Creating content for the sake of gaining exposure in search results is a noble, long-standing act that blogs, brands and businesses alike all understand. In the broader world of content, there are arguably two types of content: time-sensitive content (such as news articles that may lose their appeal over time) and evergreen content (which retains its value for longer periods of time due to the subjects it details).

While some think of evergreen content as being entirely permanent, many examples of it may need occasional tweaks and improvements in order to remain relevant. Additionally, how the content is created from the get-go can affect its relevance for years to come.

Today, let’s look at what you can do to ensure your evergreen content retains maximum value for as long as possible.

Consistent Promotion

Evergreen content can continue to deliver tangible benefits for blogs and brands for many years, but even if it’s ranking well in search, that’s not enough. The true value of evergreen content can only be realized if brands are doing enough to ensure its circulation occurs across multiple channels on a regular basis. This means evergreen content – more so than time-sensitive content – needs consistent promotion.

Ensure that you’re pinging websites and audiences – whether they be on social media, via email or through PPC marketing – with regular mentions of your older evergreen content. This helps guarantee that each page isn’t just driving traffic through search engine results but is also continuously living up to its potential through attracting audiences across all platforms.

Regular Additions

There are plenty of reasons why even evergreen content doesn’t remain relevant forever. New information, changes to the niche (whether it be through new products, new methods or anything else imaginable) can render content that seemingly would remain relevant forever quite irrelevant in a short period of time. Because of this, each page and post of evergreen content should be reviewed on a regular basis to see if new additions need to be added.

While it can be difficult to say exactly how often reviews should be conducted, it is wise to automatically plan for reevaluating evergreen content every 3 months. Especially if the evergreen options you’re evaluating are staggered, you’ll avoid being overwhelmed by the need to add a bunch of new information to multiple pages all at once. Regardless, expect that at some point, you’ll need to expand upon your evergreen content.

Pruning

While much of evergreen content management will likely revolve around adding new information as time passes, equally important is to remember that some content will naturally become obsolete. In this cases, pruning the dead proverbial branches from your evergreen content is essential.

Not only will search engines naturally pick up on your out-of-date evergreen content’s quality and rank it less prominently without such actions, but users will quickly discover the same. As such, using a similar cycle as above (once every 3 months) to reevaluate your content’s accuracy is crucial. Otherwise, you’ll be pinging websites and search engines with obsolete information: the number one cardinal sin for evergreen content solutions.

Evergreen content isn’t “set it and forget it”: you need to carefully monitor and evaluate it to ensure long-term accuracy and performance. Likewise, taking steps to ensure you’re periodically re-promoting such content will guarantee it continues to deliver results for many years to come.