How Often Should You Publish New Content?

Have you heard that publishing more often makes the Google gods smile upon your site and bless your content with top rankings? 

You’re not alone.

Many companies require their writers to post multiple time a week — sometimes even multiple times a day — because they believe it helps with search rankings. Their reasoning isn’t driven by what their readers want. Instead, it’s all about what they think Google needs to see.

Unfortunately, this can have an unintended side effect. 

I’ve chatted with many writers — and worked with many companies — who saw the quality of their content decrease after their publication schedules ramped up. There was less of a focus on creating authoritative content, and more focus on, well, more.   

The writers were writing as fast as they could, trying to keep up with “Google’s demands.”

Were the writers (and powers-that-be) comfortable with the approach? No. They knew the content wasn’t the best, and often felt embarrassed about the quality.

They just thought that publishing more often was the “magic bullet” that got Google’s attention.

Fortunately, they were wrong.

Here’s what Google says about publication frequency… 

In March 2018, Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz reported on a Twitter interaction between Google’s John Mueller and another Twitter user.

Here’s what went down.

The Twitter user asked:

“Do Google’s algorithms take into account the frequency/volume/schedule of publishing new content for a site? Say a site publishes 5 new URLs daily, but then begins to publish 2-3 instead. Does that make Google looks differently at the site?”

Good question. After all, it seems like a sudden drop in a publication schedule could be a negative signal to Google. It’s not like a print publication can suddenly change its publication schedule. Is a website any different?

Here’s what John Mueller said in response:

“Nope. A site isn’t a machine that pumps out content at a fixed rate. Well, it shouldn’t be :-).”

This means Google doesn’t care about your publication frequency. (Woohoo!)

And, your focus should be on quality — not on content quantity.

So, what does that mean to your content strategy?

If your company publishes a lot of content, and you feel the quality is slipping, it’s time to take a hard look at your analytics.

Check your bounce rates, your time on site and time on page statistics. Are people interacting with your content? Or taking off after a few seconds? Is it getting traction on social? Or is it falling flat?

You may find that you get better traction (and better positions, and more social shares) from publishing bigger, meatier content assets than from writing multiple, low-quality posts.

(Isn’t that why we create content in the first place — so people actually read and enjoy it?)

What’s more, you can easily repurpose a strong content asset. A large guide can be repurposed into multiple blog posts. You can use quotes and statistics for Instagram and Twitter. You can create PowerPoints that dovetail with parts of the main content asset.

Why not do it right the first time — and save yourself loads of time?

 What do you think?

Does reading, “Google doesn’t care about your publication frequency” make you breathe a sigh of relief? Or is your company (or your client’s company) stuck in the MORE CONTENT mentality?  Let me know in the comments!