How fast do your old posts lose their traffic?
Problem
- A post that ranks does not stay at its best - newer pages, changing searches and ageing facts wear its traffic down.
- The loss is slow enough to miss - a few percent a month looks like noise until a year has passed.
Solution
- Compare each older post's visits with the same month a year ago on your WebCounter counter.
- Put the decay into the free calculator below to see whether refreshing the post beats writing a new one.
Key points
- At 4% lost a month, a 500-visit post is down to about 306 visits after a year in our example.
- Half its traffic is gone after about 17 months at 4% - 34 months at 2%, 8 months at 8%.
- Over two years the 8% post brings about 4,970 visits, against 9,410 for the 2% post.
- The decay rates are illustrative - measure your own before you act.
- The fastest-decaying posts are the best refresh candidates, if they once ranked well.
In what one blog post is worth over three years we priced a single post, and in refresh or write new we compared the two uses of an afternoon. This post looks at the number underneath both: how quickly an old post's traffic falls away, and how to tell yours.
Why old posts lose traffic
A ranking is not kept for good. It is held against everything else written on the same question.
- Newer pages compete for the same search, and some of them are better or fresher.
- Facts go out of date - prices, rules, screenshots, years in the title.
- What people search for shifts - the words, and sometimes the question itself.
- Search results change shape - more answers shown on the results page means fewer clicks to any page.
Work out whether to refresh a decaying post
Type your own numbers into the calculator below - what a post gets now, how fast it is falling and what a refresh or a new post would cost you - and it shows which grows traffic faster.
Prefer a full page? Open the content refresh calculator on CalcSA. To price a single post over its life, the blog post value calculator goes deeper.
Worked example: one post at 500 visits a month
A post gets 500 visits a month at its best. We follow it for 24 months losing an illustrative 2%, 4% or 8% of its visits each month:
- At 2% a month: about 392 visits a month after a year, half gone after about 34 months, 9,410 visits over two years.
- At 4% a month: about 306 after a year, half gone after about 17 months, 7,500 over two years.
- At 8% a month: about 184 after a year, half gone after about 8 months, 4,970 over two years.
- With no decay at all the post would bring 12,000 visits over the two years.
Illustrative. The 500 visits and the 2%, 4% and 8% monthly losses are assumptions chosen to show the shape - no published benchmark for post decay was used. Your WebCounter counter shows how your own posts move.
Two years of one post
Visits a month from a post that starts at 500, losing 2%, 4% or 8% a month:
- 2% lost a month
- 4% lost a month
- 8% lost a month
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | 2% lost a month | 4% lost a month | 8% lost a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 500 | 500 | 500 |
| 3 | 471 | 442 | 389 |
| 6 | 443 | 391 | 303 |
| 12 | 392 | 306 | 184 |
| 24 | 308 | 188 | 68 |
- Measure year on year, not month on month - seasons swing more than decay does in a single month.
- Refresh the posts that fell furthest from a high peak - they have proved the search exists.
- Keep the same address when you refresh, so the links and ranking the post already has stay with it.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter shows visits by page over time, so you can see which posts are fading. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Year on year by page: this month's visits divided by the same month last year, for every post older than a year.
- Monthly decay: if a post kept 61% of its traffic over 12 months, it lost about 4% a month.
- After a refresh: give it two or three months before you judge it.
- Count bots out - crawlers keep hitting old pages long after people stop.
Sources
- The 500 visits a month and the 2%, 4% and 8% monthly decay rates are our illustrative assumptions - no published benchmark for post decay was used.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Content refresh vs new post.
Estimates only. How fast a post decays depends on its subject and its competition; your own counter is the test.
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