Any Data on Publishing Frequency?

[Samwise89]

We know that some terms require freshness, like the news. Let's disregard all of that for this thread and say we're exclusively publishing Evergreen content.

Do we have any data showing that sites fare better if they publish at a certain rate? Would a site that hasn't had a new post indexed in a year do worse than one that drips one in at once a month? Not for the new content but for the old content. Is the old content affected? I guess this is the same thing as a domain boost of some kind.

I'm wondering, if this is the case, if editing old posts to expand them still counts.

I was thinking as I drove around today that I'll eventually cover all of the main topics on my site and have dug as deep as needed into each of them. At that point, do I keep dripping whatever goes viral on the net into the blog to keep it fresh, or do I need to worry about it at all?

Can you eventually build links, lock in your rankings, and hold them without continual posting? I don't feel like I see old sites like that ranking still.

 

[Calamari]

I can't answer all your questions because SEO is hard to test in a vacuum. But I can tell you that you don't have to add new content to hold onto old rankings. You will however need to have better user metrics than your competitors in the serp's and getting new links isn't going to hurt either.

 

[turbin3]

The thing is, the average frequency that is successful varies from niche to niche, and in some cases might even vary widely within the niche itself. Generally speaking, I'd say it's probably true that, comparing a frequency of ~1yr to ~1month, the shorter one is probably going to perform better. That's a broad enough range, I think we can make that assumption in most cases for most niches, though I'm sure there's always weird edge cases out there.

You bring up a good point @Samwise89. Sometimes in a niche you may cover most of what you needed to. So what then? Well, most niches usually have some form of news, industry happenings and events, etc. which are always a source to draw from. I definitely recommend continuing to update old content, especially as things change, new aspects are found, etc.

The mindset to guard against is the conventional approach of focusing on a specific number / frequency, at least at the beginning. People tell themselves things like, "I need to post once per day, 5-7 times per week, 25-35 times per month." as if hitting those magic numbers is going to magically do something.

Brian Dean from Backlinko is a good example of how the conventional thinking doesn't always add up. There were at least 1 or 2 years where his posting "frequency" was I think ~2-4 posts per YEAR. He put MONTHS worth of effort into some posts. He also put a lot of effort into constantly updating and continuing to build on to old posts, which clearly kept the ball rolling just fine. And most of you know his name despite the fact he hasn't been posting 30 times per month...

What I would suggest for people to consider trying is maybe test the opposite of what they already do, and see how it performs. For example, "regular posting guy" that posts 20-30 times per month. For him, he might want to consider putting a week, maybe even a few weeks to 1 month into ONE post, and create the best possible content + outreach plan into practice. Measure things like difference in engagement metrics, link acquisition rate or volume, etc.

The average person maybe spends a few hours to a day or two on the average blog post (totally made that up but sounds reasonable lol). Just imagine what you could accomplish with a solid month worth of planning and R&D! Try it. I think many avoid this because they don't yet have confidence in the potential improvement in outcome. It also takes increased focus and persistence to stick with it versus the feeling of hitting "publish" after a few hours and "out of sight out of mind".

For those that are already doing it, maybe try the opposite. Try streamlining your process a bit and see if you can improve your publishing schedule by 20-40%, and see how that performs. Do your engagement metrics suffer? Are you seeing fewer links / shares?

 

[Philip J. Fry]

If your site is complete and the niche is evergreen, you do not need to update the site regularly. Refer to the video below. Only update it if something new happens.