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Refresh an old post or write a new one - which grows traffic faster?

19 October 2026

In what one blog post is worth we followed a single post from the day it goes up until it fades. This post asks the question every site owner faces on a Saturday morning with three free hours: write something new, or fix something old?

Why the two grow differently

A refresh works on a page Google already ranks. Update the facts, the title and the sections that have gone stale, and the extra visits arrive within weeks. A new post starts from nothing and climbs slowly while Google decides where it belongs.

• New pages take a long time to rank. Ahrefs found only 5.7% of new pages reached Google's top 10 within a year (Tim Soulo, 2017) - so a 12-month ramp is a hopeful assumption.
• The refresh lift is the unknown. There is no reliable published benchmark; the calculator's 30% is an estimate, so test it on one post first.
• A refresh is capped by the post's traffic. 30% of a quiet post is still a small number.
• A new post keeps adding once it ranks, so over a long enough time it usually wins in total.

Work out which grows faster for you

Type the visits a month of the post you would refresh, the lift you expect, what a typical new post of yours reaches and how long it takes, and the hours each one costs you. The calculator shows the visits each brings, the visits per hour of work and the month the new post catches up - with a chart.

Prefer a full page? Open the content refresh vs new post calculator on CalcSA. To price the new post in rand, the what one blog post is worth calculator follows it over its whole life.

Worked example: the calculator's defaults

An old post with 600 visits a month, refreshed for a 30% lift in 3 hours, against a new post that takes 8 hours to write and reaches 300 visits a month after 12 months. Both looked at over 24 months.

• The refresh adds 180 visits a month from month 1 - 4,320 over 24 months.
• The new post brings 5,550 visits over 24 months - 1,950 in its first year while it ranks, 3,600 in its second.
• The new post passes the refresh in month 14, in visits added up so far.
• Per hour of work the refresh brings 1,440 visits, the new post 694.

Three more cases, same defaults except the one shown:

• Only 12 months ahead: the refresh wins, 2,160 visits against 1,950.
• A quiet old post, 200 visits a month: the refresh adds only 1,440 over 24 months - write the new post.
• A busy old post, 1,500 visits a month: the refresh adds 10,800 - nearly twice the new post, for less than half the work.

Estimates. The 600 visits, 30% lift, 300 visits for a new post, 12-month ramp and the hours are assumptions, as in the calculator. Your own posts will differ - your counter is the test.

Two years of visits, refresh against new post

Same two choices, visits added up month by month:

• The refresh line is straight from day one - the page already ranks, so the lift starts at once.
• The new post line bends upward while it climbs, then runs steeper than the refresh once it ranks.
• Doing both is the real answer - refresh your top posts first, then write new ones with the time saved.

Reading your counter for this

Your WebCounter counter tells you which posts are worth refreshing and whether the refresh worked. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.

• Sort the pages report by visits - your refresh list is the top ten posts older than a year.
• Note the post's visits for the 30 days before you refresh it, then compare the 30 days after Google re-reads it.
• Check what a typical new post reaches - look at posts you wrote a year ago, not your best one.
• Refresh in a batch, measure, then decide: if three refreshes lift less than 10%, write new posts instead.

Sources

• Ahrefs, Tim Soulo, "How long does it take to rank in Google?" (2017) - 5.7% of new pages reached the top 10 within a year. Not re-checked at the original on 18 October 2026; as cited in the CalcSA calculator.
• The 30% refresh lift is our estimate - no published benchmark was found that holds across sites.
• Calculator: CalcSA, Content refresh vs new post.

Estimates only. How much a refresh lifts a post depends on how stale it was and how strong the competition is; your own counter is the test.