Timeless vs Fresh Content

Your audience is defined by the type of content you provide. The saying “Content is King” is an appropriate saying, because content has the ability to drive subscribers and traffic to your blog and also build a reputation for your blog. No matter how good a design is, it cannot substitute quality  content. The type and the tone of writing is the author’s personal choice.

There can be two types of content depending on its relevancy with time:

Timeless Content

Timeless content, as the name suggests, is the type of content which never ages with time i.e. it remains meaningful for a long period of time. Producing timeless content requires extensive research of the topic and also great amount of experience, as it needs to be relevant at all times, which is  a really difficult task to accomplish.  It requires building of quality tutorials that guide the readers and also teach them something truly valuable.

Fresh Content

Fresh content is like a fresh glass of juice, it is fresh and has something new to offer. Fresh content can be something that others are not providing and the website is getting exclusively for it’s readers (for eg. celebrity websites which have fresh celebrity gossip). Fresh content has a very short life span, it is relevant only for a small period (a couple of months or weeks or even days) after it is actually published. After certain period of time, the juice’s flavour gets altered. Similarly, fresh content loses it’s value, it’s relevancy starts to decay with time. Therefore, website owners that provide fresh content, have to constantly update their websites, in order to be relevant.

Now, you have got a hold of these two types of content, then which one is better for your website?

Blog Niche

Taking a decision on which type of content suits your blog depends on your blog niche. A fashion tips blog can have timeless content as well as fresh content, but a news website has to have fresh content.

Similarly, certain niche areas demand the content to be fresh and new, whereas some niche areas require timeless content or a mixture of both. The type of writing to a large extent is dependant on the niche of your blog/website and hence, considering your blog niche is a top priority when you are deciding between these two types of content.

Targeting Subscribers

If you are targeting subscribers which have subscribed to your blog for fresh articles, then fresh content is a better option. Timeless content can still hold certain value for your blog subscribers, if they have a few fresh ideas incorporated into it.

SEO Traffic

SEO traffic usually arrives long after the post is published, as it takes little time to be indexed by the search engines and get a high ranking in search results. As fresh content loses it’s value after some time, therefore, fresh content will be useless for visitors arriving from search engines. In order to keep the fresh content relevant, we will have to update it frequently so that it is relevant at all times. Timeless content will be a perfect choice for SEO, because they will retain their relevance for a long time and hence, they will be useful to visitors arriving from search engines.

Social Media Traffic

Social media is always buzzing with news and latest articles. Social media is a bit biased towards fresh content, as the articles are unique and they have something new to offer. Articles containing timeless content get the due attention, but the chances of them getting viral on social media is a bit difficult. Usually timeless content is already covered by other bloggers and hence, your articles do not have anything new to offer and therefore, they have little or no appeal in social media.

I, personally try to mix fresh and timeless content in my blog articles. It is a modified form of timeless content with bits and pieces of fresh content. By this technique I am able to fulfil all the requirements and take advantage of all the traffic.