SEO Production Capacity Calculator
How many articles can your team actually ship per month?
Inputs
Results
Adjust the inputs to see your forecast.
What this number means
Articles per month is team hours divided by hours per article, rounded down. At the defaults - 3 writers x 30 hours x 4.33 weeks = 389.7 team hours, 11 hours per article - capacity is 35 articles/month, using 385 hours and leaving 4.7 spare.
Bottleneck stage is the stage consuming the most hours per article: Writing at 8 of 11 hours (73%). That is where leverage lives - a template or brief improvement that shaves one writing hour per article buys back 35 hours a month, more than hiring would at the margin.
The formula
In plain English: count the team hours, count the hours per article, divide.
- Team hours per month = Writers x Hours per writer per week x Weeks per month
- Hours per article = Writing hours + Editor hours + Publishing hours
- Capacity = floor(Team hours / Hours per article)
- Stage hours used = Capacity x Stage hours per article
- Bottleneck = stage with the most hours per article
Worked example
A 3-writer team each gives 30 productive hours a week: 389.7 hours a month. Each article needs 8 hours of writing, 2 of editing, and 1 of publishing - 11 total. Capacity: 35 articles/month. The hours chart shows 280 writing, 70 editing, 35 publishing.
The bottleneck callout names Writing (73%). The manager now knows the fix is not more editors - it is better briefs, templates, or AI-assisted drafting to cut writing hours. Cutting one writing hour per article lifts capacity from 35 to 38 without hiring anyone.
Assumptions and limitations
- Hours are the fragile input. Self-reported writing hours are usually optimistic - time a real sample before trusting the plan.
- Quality is not modeled. 35 rushed articles may underperform 20 excellent ones; capacity is a ceiling, not a target.
- One shared pool assumed. The model treats editing and publishing as drawing from the same team hours; dedicated editors change the math.
- No ramp or downtime. Holidays, sick leave, and onboarding are not modeled - derate capacity 10-15% for reality.
- All figures are planning estimates.