One of the best leaders to ever pace the sidelines of a gridiron once said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” Vince Lombardi translated that idea into five NFL championships. And this philosophy is just as relevant when applied to SEO content.
Successful SEO requires not just excellence, but repetition over time. Therefore, your marketing team’s job is to figure out how to create the best content on the Internet for your targeted keyword, and to do so consistently via a thoughtful editorial process. But how much content do you need to produce to optimize ROI? Our team has crunched the numbers over the years and found the following:
| A content publishing schedule of 2 pages per week is the minimum necessary to produce ROI from SEO. |
| A content publishing schedule of 5 pages per week achieves optimal SEO ROI. |
Why Content Frequency Matters for SEO
Each piece of content represents an opportunity to target a single new keyword. Increasing content production, therefore, creates new avenues for prospective customers to find your website through Google. However, Google doesn’t allow websites to engage in this process infinitely; rather, the amount of new pages it will allow to rank for their targeted keywords is capped based on your website’s trust level.
This cap translates into an optimal publishing schedule of 5-6 pages per week for most websites, after which websites see diminishing returns in terms of ROI.
Content Frequency vs Content Quality
When someone types a word, phrase or question into Google, the list of search results Google returns consist of Google’s estimation of the best responses to the searcher’s intent. What “best” means in this context is determined by Google’s algorithm. When you boil it down, there are five main ranking factors (attributes that contribute at least 10% to a page’s rankability). These are:
- Consistent publication of high-quality content
- Keywords in meta title tags
- Backlinks
- Niche expertise
- User engagement
The importance of these and other factors is show below:As the chart above shows, the most important factor in Google’s ranking algorithm is to publish high-quality content consistently. Regular publishing is easy to understand, and fairly easy to implement as well, but the “high quality” part is what’s tough.
The value of high quality content – that is, content that deeply satisfies the searcher’s intent, answering not only their express questions but their implied questions as well – is three-fold:
- It increases the percentage of users that convert and micro-convert
- It leads to higher Time on Page, signaling to Google the page should have a higher ranking for its targeted keyword
- It inspires bloggers and journalists to link to the piece, increasing the entire website’s rankability
In addition, there’s the simple fact that each well-written new page gives you the opportunity to rank for a different keyword, increasing the size of your traffic base and therefore your full-funnel conversion rate.
Finally, after ~6 months of posting content at least twice per week, you’re eligible for Google’s “News Website” bonus, which further increases your site’s rankability.
Contextualizing Content Publishing
Content publishing fits within the larger world of an SEO campaign. Here is what one typically looks like:
SEO Campaign Plan:
Step 1: Build a Hub & Spoke strategy targeting high value container keywords
Step 2: Select transactional keywords based on their commercial value
Step 3: Assign each keyword the appropriate page type based on search intent
Step 4: Create thought leadership for each keyword chosen
Step 5: Publish thought leadership at least 2x weekly
Step 6: Track SEO conversions
Step 7: Measure success based on SEO KPIs and optimize accordingly
Implementing the above plan will produce (in order) rankings, organic traffic, engagement, conversions, and ultimately, sales.
Many companies don’t have the time or experience to maintain a content publishing program like this one. An excellent solution is to partner with an SEO agency who can handle each step of the process for you, from keyword research to ghostwriting weekly content to conversion optimization. If you’re interested in learning more, you can contact us here.
