The Half-Life of Content: Measuring How Long Your Articles Stay Relevant

In physics, half-life measures how long it takes for half of a substance to decay. Content has the same property. Your article generating 1,000 visits monthly will eventually generate 500, then 250, then effectively zero—unless you intervene.

The question isn't whether content decays. It's how fast, and what you do about it.

Measuring Content Half-Life

Content half-life is the time it takes for an article's traffic to drop to 50% of its peak. Calculate it by identifying peak monthly traffic, then tracking how many months until traffic halves. A six-month half-life means the article maintains value twice as long as one with a three-month half-life.

Different content types have predictably different half-lives. News and trending topics: weeks. Tactical how-tos tied to specific tools: months. Framework explanations: years. Fundamental principles: decades. Your half-life distribution reveals whether you're building assets or chasing trends.

Analytics tracking makes this measurable. Track each article's monthly organic traffic over time. Plot the decay curve. Articles with steep declines have short half-lives—they're time-sensitive, competitively saturated, or algorithmically deprioritized. Articles with gradual declines have long half-lives—they address stable topics with lasting relevance.

What Determines Half-Life

Topic volatility matters most. Writing about specific software features means your half-life ends when the software updates. Writing about human psychology in decision-making? That half-life measures in decades because human psychology doesn't update quarterly.

Competitive intensity accelerates decay. Your article ranking #3 might maintain that position for years in low-competition niches. In saturated markets, competitors continuously publish, and your position degrades monthly as better content displaces yours. Content entropy isn't just theoretical—it's measurable as half-life.

Search algorithm changes affect half-life unpredictably. Google updates can extend half-life by favoring your content type or shorten it by deprioritizing your approach. You can't control this, but you can measure it. Sharp traffic drops across multiple articles simultaneously signal algorithmic changes, not content quality issues.

The Velocity-Half-Life Trade-Off

High-velocity publishing creates shorter average half-lives. Frequent content on fast-moving topics means most articles have three-to-six-month relevance. Scaling content without deep expertise accelerates this—surface-level tactical content ages faster than expert analysis.

Low-velocity, high-depth publishing creates longer half-lives. Comprehensive guides that take weeks to produce can generate traffic for years. The investment per article is higher, but the return period is longer. Your ROI calculation depends entirely on half-life assumptions.

Companies optimizing for quarterly results favor short half-lives—quick wins from timely content. Companies building long-term assets favor long half-lives—slower initial gains but sustained value. Neither approach is wrong; they serve different strategic timeframes.

Extending Half-Life Through Maintenance

Content maintenance extends half-life but can't prevent decay indefinitely. Updating an article resets its clock partially—maybe you get back to 80% of peak traffic, not 100%. Each subsequent update yields diminishing returns.

The maintenance question becomes: is extending this article's half-life more valuable than creating new content? If the article still ranks well and serves important keywords, maintenance wins. If it's barely generating traffic, let it decay completely and reallocate resources to new content with longer natural half-lives.

Strategic content partnerships can extend half-life by adding credibility and updating expertise that would be expensive to develop internally. Partner-contributed updates can refresh content more cost-effectively than complete rewrites.

Portfolio Half-Life Analysis

Looking at individual article half-lives is useful. Analyzing your entire content portfolio's half-life distribution is strategic. If 80% of your content has half-lives under six months, you're on a publishing treadmill—constantly creating to replace what's decaying.

A healthy portfolio has distribution across half-life ranges. Some short half-life content captures timely opportunities. Some medium half-life content addresses current best practices. Some long half-life content builds enduring authority on fundamentals.

Quality over quantity matters specifically because quality tends to extend half-life. Well-researched, comprehensive content maintains relevance longer than quickly produced content optimized for immediate traffic.

The Compounding Half-Life Effect

Content with longer half-lives compounds value over time. An article with a two-year half-life continues generating traffic, backlinks, and authority while you publish new content. Articles with three-month half-lives provide temporary boosts but no compounding.

This is why thought leadership content focuses on frameworks rather than tactics—frameworks have longer half-lives. "How we think about X" ages better than "How to do X with Tool Y."

The compounding effect means your 50th article with long half-life generates more cumulative value than your 50th article with short half-life, even if initial traffic is identical. Over three years, the long half-life article might generate 5x the total traffic of the short half-life article.

Half-Life as Content Strategy Filter

Before creating content, estimate its half-life. Timely response to trending topic? Three months. Tutorial for specific tool? Six months. Framework explaining enduring principles? Three years. The estimated half-life should inform how much you invest in creation.

Low-investment, short half-life content: acceptable for capturing immediate opportunities. High-investment, short half-life content: terrible ROI unless the immediate traffic is exceptionally valuable. High-investment, long half-life content: optimal for building sustainable traffic.

Interactive content like calculators often has longer half-lives than articles because the utility remains constant even as contexts change. A mortgage calculator from 2020 still works in 2025. An article about 2020 mortgage rates does not.

When to Accept Decay

Not all content deserves life extension. Some articles served their purpose—captured a moment, tested an approach, addressed a temporary need. Letting them decay naturally while you focus on higher-value content is strategic resource allocation.

Delete content with short half-lives that no longer generates traffic. It creates maintenance debt and dilutes site quality signals. If an article's half-life expired and it's not worth reviving, removal is more strategic than neglect.

Measuring What Matters

Content half-life transforms "should we update this?" from guesswork into data-driven decisions. Articles approaching half-life with good remaining traffic are maintenance candidates. Articles past half-life generating minimal traffic are deletion candidates. Articles with long half-lives justify higher initial investment.

Your content strategy should optimize not just for initial traffic but for weighted traffic over expected lifespan. That optimization requires understanding half-life across your content portfolio.

Want to analyze your content portfolio's half-life distribution and build strategies optimized for sustainable traffic rather than temporary spikes? We measure content decay rates to inform creation and maintenance decisions. Let's talk about building content that compounds value over time.