Evergreen Isn’t Eternal

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Shoutout to past me for accepting that invite and ruining present me’s excuse.

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🧠 Evergreen Isn’t Eternal: The SEO Content Rot Audit

🔍 Google Ads Adds Instant Tips + Quietly Rolls Out Smart Bidding Exploration

🎥 Ad of the Day

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🧠 Evergreen Isn’t Eternal: The SEO Content Rot Audit

Some of your best-performing blog posts are now quietly killing your conversions.

They still rank. They still bring traffic. But the buyers? They’re bouncing, or worse, converting on competitor sites that updated their narrative while you left yours untouched.

1. Ranking ≠ Relevance: The Hidden Decay of “Top Posts”

DTC brands love their “evergreen” content archives, but algorithms love fresh, user-aligned intent. A page from 2021 might still get 2,000 clicks a month, but if its CTAs, offers, or tone are stale, it’s doing more damage than good.

The true rot? Silent performance leaks you never measure: scroll depth dropping, bounce rate rising, time-on-page flattening.

Smart marketers don’t just audit SEO, they audit content impact.

2. The Content-Decay Detection Stack: How to Find What’s Leaking

There’s a specific 4-metric sequence to run when sniffing out content rot:

• Traffic trend (stable or dropping?)
• Conversion attribution (is this content touching revenue?)
• Query alignment (does the search term still match your funnel?)
• Engagement delta (scroll, bounce, and return rate shifts)

Most CMS dashboards won’t show this decay clearly. This is where the SEMrush SEO Toolkit delivers a tactical unlock:

Use the On Page SEO Checker to flag outdated pages based on crawl issues, keyword gaps, and declining engagement. You’ll get intent-adjusted suggestions tailored to today’s SERP expectations, ready to deploy.

3. Strategic Payoff: From Passive Decay to Compounding Refresh ROI

Refreshing a high-traffic, low-conversion post is one of the highest-leverage SEO plays. You already have distribution, but now you’re matching current buyer psychology and re-aligning funnel stages.

In one case, updating 6 decaying blog posts around summer skincare lifted conversion-assisted revenue by 22% and doubled time-on-page. Why? Because the content was re-built around today’s buyer pain, not last year’s keyword.

4. The Anti-Rot Cadence: Build a Quarterly Refresh Operating System

Set a quarterly ritual. Group top-traffic URLs by assisted conversion value, run them through SEMrush’s SEO Checker, and flag any drops in scroll depth or query alignment.

Instead of rewriting your entire archive, you surgically optimize only what’s decaying. This is how content moves from static “assets” to living revenue machines.

Great SEO doesn’t just get traffic. It builds momentum-rich pages that evolve with your market. When you treat content like CRO infrastructure, not a blog backlog, you unlock an unfair compound advantage.

Run a rot audit today and revive your best-performing ghosts. You can try SEMrush’s On Page SEO Checker free for 14 days; just one refresh could pay for your quarter.

🔍 Google Ads Adds Instant Tips + Quietly Rolls Out Smart Bidding Exploration

Google Ads is layering in subtle but impactful updates that aim to streamline optimization and expand bidding potential. From hover-based insights on Optimization Score to Smart Bidding Exploration’s rollout, these changes promise more control, but also require a sharper eye from advertisers. 

The Breakdown:

1. Inline Tips Now Appear Beside Optimization Scores - A new hover icon next to the Optimization Score quietly surfaces one-click insights like “add sitelinks” or “fix disapproved ads,” removing the need to enter the Recommendations tab.

2. Less Clicks, More Nudges, But Use Caution - The feature speeds up access to campaign feedback, which helps teams act faster. However, not all recommendations are equally valuable, some may be unnecessary or too broad. 

3. Smart Bidding Exploration Begins Rolling Out to tROAS Campaigns - Google is testing a new bidding behavior that expands reach by allowing flexibility in ROAS targets. It's already showing up to 20% more conversions at the same cost in early cases, according to a Googler’s LinkedIn post. 

Neither update has been publicly announced by Google, leaving advertisers to spot these changes on their own. This silent rollout approach means many may be using new features without even realizing it. It also raises concerns about testing visibility and user control.

🎥 Ad of the Day

What Works:

1. Double-Tiered Hook That Flips Fragrance Norms - The headline structure is a bait-and-switch reversal: “Gets Rid Of Foul Odors First.” This interrupts expectations in a category where most brands lead with scent or emotion. Instead, it leads with functional deodorizing, then softly pivots: “Then Makes You Smell Like All Of Your Favorite Things.”

2. “Favorite Things” as Emotional Anchors - Instead of abstract fragrance notes like “bergamot” or “white musk,” they name tangible, nostalgic scents, Warm Sugar, Pistachio Latte, Amber. These are emotional anchors, evoking food, coziness, or indulgence, making the product feel edible, desirable, and familiar.

Broader Insights:

Kitsch reframes a crowded fragrance space by tackling odor first (problem-aware), then linking scent to joy (emotion-aware). Its copy is structurally sound—problem → transformation—and visually reinforced with tangible, warm, human imagery.

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