Many blogs and brands love evergreen content for one simple reason: it is designed to continuously deliver traffic and results for a website without requiring continuous maintenance. Websites that deal with current events or hot news stories constantly have to produce content in order to remain relevant in search engines, but evergreen content creators produce value that can be successful for years at a time. However, not all evergreen content will continue delivering results forever. It is important to acknowledge that most forms of evergreen content will require occasional updates in order to truly produce its maximum potential value. We’ll talk today about what to do with your evergreen content that is now stale.

When to Inspect Evergreen Content

With the exception of some very specific forms of content, even the most notable styles of evergreen content may require occasional revisions. Once you have produced a piece of content that is designed to stand the test of time, set an alarm for one year. After content has been in existence for one year, there may be new updates or findings that can be valuable to those who will read your content in the future. At the same time, checking content after one year gives you the ability to resurrect the content as part of your content marketing strategy; you can begin pinging links back to it on social media and email once again, and boost traffic to your website.

What to Consider Changing

If one year has passed and you are now checking older content, then what should you consider changing? This can vary depending on the type of content and niche, but there are a few fairly universal elements to consider. First, be sure to consider the flow of the article and how well it reads. Our content and writing styles change and evolve over time; you may have improved your technique since writing it originally and now see some technical changes that can be made to improve user-friendliness. Next, consider your current content strategy. Have your SEO efforts changed? Are you targeting new keywords? You may find fresh opportunities to begin pinging links to different SERPs by modifying this existing content.

Potential Additions

If you have inspected and are now ready to add new elements to your now-brown evergreen content, what should you add? As we referenced before, the inclusion of new keywords for targeting SERPs is always a good idea; your content and SEO strategies may have changed since the content was originally written. Multimedia is another good consideration, as you may be able to find newly-created photos, videos, podcasts or other elements that more adequately illustrate the points you originally made. Last but not least, consider how you can incorporate new links to other pieces of content you’ve recently created. This is always a good idea and helps further improve your link building and SEO efforts.

Even evergreen content requires occasional updates in order to provide the most benefit. What you decide to add, change or inspect may vary, but occasional updates are always a good idea. How much of your website is comprised of evergreen content and are you already doing these things? Tell us about it below.