67% of blog posts lose half their organic traffic within 18 months, and most B2B teams never budget for it. This post models the exact dollar cost of ignoring content refresh at three intervals, and shows why building it into your launch budget costs 40% less than fixing it later.
AI Overviews now appear on nearly half of all Google queries, and AI-referred visitors convert at 5x the rate of organic traffic. This post builds a concrete dual-surface decay model with 6, 12, and 18-month payback calculations so B2B content teams know exactly when to refresh, merge, or retire a post.
MIT data shows 95% of generative AI pilots miss their P&L targets, yet 79% of teams report productivity gains. The gap lives in the six post-generation steps most teams never instrument: keyword validation, internal linking, quality scoring, metadata, performance attribution, and content decay management.
