You’ve probably heard it in every content meeting ever.

“We just need to publish more.”

It sounds logical, right?

More blogs = more traffic = more leads. Simple maths even I can do.

But here’s the truth: most of the time, that “just publish more” mindset is lazy thinking. It’s a shortcut masquerading as a strategy. It might’ve worked in 2018, but a content strategy now needs to be much more nuanced.

And if you’re not careful, it leads to bloated blogs, wasted hours, and a site full of content no one reads, let alone trusts.

This post isn’t a rant (well, maybe a small one). It’s a breakdown of why content velocity is one of the most overhyped ideas in marketing, and what I’ve found actually works when you want content to drive real results.

No fluff, no hype. Just honest insight from someone who’s tested both approaches.

Short on time? Here are the key takeaways

Publishing more often doesn’t equal better results: Content velocity often leads to shallow, low-impact posts that clutter your site and dilute trust. Focus on purpose, not post count.
Strategic, experience-led content earns trust (and rankings): First-hand insight, subject-matter depth, and clear intent are what Google—and your audience—care about. That’s what drives sustainable SEO and AI visibility.
One great piece can outperform 10 mediocre ones: With the right strategy and execution, a single useful, well-planned post can deliver more traffic, links, and conversions than a whole month of rushed output.

The Cult of Content Velocity

Somewhere along the way, “content velocity” became gospel.

Publish daily. Hit 100 blogs a quarter. Outpace the competition. It sounds like hustle. It feels like progress.

But it’s mostly noise.

The whole idea comes from two places:

Newsrooms, where speed matters because stories age in hours (as a former journalism student, I know this world all too well!)
Aggressive SEO tactics, where sheer volume once gamed the system. The more you posted, the more topical authority you had, which led to better ranking, which led to better topical authority, and so on.

Neither applies if you're a B2B SaaS company, a services firm, or anyone who values trust, leads, or long-term growth.

And yet, brands keep chasing it, because velocity looks impressive on a dashboard.

“Look, we published 87 posts last month!”

Cool. How many of them got read?

Or ranked?

Or converted?

I once had a client who wanted to scale to 50 posts a month. Not because we had 50 meaningful things to say, but because their competitor did. No plan. No strategy. Just “go faster.”

The crazy thing is that I was getting paid on a deliverable contract. More posts? More money.

However, I knew this approach was wrong on so many levels, so I pushed back, saved the client a significant amount of money, and achieved better results.

Plus, I built up a ton of respect with that client, and we’ve now worked together for well over two years!

Why Velocity Often Leads to Garbage (and Missed Opportunity)

The more you crank the wheel, the worse the output usually gets.

Here’s what actually happens when you chase volume:

Research gets skipped. No time for subject-matter interviews, original insights, or even decent desk research. You end up rewording what’s already out there.
Editing becomes optional. When the goal is “done,” not “good,” quality control disappears. Typos slip through. Ideas don’t land. Credibility takes a hit.
Strategy gets sidelined. Velocity focuses on output, not outcomes. No one’s asking why this content exists or what role it plays in the customer journey.
You create content debt. Fifty half-baked posts are now sitting on your site, offering no value, cluttering up your sitemap, and confusing Google about what you’re actually good at.

But the worst part? It actually ends up doing very little for your topical authority and, therefore, rankings and traffic. In some cases, it can even slowly erode your authority.

If someone clicks through from Google and lands on a 700-word fluff piece written in 20 minutes by someone who’s never spoken to your customers... what are the odds they trust you? Let alone buy from you?

That’s not content marketing. That’s content pollution.

And here’s the kicker: once you’ve published it, you now own it.

That junk post you rushed out in April? It’s still in your sitemap. It’s still ranking (badly) for some irrelevant long-tail query. It’s still eating crawl budget and diluting your topical authority.

Google doesn’t reward volume anymore.

It rewards clarity.

Consistency.

Evidence that you know what you’re talking about and have a reason to say it.

And users? They’re even less forgiving. One forgettable post might not seem like a big deal, but stack 20 of them, and suddenly your entire site feels low-effort. You become just another brand shouting into the void.

Meanwhile, the sites that slow down, invest in quality, and focus on building trust? They win. Maybe not in week one. But give it three months, and they’re the ones people remember, cite, and convert through.

So the real opportunity cost of content velocity? It’s not just bad content.

It’s the good content you could’ve made instead.

The Better Approach: Editorial Focus and Strategic Intent

Now, all that sounds pretty depressing, and I get that.

I’ve essentially just told you that the harder you hustle, the more you suffer.

But aside from getting that slogan on a T-shirt, that’s not strictly what I’m saying. What I’m actually saying is that you should keep that energy and instead focus it elsewhere.

The real question to ask yourself is: Why are we publishing this, and who is it actually for?

That’s where editorial focus comes in.

Not just “we write about X,” but “we’re building authority around this exact slice of our market, and everything we publish needs to strengthen that.”

It’s quality, on purpose.

Strategic intent means each piece earns its place in the lineup. It has a role. It’s linked to a user need, a funnel stage, and a commercial outcome.

It’s not just there to fill a Tuesday.

When I’m planning content, I run everything through a simple filter:

Does it solve a real problem for our audience?
Does it demonstrate experience or expertise, not just summarise?
Is this something we want to be known for?
Will it still be useful in 6 months?

If the answer’s no, it doesn’t make the cut.

This isn’t about being precious. It’s about being intentional. Because when every post is designed to build trust, educate with authority, and support a bigger business goal, you don’t need to publish more.

Most brands have content. Very few have a point of view.

That’s what editorial focus gives you: a clear sense of what you stand for, not just what you talk about.

Strategic intent isn’t about guessing what might rank. It’s about reverse-engineering what your ideal customer actually needs to hear before they take action, and then giving them that, in your voice, with your perspective.

Its content does one of three things:

Earns trust: Through authority, relevance, and real insight.
Drives action: By making the next step obvious and valuable.
Builds positioning: Showing how you think differently, not just what you do.

And yes, that might mean publishing less often. But every post earns its keep.

This is the stuff that gets linked to in Slack channels. Forwarded in emails. Cited in sales calls. Bookmarked, reread, remembered.

What to Focus on Instead

Now, I’m conscious I’ve talked a lot about what your content should and shouldn’t do, but I haven’t really talked about exactly what that looks like. So let’s do that now.

Own your topics, don’t just cover them

You don’t need to rank for everything. You need to own the stuff that matters to your business.

That means:

Going deep on a handful of key topics, not spreading thin across 50.
Building clusters that answer every relevant question from awareness to purchase.
Writing content that’s clearly authored by someone who knows the space, not just regurgitating what’s already out there.

Hint: This is exactly what Google wants to see when it talks about topical authority.

Create content that earns attention

Forget volume. Ask: “Would someone link to this? Share it? Use it in their deck?”

The bar is higher now. If your content doesn’t offer:

Original data,
Actual experience,
Or a clear, opinionated POV…

…it’s just filler.

The good news? When you raise the bar, your content starts doing its own distribution. That post that took three times longer to write? It keeps delivering for months, even years.

Think distribution before you write

Most content dies in the CMS. Not because it’s bad, but because no one ever thought about how to get it seen.

I flip the order. Before I write anything, I ask:

Who needs this?
Where do they already spend time?
How can I slice this into multiple formats?

If a blog post can’t be repurposed into a killer LinkedIn thread, a sales enablement piece, and a lead magnet, I question whether it’s worth writing.

Optimise and improve your best stuff

Your highest ROI might come from not creating something new.

Instead:

Find pages ranking on page 2 and give them the boost they need.
Refresh top posts with updated insights, better CTAs, and improved UX.
Consolidate weak or overlapping pieces into one definitive guide.

You’d be amazed how much impact you can drive by making old stuff better instead of pumping out new content for the sake of it.

Real‑World Example: How Quality Outperforms Quantity

A great example of quality beating quantity came from a project I led with Connecteam.

The goal? Publish a series of in-depth competitor reviews, not just to tick the SEO box, but to actually help buyers make informed decisions.

But we didn’t churn out keyword-stuffed templates. We built a process grounded in subject-matter expertise and first-hand experience.

The strategic approach

As the content strategist, I worked directly with Connecteam to design a smarter editorial process:

We sourced access to competitor platforms wherever possible.
Writers were instructed to run real-world tests, speak with sales teams, and evaluate tools against practical use cases, not just spec sheets.
Every review had to offer unique, experience-led insight that couldn’t be pulled from a feature comparison table.

My job was ensuring the entire process delivered true EEAT value: Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Execution: useful, user-focused reviews

We didn’t just “cover competitors.” We created editorially robust, honest, and helpful reviews tailored to buyer intent:

Who is this tool really for?
Where does it fall short?
How does it compare based on actual use, not just pricing pages?

Each review was planned, briefed, edited, and published with clarity and intent. No filler.

The results

This wasn’t a fast turnaround. But the payoff came quickly:

The reviews started ranking for high-value buyer terms, despite competing with big affiliate and aggregator sites.

AI search features began surfacing the pages, likely recognising the depth and real-world insights.

The reviews drove qualified organic traffic, people who were actively comparing options, not just skimming blogs.

Why it worked

Expertise: The writers didn’t just summarise—they understood what matters in a real buying decision.
Experience: Accessing trials and talking to sales teams gave the content credibility and clarity.
Authoritativeness: The content was structured and presented like something you'd trust in a buying process.
Trustworthiness: No obvious bias, no filler—just helpful, experience-led reviews.

We didn’t publish dozens of weak summaries. We published a handful of standout reviews. And they’re still earning their keep, ranking, converting, and building trust.

Check out the case study in full to get a true understanding of the impact our approach had.

It’s Time to Burn The Velocity Calendar

I’m conscious that I’ve asked a lot of you in this article. Essentially, I’ve asked you to forget everything you’ve learned and embrace a completely new approach to content marketing.

But trust me, it’s 100% the way to go. If it helps, it often leads to me doing less work with brands, which might seem counterintuitive, but I’m always focused on delivering the best possible results for anyone who puts their content in my hands!

And the truth is, you don’t need to publish more; you need to publish better.

Thoughtful, strategic, experience-led content that actually earns trust. Content that gets cited, shared, surfaced by AI, and read all the way to the CTA.

The brands that win aren’t the ones pumping out 40 blogs a month. They’re the ones putting real thought into why they’re publishing something, and what it’s meant to achieve.

So scrap the volume calendar. Focus on clarity, utility, and intent.

Because in 2025 and beyond, the best content isn’t the most frequent.

It’s the most useful and the most trusted.

Frequently Asked Questions About Content Velocity

Does publishing more content help with SEO?

Not always. While consistent publishing can help with indexing and topical coverage, quality and intent matter more. Thin or low-value content can actually harm your SEO if it dilutes your site’s authority.

What’s a healthy publishing cadence?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. For most brands, 2–4 well-crafted pieces per month will outperform 10+ rushed ones. Focus on building authority in key areas, not just hitting a number.

Can AI tools help with content velocity?

Yes, but they need to be used strategically. AI can speed up drafting and research, but without strong editorial oversight and first-hand insight, it often leads to generic, untrustworthy content.

How do I know if I’m publishing too much?

If engagement is low, rankings aren’t improving, or your team is stretched thin, that’s a sign to slow down. Audit your output and ask: Is each piece serving a clear purpose and adding value?

Why “Content Velocity” is a Trap (and What to Focus on Instead)