold for obtaining maximum search position, it was hardly necessary in most cases, unless your goal is purely SEO.

My understanding of the 3x per week guideline is that is what it takes to get the most attention from Google. This is most important to bloggers who are trying to earn income from their blog, or from those who are blogging primarily to generate high page rank from search engines. Naturally, the competition for blogging at the pro level is fierce. If you’re trying to generate income via Google Adsense or via direct ad sales, you need lots of regular readers whose numbers can justify the ad prices on a blog. If your goal is purely to get Google’s attention, then the more posts, the merrier. No doubt.

Here, though, I’m thinking about the typical small business person who wants to communicate with prospects, cohorts and customers via a regularly updated website. Someone who wants to improve their online presence.

If you’re scoring me–and I doubt you are–you’ll note that my post frequency has settled in at 2-3 per month. Not as many as I would like, but in my mind, enough to let my readers know that I’m still here, still thinking about marketing, and working to make sure my web site stays relevant.

If I posted twice that much, would you have a different opinion about me?

The point is this: if you’re going to blog in support of your business, commit to doing it on some sort of regular basis. I think once a week is plenty. Even once a month is better than not doing it at all. And it will improve your page rank.

But if you post a few times and then stop altogether, that’s not good. A stopped blog is like a dead end road. Chances are you’ll never see that reader again.

Perhaps you, as a domain or business owner, received a coupon in the mail recently from Google offering a $100 coupon for Google Adwords advertising.

Like me, you might have gotten pretty excited about it. I’m a big fan of Google Adwords, having used them since 2006. They work.

Imagine my disappointment when I entered the coupon code only to get an error message that says “sorry, your account is too old to be eligible to redeem this coupon”. Too old? That’s a bad thing?

I planned to use the coupon for a new client, which I spent time setting up prior to getting to the coupon screen, as required.

Now, I just feel like I was bait-and-switched. New campaign ready to go, but the coupon is no good.

I went to the very fine print at the bottom and found the disclaimer, “promotional credit must be applied to a new Adwords account within 14 days of creating the account”. Ok, that’s clear. But extra tiny.

In a twist that says to me that they didn’t purge existing clients from the promotion, the client they sent the coupon to has been a regular Adwords advertiser for three years, yet they allow the coupon to be transferred to another advertiser. But only if you create a new Google account. Huh?

Seems counter-intuitive to me. If you only want to market to those who don’t have Google accounts, don’t send them to those who do have them AND make it abundantly clear that it’s only for new Google customers.

Better yet, stimulate the advertising economy by letting everyone have the coupon because, let’s face it, $100 doesn’t go particularly far for most Adwords advertisers. But it does get you started, or restarted, as the case may be. And that simply means more $ for Google.