The Magic Number: How Many Blog Posts You Need to Generate Traffic

If you're looking to engage qualified audiences through content, there's one question you've probably asked yourself: How many blog posts do you need to generate traffic?

In short, there's no magic number. But in this post, we'll get as close to one as possible.

Ready? Let's dive in!

How Many Blog Posts Do You Need to Get Traffic? [A Historical Perspective]

Most agencies suggest that a company needs 10-30 blog posts to start seeing SEO results. But, why?

Compound Interest

Naval Ravikant, co-founder and former CEO of AngelList, once said that everything we value in life comes from compound interest. From building a friendship to mastering a skill, it's all about doing a little every day. And that's exactly the case with SEO.

Google (and users) like alive and growing websites, constantly providing new useful information and optimizing their user experience. So, the more you publish (high-quality content), the better your search engine rankings will be.

As you publish new blog posts:

• Google refines its understanding of your website's positioning, so you start ranking for more relevant queries
• Google understands that your website is active, which may favor your positioning
• You build internal backlinks that make your site's structure more robust and easier to navigate
• You target more (and more precise) user needs, allowing you to be found by more, better-qualified users
• You build topical authority

It's easier for Google to understand and evaluate a website with 200 URLs, than a website with a small handful of pages. And, as your website grows, you're likely to see your platform's traffic grow in a way that's similar to the typical compound interest curve.

Less is more. But, when it comes to SEO, we could say that more is more and less is a bore.

But, is the “10-30 posts” recommendation based on more than just anecdotal evidence? 

Tipping Points

The most solid reference we came across is a Hubspot study from 2010.

This study covered 762 Hubspot customers and focused on the impact of blog size on monthly lead generation. It found that companies experienced three tipping points in their blogging journey:

• When they entered the 12-23 blog post range, they received one new monthly lead on average
• When they climbed up to the 24-51 post range, their lead generation efforts grew by 13%
• When they entered the 52+ range, they experienced a 77% increase in lead generation

This study covers under 1000 companies, and it's over 14 years old! The internet has changed a lot in the last 13 years. Major events like the 2020 COVID pandemic completely revolutionized the digital landscape. And, between 2010 and 2024, the Google algorithm, users' behavior, and the inbound marketing sector changed as well.

Are these findings relevant at all?

In short, yes. We could say that Hubspot's findings still hold some water. While the exact number of blog posts that would cause a "tipping point" may have changed, in principle, the more high-quality blog content you publish, the better your organic traffic.

Think of every blog post you publish as a potential door through which users can enter your website. The more (pretty, accessible) doors you have, the higher the chance that your users will find one and choose to open it.

However, the estimates on Hubspot's report are just that: Estimates. And that's not just because time has passed. They were already estimates in 2010!

One thing's certain: If you've got the right strategy and are producing new blog posts regularly, your search rankings will improve.

What's the Ideal Blog Posting Schedule?

Remember what we said about compound interest? There's only one SEO strategy that's always doomed to fail: Inconsistency.

All our clients see an increase in organic traffic and positioning within the first 3 months working with us. However, it can take 4-6 months to start getting more sales from SEO. And it can take 6-9 months for the numbers to get really interesting. Once again: Compound interest.

But, if you keep your strategy sound, you can boost your traffic faster by increasing your posting frequency. With that in mind:

How many blogs should you post a week?

If all your team can manage is to publish one post per week, that's better than no blog posts. Of course, from that point on, the more articles you publish the better - until the point where quality starts to diminish.

All your content should:

• Address your target audience's real interests and needs
• Relate to your product
• Provide a clear, relevant and exciting path to conversion
• Bring something fresh that no already available resources can provide

With the rise of generative AI, we're seeing teams churning hundreds of bad content pieces that waste readers' time. Volume still matters, and SEO is still a volume game. But while low-quality AI blog posts may bring you more traffic, only valuable content will bring you more leads.

If you're using your blog to build rapport and position your brand as a go-to authority, AI content simply doesn't make sense.

So, going back to this section's core question: How many blog posts per week? As many as you can, as long as publishing velocity doesn't jeopardize quality.

How Long Does It Typically Take for One Blog Post to Start Generating Traffic?

If you repurpose your content properly and distribute it across relevant channels, it can take you a couple of hours to get traction. For instance, one of our latest posts received over 100+ visits within its first hour live, just because we sent it via email, to a qualified target audience.

But, it can take a couple of days/week for a new blog post to start receiving traffic through Google and other search engines.

Wondering how to speed up the process?

How to Get Traffic to a Blog Post Faster

To get traffic to your new blogs fast, we recommend you:

• Build internal links
• Use Google Search Console's “Inspect URL” tool
• Leverage Indexnow
• Keep your technical SEO in check
• Make sure you're targeting the right keywords

Let's dive a little deeper.

Build Internal Backlinks

The best way to welcome a new piece into your blog is by building links to it from your most successful pages. Maybe you can link to it on older posts, or add it to a content hub. But make sure you build these backlinks.

Pro-tip: Have a large website? Check out automated interlinking tools.

Use Google Search Console

Want to make sure a new post has been indexed?

Here's how:

1. Go to Google Search Console
2. Enter your new post's URL in the search bar and press enter
3. If the URL's not indexed, click Request Indexing

Next, a pop-up window will appear, letting you know that Google's testing if the URL can be indexed. If that's the case, the page will be added to the priority crawl queue.

Leverage IndexNow

The IndexNow protocol works by submitting the website page URLs to search engine bots to be indexed as soon as the content is published. This helps to ensure that the website is indexed quickly, thus allowing the website to rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

IndexNow's main limitation is that it can only submit URLs to search engine bots, rather than entire web pages. This means that if the content on a website is regularly changing, IndexNow may not be able to keep up with the changes. 

Additionally, only Yandex and Bing participate in the IndexNow protocol. So you're missing out on over 80% of global users.

Keep Your Technical SEO in Check

Elements such as noindex tags, misplaced canonical links, and miswritten robots.txt files can severely affect how Google crawls and indexes your site.

So, if you're facing systematic indexing issues, you may want to check your website's technical SEO.

Additionally, verify your website's speed and responsivity, as slow loading times and poor mobile responsiveness can negatively impact your content's SEO visibility. Search engines prioritize fast, user-friendly sites, so optimizing these aspects will bring you more organic traffic.

Make Sure You're Targeting the Right Keywords

Do your blogging goals align with your business goals? Make sure that you're targeting keywords that align with the content you're producing, both from a commercial standpoint and from an editorial perspective.

Targeting high-volume keywords that don't align with your company's expertise can significantly hinder your ability to rank effectively. Search engines prioritize relevance and authority when determining which pages to display for specific queries. If you focus on popular keywords that are unrelated to your core business areas, your content is less likely to provide value or meet the user's search intent.

This misalignment can lead to lower engagement, reduced dwell time, and higher bounce rates, signaling to search engines that your page may not be the best fit for those queries. Subsequently, your website could experience poor rankings and difficulty in building credibility, ultimately wasting resources that could have been better spent targeting niche, relevant terms where your expertise shines.

Produce Complementary Content

Creating content that complements your blog enhances your brand's narrative and builds a cohesive network of information favored by search engines. Examples of complementary content include case studies, dedicated landing pages, and interactive resources like calculators.

Pro-tip: Don't shy away from interactive resources and user-generated content, they are excellent for building programmatic collections and attracting qualified traffic at scale.

How to Start Getting Traffic from Existing Articles

Did you laugh when you read the Hubspot survey results? If you have a large content library but little traffic and no leads, you shouldn't continue producing more content.

Instead, we recommend you revamp your current articles. Especially if you've been delving into black-hat or unreliable content production techniques.

Revamping existing content can significantly enhance its visibility and effectiveness. Start by conducting a thorough content audit to identify underperforming, but high-potential pieces.

What are those "high-potential" pieces? Those that you could use to target high-intent, low-difficulty keywords.

We recommend you:

• Update outdated information.
• Improve readability and flow, using lists, short sentences, and short paragraphs.
• Enhance the format with clear headings and visuals.
• Add the right keywords, so they blend into the text naturally.
• Enrich your content by adding first-hand insights, case studies, or actionable insights related to your product.
• Adjust your meta tags to make sure they include the right keywords and target the right search intent.

The Winning Combo: Good Quality Posts + Repurposing + a Steady Publishing Schedule

Too much information? Let us synthesize!

As general guidelines, we'd suggest you:

• Stop stressing about reaching exact benchmarks
• Post regularly
• Do keyword research that matches your possibilities and business goals
• Update existing content, to boost your rankings without the hassle of producing new content

Need a team that can boost your content ROI while minimizing headaches? Learn why startups from all over the globe choose Postdigitalist as their content partner: Book a free consultation, no strings attached.