Does posting more often grow your traffic?
Problem
- "Post more often" is the standard advice for growing a blog, and it costs you hours every week.
- Posts written faster usually rank worse, so twice the posts is rarely twice the traffic.
Solution
- Read what your settled posts get off your WebCounter pages report, and guess what a rushed post would get.
- Put both paces into the free calculator below and it shows the growth, what each extra post adds and the break-even.
Key points
- Doubling from 4 to 8 posts a month gives 40% more visits when the faster posts get 35 visits instead of 50.
- Each extra post adds 17.1 visits a month, against 42.7 for the posts you write now.
- Below 25 visits a post, the faster pace brings no more traffic than posting 4 a month.
- Only at the same quality does twice the posts mean twice the visits - 8,200 a month instead of 4,100.
- The question is not how often, but how good a rushed post still is.
In do commenters come back more we saw that chasing comments moves returning visitors only a little. Posting more often is the other thing site owners push hardest on. This post asks how much faster a site really grows if you post more often - when posting faster means each post gets fewer visits.
Why more posts is not simply more traffic
Visits a month are the posts you have published times what each one gets once it ranks.
- More posts at the same quality is more traffic - twice the posts, twice the visits, just later.
- A post written in half the time usually ranks worse, so the visits each one gets fall.
- HubSpot found companies publishing 16 or more posts a month got about 3.5 times the traffic of those publishing 0 to 4 - but that compares different companies, not one writer going faster.
- So the real number to know is the break-even: how few visits a faster post can get before posting more stops paying.
Work out what posting more adds
Type the posts a month you write now and the visits each gets once it ranks, the faster pace and the visits you expect a faster post to get, the months a post takes to rank and how long to count. The calculator shows the growth, what each extra post adds and the break-even, and charts visits a month at both paces.
Prefer a full page? Open the posting frequency vs growth calculator on CalcSA. For how many posts it takes to reach a traffic goal, the posts until Google traffic calculator goes deeper.
Worked example: the calculator's defaults
4 posts a month that each settle at an estimated 50 visits a month, against 8 posts a month that each settle at an estimated 35. Every post builds up over 6 months, then holds. Counted over 24 months:
- At 4 posts a month you reach 4,100 visits a month by month 24, and 44,367 visits in total.
- At 8 posts a month you reach 5,740 - 40% more for twice the posts - and 62,113 in total.
- Each extra post adds 17.1 visits a month by month 24, against 42.7 for each post at the slower pace.
- The faster pace stops paying below 25 visits a post - that is where 8 a month brings the same 4,100 as 4 a month.
Three more cases, same defaults except the one shown:
- Faster posts as good as the slow ones, at 50 visits: twice the traffic - 8,200 a month by month 24.
- Faster posts at 25 visits: exactly 4,100 a month - double the work for no extra traffic.
- 12 posts a month at 30 visits: 7,380 a month, 80% more for three times the posts; the break-even drops to 16.7 visits.
Estimates. The 50 and 35 visits a post and the 6 months to rank are assumptions, as in the calculator. The model holds a post's visits once it ranks; in practice they fade slowly. Your WebCounter pages report shows what your own posts get.
Two years of visits at three paces
Visits a month from 4 posts a month at 50 visits each, 8 at 35 and 12 at 30, every post taking 6 months to rank:
- 4 a month, 50 visits
- 8 a month, 35 visits
- 12 a month, 30 visits
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | 4 a month, 50 visits | 8 a month, 35 visits | 12 a month, 30 visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 500 | 700 | 900 |
| 12 | 1,700 | 2,380 | 3,060 |
| 18 | 2,900 | 4,060 | 5,220 |
| 24 | 4,100 | 5,740 | 7,380 |
- Every pace is a straight climb once the first posts settle - the slope is posts a month times visits a post.
- Tripling the pace less than doubles the slope when each post gets 30 visits instead of 50.
- Speed up only if quality holds above the break-even; otherwise spend the time making four posts better.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter shows visits by page, so you can see what your posts really get once they settle. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Visits a post: average the monthly visits of your posts older than six months, including the ones that get nothing.
- Test a faster pace for one quarter, then compare those posts with the ones before once they are six months old.
- Watch your oldest posts too - if a faster pace leaves no time to refresh them, their visits fade.
- Count bots out - a new post can draw crawler visits that look like readers.
Sources
- HubSpot, How often should companies blog? (2015) - companies publishing 16+ posts a month got about 3.5 times the traffic of those publishing 0 to 4 - not re-checked at the original for this post; it compares companies, not paces.
- The 50 and 35 visits a post and the 6 months to rank are our estimates - no published benchmark for how much a faster pace lowers visits per post was found.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Posting frequency vs growth.
Estimates only. What a post gets depends on your niche, your competition and the time you put in; your own pages report is the test.
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