Sometimes, content has a shelf life. Regardless of how engaging and well written it is, it’s only relevant for a short time. Evergreen content is the opposite. Long after these pieces are published, they continue to bring in viewers and provide value.
When you’re planning content initiatives for your business, it’s necessary to add evergreen content into the mix. Here’s why evergreen content is important to your content marketing campaign and your audience far into the future.
Evergreen content is content that stays fresh for a long period of time. With evergreen stories, you are creating search-optimized content that is not tied to current events or that moment in time. These are topics that will engage your audience and serve a purpose at any point in time. There is steady interest in these pieces and their traffic remains relatively even, whereas you may see a spike and then a drop in views with timely content – i.e., content that isn’t evergreen.
Here’s a real-world comparison as an example: If you were at the grocery store, evergreen content would be a nonperishable item, such as canned beans, that can be consumed years later with no issues. Trending or timely content is more like a gallon of whole milk – it’s only good for a week or so.
Key takeaway: Evergreen content is material that provides value to your audience long after you have published it.
Evergreen content can come in many forms:
Evergreen content can also be adapted across various industries. As long as you have a clear idea of how you want this content to help your audience, you can create something long-lasting. Here are a few examples.
When you intend a piece to be evergreen content, you should avoid these types of stories:
Adding a year (“Best Vacation Spots in 2021”) or season (“Best Summertime Activities in New York”) to the title can limit how far your content can stretch. While they might still attract viewers after they are published, they will not be as evergreen as pieces that aren’t tied to a certain time period.
Key takeaway: You can create evergreen content in several formats and for many industries. The key is to ensure the content will be useful, interesting and relevant to your readers for a long time.
Evergreen content is the gift that keeps on giving. Search engine optimization company Ahrefs credited evergreen content with growing its own blog from 15,000 visitors a month to about 200,000.
Evergreen content is important because it can help you accomplish these tasks:
Key takeaway: Evergreen content has several benefits, such as driving traffic to your site and setting you apart as a thought leader in your space.
Evergreen content revolves around keywords. So, before you can start writing evergreen pieces, you need to find out what terms are relevant to your business and can make an impact.
Follow these steps to find keywords:
Start by thinking about what topics are relevant to your business and how they can help your audience. For example, if you are an insurance company, your list of topics may include these:
While the topics are important, they aren’t content. Keywords will lead you to your evergreen content. To find what makes sense for you, use a keyword tool, such as Google Trends or Moz. You want to find terms that:
Following those steps will help you build out your keywords. For the insurance company in the example above, the keyword results may look like this:
Once you have your keywords and know what stories you want to create, it’s time to write your evergreen pieces. You should ensure the following:
Key takeaway: Your starting point is to find relevant, high-ranking keywords for your content. From there, if you focus on writing clear, well-written content that helps your audience, you’ll be able to build evergreen pieces that engage them.
You should regularly check to see if your evergreen content is still ranking well. Regardless of how much work you put into it or how good it is, it could fall in the rankings over time. If you see your articles’ traffic slip, it may be time to refresh your evergreen content.
This doesn’t mean you should completely rewrite your content. You want to add to whatever you already have. Google will be able to tell when you have updated your pieces, which can push you back up in rankings if you do it well.
Here are some ways to update your content:
While true evergreen content generally stays accurate as time goes on, sometimes things change. For example, if you published a piece about how to use Twitter a few years ago, it may be out of date because the social media channel has made updates, such as increasing the word count of tweets. While the general concepts and principles the article explains might still apply, you also want the details and numbers to be up to date.
Revisit your piece and consider what angles you may have missed on the first go-around. It might be quotes from experts or an entire section that you didn’t include. In the example of “How to Use Twitter,” maybe you can add a new section that describes how to become a verified user.
Are there any broken links in your text? Are the links the most relevant ones you could use? Can you find more credible sources to link to? Do an audit of your links to make sure everything still makes sense and adds value.
An easy way to breathe fresh life into your content is to add new media. For example, you could create an infographic that summarizes the information in a certain section, or embed a podcast that further explains the points in the article. You could also add videos or slideshows.
Interactive elements such as polls and quizzes encourage your audience to stick around longer and maybe even share the piece. This will signal to Google that this is relevant content that needs to rank higher.
Even if you were thorough before publishing your piece the first time, it might still have spelling and grammar errors. Read the piece out loud or the sections in reverse order, which helps to pinpoint patterns and mistakes you may have missed.
Key takeaway: To ensure your evergreen content continues to rank highly in search engines, reevaluate it periodically for complete and up-to-date information and links, opportunities for new media and interactive elements, and spelling and grammar.