A lot of businesses treat content planning like they’re standing in front of two doors.
Behind one door: evergreen content.
Behind the other: trending content.
And apparently you’re supposed to choose wisely, like this is a game show for marketers with too many tabs open.
The real answer is less dramatic.
Most businesses don’t need to choose one or the other. They need to understand what each one is for, what each one actually does well, and which one deserves more of the effort.
Because evergreen and trending content do different jobs.
If you expect one to do the work of the other, your content strategy usually turns into a weird mix of rushed blog posts, short-lived traffic spikes, and a website that still doesn’t feel especially useful six months later.
This comes up a lot at StrottnerDesigns…A business gets excited about what’s timely, writes a few posts around current trends, and feels productive for a minute. But when you step back, none of that content is really building long-term authority around the services the company actually wants to be known for.
That’s the problem.
Content shouldn’t just keep the blog moving. It should help the business become easier to find, easier to trust, and easier to hire.
Evergreen content is the content that stays useful over time.
It answers questions people will still be asking next month, next year, and usually well beyond that. It isn’t tied tightly to a moment, a news cycle, or a temporary industry conversation. It keeps working because the topic itself keeps mattering.
For a business website, evergreen content often includes things like how-to articles, service explainers, comparison posts, buyer-question content, industry fundamentals, process pages, and mistake-avoidance posts.
In other words, evergreen content usually supports the questions your customers keep asking no matter what year it is.
That’s why it’s so valuable.
It compounds.
A good evergreen post can keep bringing in traffic, links, trust, and useful search visibility long after it’s published. It gives your website something sturdier than a momentary spike. In the case of our client, Vista Dermatology, it’s a post on Winter Itch which gets millions of views every year from November to February.
And for most businesses, that’s where the bulk of the effort should go.
Trending content is built around what’s timely right now.
That might be a new platform feature, a change in search behavior, a current industry conversation, a seasonal shift, a new tool, or a topic that suddenly has more attention than usual.
Trending content can absolutely be useful. It can help a business look current. It can show awareness. It can create short-term visibility. And sometimes it can bring in a burst of attention that evergreen content never would.
But trending content has one obvious weakness.
It expires faster.
Sometimes very fast.
A post built around a hot topic can feel stale in three months, a little dusty in six, and completely irrelevant by the time someone’s cleaning up the blog a year later.
That doesn’t make it bad.
It just means it needs to be used on purpose.
This is where people get distracted.
Trending topics are exciting because they feel urgent. They make it seem like there’s something happening right now, which makes content feel active and responsive. That’s appealing.
The problem is that activity isn’t the same as momentum.
A business can publish a lot of trend-based content and still build very little long-term value. The traffic may spike. The relevance may feel fresh. But if the content isn’t tied back to the business’s real services, real expertise, or real buyer journey, it often doesn’t do much besides create noise.
We see this a lot with companies that are trying to “stay visible” but aren’t really building authority.
They end up writing about what’s current instead of what’s commercially useful.
That’s usually a bad trade.
If your business only has limited time and budget for content, evergreen should almost always get the bigger share.
That’s probably the cleanest way to think about it.
Evergreen content helps your website become a better long-term resource around the topics that matter most to your business. It supports SEO, strengthens service-page relevance, gives you more internal linking opportunities, and helps build topical depth over time.
Trending content does something different. It shows that the business is paying attention. It can create timely relevance. It can help you participate in current conversations and capture some near-term search interest.
Both can be useful.
They’re just not equally useful for every business.
If your website still lacks strong service-related content, clear pillar topics, and solid evergreen foundations, chasing trends first is a little like buying decorative throw pillows before the house has walls.
Maybe fun.
Not the priority.
This is where content planning gets smarter.
Before you decide whether to write evergreen or trending content, ask what the content is actually supposed to accomplish.
If the goal is to build long-term SEO value, answer core buyer questions, support service pages, improve topical authority, or create a stronger website asset, evergreen content should lead.
If the goal is to respond to a current conversation, show relevance around a recent change, capture timely interest, or demonstrate market awareness, trending content may make sense.
Most businesses need both at some level.
But they usually don’t need both in equal amounts.
For most businesses, evergreen content should be the foundation, and trending content should be the accent.
That means your main effort should go into the topics your business wants to be found for over time. These are the recurring questions, comparisons, service-related concerns, and industry topics that stay relevant to your buyers.
Then, when there’s a timely topic that genuinely connects to your expertise or services, you write about that too.
Not because it’s trending.
Because it’s trending and relevant.
That second part matters.
A trend that has nothing to do with what your business actually sells usually isn’t an opportunity.
It’s a distraction with better PR.
Usually in one of three places.
First, they overvalue what’s current and undervalue what’s durable. They chase short-term attention and neglect the content that could keep working for them over time.
Second, they create evergreen content that’s technically relevant but too broad to be useful. That kind of content sounds safe, but it doesn’t build much authority because it could’ve been written by almost anyone.
Third, they create trending content with no bridge back to the business. It may get some attention, but it doesn’t strengthen the site where it actually counts.
That’s why a good content strategy isn’t just about choosing topics.
It’s about choosing topics that make the website more useful and more connected to what the business wants to grow.
At Strottner Designs, we don’t think a business blog should feel like a random pile of opinions, updates, and keyword experiments.
We think it should act more like an asset.
That usually means evergreen content carries the load. It builds the long-term structure, supports SEO, strengthens authority, and helps answer the questions buyers actually ask on the way to a decision.
Trending content can still play a role. It can help a brand stay current and participate in timely shifts, especially when the topic directly affects how customers search, buy, or evaluate a service.
But if a business has to choose where most of its energy goes, we’d put that energy into the content that still matters after the excitement wears off.
That’s usually the smarter bet.
Trending content can get attention.
Evergreen content can keep earning it.
That’s the difference.
If your business wants a stronger website, better long-term search visibility, and content that keeps helping after publish day, evergreen should be your foundation.
Then use trending content selectively, when it actually supports the bigger strategy.
Because the goal isn’t just to publish more.
It’s to build something that keeps working.
Not sure what your business should actually be publishing?
At Strottner Designs, we help businesses build content strategies that do more than fill a blog. From evergreen service-supporting content to smarter topical planning and search-focused structure, we help create content that keeps working long after publish day.
Interested in a new site and SEO, or just a new site? Visit Home of the Free Website to learn how we can build you a free or affordable site.
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