The data-backed case for publishing less content

Quality over quantity is a familiar saying, but it’s not always an easy sell to executives and decision-makers who still believe publishing more content leads to better results.

That approach may still work in some areas of marketing and at specific, tested frequencies. But today’s content strategies often benefit more from a slower, data-backed production cadence guided by the law of diminishing returns.

The law of diminishing returns in online content

Publishing more frequently was associated with higher traffic, HubSpot found. But every content strategy eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns, where producing more content delivers smaller returns than improving what you already have.

That point will vary by organization. You’ll also have “compounding articles” (as HubSpot calls them) that generate most of your traffic, leads, and engagement. The goal is to identify your publishing threshold using your own performance data.

Once you do, you can use that data to show your leadership team why publishing as much as possible doesn’t necessarily produce better results.

But are your articles even getting indexed? 

A recent SEO client brought up an interesting point I hadn’t considered before. Among their high-quality content, researched, written by a human, and edited and reviewed by several people before publication, many articles were discovered by Google, but the search engine simply chose not to index them.

This has been relatively rare until recently. Historically, Google indexed most pages it discovered on established, higher-quality sites. But as AI has accelerated site creation, we’re seeing more pages discovered by Google but left unindexed.

Searching Reddit and other social forums shows that other SEOs are running into the same issue. Google has even addressed it in a Search Central video. SEO analyst Raghunath Sabat shared on LinkedIn that this issue persists when one or more of the following exist:

• Crawl budget is limited.
• There are too many URLs to crawl.
• It’s a low-priority site (an authority issue).
• The content is low quality.
• There aren’t enough internal links.

In Raghunath’s case, he resolved the issue by republishing the article and linking to it from relevant articles. But the fundamentals still matter. Internal linking and crawl budget remain crucial to getting your high-quality content indexed and delivering value.

Why crawl budget still matters

According to Google’s Developer documentation: 

• “The amount of time and resources that Google devotes to crawling a site is commonly called the site’s crawl budget, and it’s determined by two main elements: crawl capacity limit and crawl demand.” 

When a site has too many pages to crawl, Google may decide not to crawl the entire site. That decision is typically based on dozens of factors, including site authority and what Google has already indexed.

Determine a content pruning strategy

Publishing less is only part of the equation. Optimizing the content you already have should become a core part of your content strategy and production workflow.

One of the strongest examples comes from Jimmy Daly’s post on how QuickBooks deleted more than 2,000 pieces of content from its resource center. Within weeks, traffic increased 20%, leading to more than 70% more lead signups.

Deleting content doesn’t guarantee success, but it can reduce crawl demand and help Google focus its crawl resources on the pages that matter most.

Deleting content you’ve invested time, money, and effort into can feel risky. But in many cases, your lowest-performing content isn’t driving the results that matter most: conversions, leads, and sales. A Userpilot case study found that deleting nearly 25% of its content led to its highest-trafficked month yet.

Focusing your content on the topics where you have the deepest expertise, with one to four high-quality articles per topic instead of 50 or more, can improve crawl efficiency and help your team produce stronger content.

While studies have observed a correlation between dwell time (the amount of time users spend consuming your content) and rankings, Google has never confirmed that dwell time is a ranking factor.

Still, many experts have found that AI search citations disproportionately come from well-structured, substantive pages, and cited brands see meaningfully higher click-through rates than competitors that aren’t cited.

How to make the case for less content

We’ve covered the benefits of producing fewer, higher-quality content pieces, from improved crawl efficiency and indexing to stronger engagement. But how do you turn those insights into an actionable plan that stakeholders can support? Start with these steps.

Run a content audit

Use a tool like Screaming Frog to generate a list of the content on your site you want to analyze. This could include blog articles, support articles, or other content assets.

Pull not only the URLs, but also the data that will help inform your decisions, such as conversions, traffic, and ranked keywords over the past 12 months.

Review each URL and decide whether to:

• Keep it as is.
• Consolidate it with another article and redirect the current URL.
• Refresh it with updated information and data.
• Delete it and redirect the URL.

Then develop a plan for each category. Some tasks, such as deleting and redirecting content, can be completed in bulk. Others, such as content refreshes, are better handled in phases. Pair this work with a content gap analysis or other research to identify where new content still makes sense.

Reframe your KPIs

The metrics you’ve traditionally used to measure content success may no longer capture the full impact of AI-driven search.

Consider building an AI search prompt library that reflects how people discover your content, and track, when possible, whether your content generates conversions from AI summaries or other third-party experiences.

Set a review date

If there’s still uncertainty about making a significant change to your publishing cadence, establish a review date to evaluate the results. Give the changes at least three to six months before deciding whether to continue or adjust your approach.

Stay agile

Don’t treat any changes as permanent. As search and publishing continue to evolve, evaluate what’s working, such as content pruning, and what isn’t, such as changes to your publishing cadence.

It’s not just about publishing less

Today’s content strategy isn’t about publishing more. It’s about making every article count. If your content isn’t driving meaningful business results, it isn’t the best use of your team’s time, budget, or resources. Every site has its own point of diminishing returns. Your job is to identify that threshold and adjust your production strategy accordingly.

Refreshing existing content while creating new content remains essential. Don’t create content that can be easily summarized. Instead, publish substantive, informative content that offers depth beyond a quick overview. Depth and quality will attract more users and customers than high-volume publishing.