“How often should I post on my blog?” is one of the most common questions in content planning, and most answers to it are invented. You will find confident advice to post daily, three times a week, or sixteen times a month, usually with no source behind the number. The honest answer is that frequency is not the variable that matters. What you publish matters far more than how often.
Google has said as much. In a thread reported by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, Google’s John Mueller addressed content frequency directly, and his answer has not dated.
What Google has said about publishing frequency
Mueller’s line was short: “a site isn’t a machine that pumps out content at a fixed rate. Well, it shouldn’t be :-)”. The point behind the joke is that Google does not reward publishing frequency in itself. A site that adds ten pages a day does not automatically outrank a site that adds one a week. Each page is judged on whether it answers the query better than the alternatives.
That should change how you plan. If frequency were a ranking signal, the rational move would be to publish as much as possible and accept a lower average quality. Because it is not, every weak post is simply a weak post: it costs you writing time, editing time and crawl attention, and it gives readers a reason to trust the rest of the site a little less.
Why “post every day” advice persists
The advice survives because it mixes up correlation and cause. Sites that publish often tend to be large, well-resourced operations with editors, subject experts and established authority. Their traffic comes from all of that, not from the calendar. Copy the cadence without the resources and you get the volume without the quality.
There is also a news effect. A publisher covering a fast-moving topic does need to post frequently, because the queries themselves are new every day. That is a property of the topic, not a rule for blogs in general. A post about how to prune a fruit tree does not need a sibling tomorrow.
A related myth is that a site needs a certain number of posts before it gets any traffic. Our piece on how many blog posts you need to get traffic covers why the count matters less than whether each post targets a query you can realistically win.
How often should I post on my blog, then?
Work backwards from what you can publish well. Decide what a finished post looks like for your topic: researched, edited, with original examples or data where you have them. Estimate honestly how long that takes. The frequency you can sustain at that standard is your publishing frequency. For a solo writer that might be two posts a month. For a team with an editor it might be several a week.
The table below sets out the trade-offs. None of the cadences is right or wrong in itself; each fits a different situation.
| Approach | When it fits | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed high volume (daily or more) | News, fast-changing topics, teams with editors | Google does not reward the rate itself; quality has to hold at volume |
| Steady, modest cadence (weekly or fortnightly) | Most niche sites and company blogs | Consistency helps readers and planning, not rankings directly |
| Publish when ready | Solo writers, in-depth topics, research-led posts | Long gaps can stall your own momentum; keep a backlog |
| Updates to existing posts | Any site with an archive older than a year | An update is publishing too; often the quickest return |
If you need a number to plan around, choose one you could keep up for a year without lowering the bar. A cadence you abandon after two months does more harm to planning than a slower one you keep.
Consistency helps readers, not the algorithm
A regular schedule still has value. It just lives somewhere other than rankings. Readers who subscribe to a newsletter or follow a feed come to expect posts on a rhythm, and a predictable cadence makes that relationship easier to keep. Internally, a fixed rhythm makes planning possible: briefs get written ahead, editors know when drafts arrive, and research does not get squeezed into the day before publication.
So keep a schedule if it helps your process. Just set it by capacity, and do not treat a missed week as an SEO problem. It is not one. Publishing a thin post to hit the date is the bigger risk.
Updating is publishing too
The frequency question usually assumes that every slot in the calendar is a new URL. It does not have to be. Updating an older post with current facts, better examples and a sharper answer to the query is publishing, and for an established blog it is often the better use of a slot. The post already has links, history and, often, some rankings to build on.
A sensible split for an archive more than a year old is to give part of each month to refreshes. Our content refresh guide covers how to choose which posts to revisit first, and how to tell a refresh from a rewrite.
Some posts should not be updated at all but merged or removed. Two thin posts on the same question compete with each other; one strong post usually does better. Pruning belongs in the same calendar as publishing.
Plan the topics, then the calendar
Frequency is the last decision, not the first. Start with the list of queries you want to answer, ordered by how likely you are to win them and how much they matter to the business. Our guide to SEO content strategy covers building that list. Once you have it, the calendar is arithmetic: the number of topics, divided by the time each one takes to do properly.
Here is the limitation. Mueller’s comment is a statement of principle, not a published study, and Google has never released data on how publishing rate relates to rankings. Nobody outside Google can prove a cadence has no indirect effect, for instance through more pages earning links or more queries covered. What can be said is that the volume only helps when each page earns its place.
The practical answer, then: pick a pace you can sustain at your quality bar, protect time for updates, and never publish to fill a slot. Readers notice a weak post faster than any algorithm does. More planning guides sit in our strategy archive.
Frequently asked questions
How often should you do a blog post for SEO?
As often as you can publish to a consistent standard. Google does not reward publishing frequency itself, so quality and relevance matter more than the rate.
How many blogs should you post a month?
There is no correct number. Work out how long a finished post takes you, then set a monthly target you could keep for a year without lowering the bar.
Does posting more often help rankings?
Not in itself. Ten pages a day does not automatically outrank one a week; each page is judged on how well it answers its query.
Do updates to old posts count?
Yes. Updating an existing post is publishing, and for an established blog it is often the better use of time than a new URL.
The takeaway Frequency is not a ranking factor. Set your pace by what you can publish well, keep a schedule for readers and planning, and give part of the calendar to updating what you already have.
