Published:
by Wayne Smith
If updates are not made, content on social media and search engines can and often does decline in visibility and effectiveness. Even link equity is subject to deterioration over time.
The KPIs for SEO needs to consider this depreciation. News and breaking events can lose relevance within hours or days unless updated, while evergreen content can continue to provide value for years.
- News and Trending Topics (Rapid Depreciation)
- Social Media Virality (Short-Term Spike, Fast Drop-off)
- Seasonal Content (Recurring but Limited Relevance)
- Product Reviews and Tech Comparisons (Gradual Decline)
- Link Equity Decay (SEO Deterioration Over Time)
- Evergreen Content (Slow Depreciation or Long-Term Value)
Algorithm changes themselves can change the semantically related entities for content relevance and require updates to the content to include these new entities or consolidate pages, (even for evergreen content).
2025 SEO Depreciation
The entity "SEO Depreciation" is a new entity. It was not in the lexicon in 2019. The concept of evergreen content, which is the opposite of SEO depreciation, has been a concept since the early 2000s.
The hat tip for the new entity goes to:
Will Critchlow, CEO at SearchPilot -- syndicated podcast of Voices of Search
Evergreen Content
The concept or strategy for evergreen content is to publish materials that depreciate very slowly, if at all. Generally, evergreen content is created by creating an asset with a unique name (in other words, it is an entity); But, there are many types of content which doesn't depreciate.
Linkable assets, syndicated content, and link bait
The strategy behind evergreen content is to publish materials that depreciate very slowly, if at all. Generally, evergreen content is created by developing an asset with a unique name—essentially making it an entity. Content that continues to grow in visibility can be considered evergreen.
Content needs links from sites where users have an interest in the asset.
Software and lightweight web applications can serve as valuable assets that attract links from other websites and Web 2.0 platforms. These assets establish themselves as entities, accumulate links, and maintain their evergreen status.
Syndicated content, while not evergreen on a page-by-page basis, can serve as an evergreen hub.SEO: Content Deserves Freshness
As early as 2005 SEO experts observed ranking benefits for fresh content. Without freshness content on search engines becomes stale. Google became the number one search engine in part because it promoted fresh content.
More recently, the relevancy of fresh content can be seen clearly when considering product reviews: A page reviewing iPhones including the iPhone 16e, (just introduced), would be more relevant for, "iPhone Reviews," than a page reviewing older models.
Clearly, News and Trending Topics have a fast update schedule as new details about the topic emerge. The depreciation of specific topics is very rapid, although topics like renaming a mountain may depreciate much slower, assuming the story does not have legs. Mount McKinley may now be evergreen content unless something new happens, although Denali is still a semantically related entity, which should be included for informational content.
Freshness Affect on SEO
The locations where pages are shown in search engines need to be monitored and new entities or semantically related terms need monitoring. Pages need to be updated when the new entities are of interest to clients, terms people are not searching for have no effect.
Marketing and Keyword Research
This means time needs to be invested in discovering the changes and updating the content.
Risk Management
Beyond content going stale or needing updates, algorithm changes can also impact rankings.
For example, if an algorithm evolves to recognize "mice" and "mouse" as the same entity, a page optimized for "mice" could start competing with a page optimized for "mouse," leading to keyword cannibalization.
Entities in search engines operate beyond simple plural vs. singular distinctions. The entity dataset, index, or glossary is a by-product of AI. As AI advances in its understanding, pages that previously ranked separately may suddenly compete for the same queries.
To mitigate ranking conflicts, cannibalization risks must be proactively managed.