Marketing

Content Marketing: Don’t Underestimate the Value of Dated Content

Evergreen content is all the rage among SEO and content marketing experts. Just Google it and you’ll see for yourself. The internet is rife with articles discussing how important evergreen content is and why your website should have it. Even so, do not ever underestimate the value of dated content.

Unfortunately, modern society is a culture of extremes. People tend to be all-or-nothing in the way they view things. That leads to certain failures within the SEO realm – including obsessing over evergreen content to the detriment of its dated counterpart.

The truth is that both types of content offer value. It is not a matter of one being automatically superior or inferior to the other. To obsess exclusively over evergreen content is to ignore the benefits of dated content.

More About Dated Content

Webtek Digital Marketing, a Salt Lake City company that offers content marketing services, explains dated content is any content with information that is likely to be outdated in a short amount of time. Dated content tends to be content related to:

  • the daily news cycle
  • changing statistics and other types of data
  • current fads and trends.

The shelf life of a particular piece of content is a matter of perspective. A news article will be outdated within 24 hours or so. Likewise, you could write a piece of content heavy on statistics. The statistics may be relevant for only a few months before being replaced by newer, updated statistics.

More About Evergreen Content

Webtek describes evergreen content as being the direct opposite of dated. An evergreen piece contains little or no information likely to be outdated in short order. This particular post is considered evergreen content for that very reason.

Does that make evergreen content superior? No. It makes it different. Evergreen content is considered valuable because it is capable of producing SEO benefits over long periods of time. But dated content can be just as important.

For example, the local newspaper may offer a limited amount of evergreen content. Its content that doesn’t qualify as hard news. But the majority of the site’s content will be dated by default. Such is the nature of daily news. Without that content, the newspaper would not have a website worth visiting.

A Mixture of Both Types

The most successful websites, from an SEO perspective, offer a combination of both of types of content. A site may lean heavily toward one rather than the other, but it’s not exclusive to that particular content type.

The newspaper’s website has already been described as one that would lead more heavily toward dated content. Similarly, a site designed around DIY home remodeling projects would be more heavily weighted toward evergreen content. Its volume of dated content would be somewhat limited.

All Content Needs Updating

Whether a site is equally balanced or leans toward one content type, the truth is that all content needs updating if it is going to stay online. If it can’t be updated, perhaps it should be archived. By the way, archiving is not a bad idea either. It can offer historical information that Google finds quite attractive.

Dated content can be updated simply by modifying the information in question. As for evergreen content, nothing stays green forever. Even the greenest pieces can get stale over time. They need updating just as much as dated pieces.

As you are thinking this over, don’t get so wrapped up with evergreen content that you focus on it exclusively. Underestimating the power of dated content is to ignore content that could do a very good job of driving traffic and boosting conversion.

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