What is Content Velocity?

(and how is Spaghetti relevant)

Content velocity is the speed at which content is created and published by your business. It can apply to all platforms but in most cases, you’ll see it mentioned about SEO.

Content Velocity is SEO jargon for “How often do you post content?”.

SEO experts care because to Google; publishing more often shows you are active in sharing knowledge and educating your audience.  It’s SEO by numbers and the more content you publish the more you give Google to read and serve up to people in search. 

The Spaghetti

Just like when you’re cooking spaghetti you throw a little at the wall after a few minutes. It slides down the wall (or bounces off) and hits the ground – Spaghetti, not ready yet-y.

Then, after a minute you throw another piece of spaghetti at the wall – it sticks but only for a moment. Then it slides down the wall and lands next to the first sad piece of spaghetti. That is two sad spaghetti pieces on the floor, a mess on the wall and thunder rumbling in your stomach.

A minute or two later, you repeat the process and finally, it sticks. Its ready. But,to be sure, you throw another piece and another.

That’s content velocity SEO in a delicious, messy metaphor. Each piece of spaghetti is well-written, SEO targeted content you want to stick to Google’s wall of rankings. Every minute you wait for spaghetti is days or weeks between throwing more content spaghetti at Google and waiting for it to stick. Because when it does, it’s time to eat.

You throw that spaghetti content at the wall aside those who post new or updated content more often see Google crawl their site and attempt to find somewhere in the rankings to show that content.

Google likes content velocity because, theoretically, it’s also good for users.

Google thinks updated content signals new research, opinions or facts about a topic. This can be true but in my experience is rarely the case. 

Regardless, content velocity is somewhat of an SEO hack you can use to push Google into reviewing your site more often.

The more content you post, the more chances you have of ranking for something (anything) which you can then double down on and leverage into more traffic, and customers.

Simplified the math is like this:

To get clients you need conversions. To get conversions you need traffic

To get traffic you need rankings. To get rankings you need content.

Ergo, more clients from SEO depend on more content. So, we must publish as much content as possible.

Strategies to Increase Content Velocity

If more content = more traffic it eventually leads to more clients. How do we increase content production? The casual advice you will get is; 

1. Content Planning and Scheduling – Anything that requires high volume will require planning so, develop a robust content calendar that outlines what to publish and when. This will take some time and I advise planning 3-6 months in advance. Once you start the engine you don’t want to have to stop again to do more planning.
2. Delegate –  You can’t do it all, you can’t review it all and you definitely cannot post it all. Don’t try. The best thing you can do is hire and empower a team focused on creating and deploying content rapidly. Define clear roles and batch tasks to streamline content production. A standard team would consist of 2 writers, an editor and a publisher. A small team like that could publish 6-10 pieces of content per week. That’s a lot of content if it was planned well. But way too much for one person.
3. Automation and Tools – Automate what you can. While I wouldn’t recommend the current trend of using AI to do everything and call it “automation” you should leverage it where possible. A few places automation makes sense in this system; 
   1. Scheduling – A CMS like WordPress will allow you to schedule your drafted posts to publish on a specific date.
   2. Internal linking – Plugins that automate your website’s internal linking will save you time in adding it manually and will remember posts you don’t as you build your content repertoire.
   3. Messaging and reporting – Connecting a project management tool like ClickUp, Asana or Trello to Slack or email is vital. When things are ready for review, or publishing you want people to be notified immediately without relying on someone to send a message manually. People can be forgetful but machines aren’t. 

Advanced Advice for Content Velocity

Here are some other ways to get content velocity that people don’t often talk about;

1. Video – Counter-intuitive, but it works. If you have webinars or regularly do a live stream or podcast then you should leverage that into content for your website. Many tools can help you transcribe your video recordings for low or no cost. I use Descript but YouTube will also autogenerate transcripts for you when you post there. Use an AI tool like ChatGPT and add your transcript there to get segments or content ideas from your videos that you can then turn into content.
   
2. Social Media – If there is a post that your target audience has responded well to then from your or your competitors I recommend taking that piece of content and its comments and writing something for your website on the same topics. Social is a great place to find validated ideas to write about.
   
3. ChatGPT – But don’t just use it like a novice. Asking ChatGPT to write content for you that you then post with no oversight, no human opinion or experience is a fast way to turn content velocity from a strength into a Google penalty. Instead, use ChatGPT, Claude and any other Gen AI to help you brainstorm ideas for new content. It works best if you give it some context on how to help you find new content ideas. I like to give it articles to read and then suggest things that it hasn’t covered.

   I

   t can also – help to suggest headings (ask for 10 and give it feedback), write SEO page titles or meta descriptions, and even suggest images that you should add based on competitors’ pages.
   

The Process of Content Velocity

Below is a high-level overview of what the process of content velocity looks like for a small team. 

1. Plan your content  – Three to six months in advance is a healthy amount.
   Before you start writing anything, get your SEO research done so you can provide a content brief for your writers to work from. Good writers versed in SEO and how to write ranking content can work off a single keyword only and they will do the rest.
   
   However. most writers however will need more (assume anyone from Fiverr/UpWork etc is in this category). At minimum provide them with a spreadsheet to track their articles from, unique brief documents for each piece and a style guide so that there is consistency across each article before it hits your website.
    
2. Get your team together and delegate  – Now delegate the content and the roles each person has in producing that content and getting it published. Clear, defined roles are crucial. The buck must stop somewhere and it can’t always be with you. Give people the power to solve the problems themselves.
    
3. Start producing content. – Although you should start writing in week 1, I recommend against publishing anything. Have everything ready and filed somewhere in a Google folder so it can be found later. Building up a backlog is important also so that velocity doesn’t fall off when someone is sick, injured or on holiday.

    

4. Fix the breakdowns – The best-laid plans rarely survive the first week of content production at scale. Plan a time with your team every day in the beginning for 15 minutes and go over any issues. Some common issues are images and tone of voice in the content as well as fact-checking but you’ll find more. Be patient here and spend the time you need to iron out the problems.

    

5. Schedule content  – You should have a backlog of content you can paste into your CMS and then schedule for publishing now. As mentioned earlier you don’t want to publish daily the content from that day or the day before. An ideal backlog of content would be 2-4 weeks. That gives you ample time to replace anyone or get extra help if something happens to your team. Without this buffer, something as inconvenient as the flu or as fantastic as a wedding or new child can ruin months of hard work.

    

6. Review published content  – This was all for SEO so reviewing the content and results is an important step. Do this monthly and track the content against the keywords you were targeting at the time. If the content doesn’t rank it doesn’t get traffic and so on. 

Summing Up

Content velocity is SEO jargon for the publishing cadence on your website. High-velocity content publishing is good for your SEO because Google likes fresh content the more you post the more content it has to show to users. The more Google shows your content the more likely you will get customers.

Despite being helpful it’s also hard to because velocity requires planning and tight processes. When you start publishing you need a great team, with clear roles and a defined process to follow. Consistency in quality and quantity are the challenges but you can overcome them with automation, delegation and documentation. A small team could produce 6-10 posts per week which would far outpace 95% of websites on the internet and help you achieve more traffic and eventually more clients.