Every published article keeps generating organic search/referral traffic long after it goes live, but that traffic decays. Piece i, published at month t₀ with initial monthly reach Q, contributes at month t:
traffic_i(t) = Q_i · 2^(-(t - t0_i) / H_i)
Total organic(t) = Σ traffic_i(t) for all published pieces
Cumulative reach = ∫ Total organic(t) dt
H is the content's half-life: the number of months for a piece's monthly traffic to fall by half. Evergreen, well-researched content has a long half-life and keeps paying off; shallow content decays fast. Because pieces overlap and stack, total organic traffic compounds over time even without increasing the publish rate.
- Publish frequency — how many new pieces launch per simulated month; more pieces stacked in flight raise the compounding baseline.
- Content quality — each piece's initial monthly reach (its Q); higher-quality, more useful content starts with a bigger audience pull.
- Evergreen half-life — how slowly a piece's traffic decays; this is what separates "content marketing" from a one-off promotion.
- Paid Ads toggle — adds a fixed monthly reach that exists only while spend is active and drops to exactly zero the instant it's switched off — no residual value, no half-life. This is the structural reason content marketing compounds and paid acquisition does not.
The pillars in the 3D view are individual content pieces arranged along a publishing timeline spiral; their glow and rising particles track each piece's current traffic contribution as it decays.