Just like diamonds are forever, some things never go out of style. When it comes to marketing on the web, evergreen content can allow your website to stay relevant over time.
Evergreen content helps boost traffic to your site, achieving long-lasting results. In fact, this free marketing strategy is considered to be sustainable over an indefinite amount of time.
In this article, you’ll discover what is evergreen content, how to incorporate it when you create a website, and some of the best topic ideas.
What is evergreen content?
Just like an evergreen plant whose foliage remains green all year long, evergreen content never gets stale. This type of online content retains its freshness and stays continually relevant for your audience based on timeless topics.
Hence, evergreen content is an invaluable content marketing strategy for any online presence seeking to keep visitors reading and sharing its content long after it’s been published.
Evergreen content can help your business grow by improving traffic to your website and digital visibility, while providing beneficial information to a great number of prospective customers.
Timely content vs. evergreen content
Not all types of website content are evergreen. Timely content, too, makes for great content ideas for blogs and websites. Unlike evergreen content, time-sensitive topics are valuable around the time of their publication, while becoming obsolete soon after.
For example, if there's a solar eclipse set to occur, you might look for the best viewing places. This query could become highly searched, but only within a certain time frame. In comparison, a broader question that people would be likely to look up at different occasions could be, “What are eclipses and why do they occur?”
Some types of content that are not evergreen:
News articles or current events
Annual or monthly statistics
Anything relating to holidays or special occasions
A discussion of the latest trends
The importance of evergreen content
Evergreen content can be used as a strategy to help boost your site’s SEO. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears in better positions on Google, Bing and the like.
Incorporating evergreen content to your site may significantly improve your search traffic over time. This is because evergreen content could potentially generate a steady stream of organic traffic over time.
While many topics are highly pertinent and sought out during specific time frames, others remain fairly relevant for much longer periods of time. Tackling these long-lasting subjects makes for a good content and copywriting strategy, and allows your site to gain authority over a particular issue. It also allows you to really develop the ethos, pathos and logos of your content for long term impact.
Evergreen content also requires a relatively low amount of maintenance as it never goes out of style. (More on maintenance below.)
How to incorporate evergreen content on your website
Evergreen content can be included across different sections of your website. Whether you feature it on any of your site’s pages or create a free blog to share your expertise, you should try and come up with topics that are forever relevant to your business -- and as a result to your clients.
When you write a blog post, consider popular writing formats that usually generate interest and bring in a steady traffic of readers.
The following formats can help you create your own evergreen content. Try and think of ways to apply these concepts to your own brand, brainstorming blog ideas that are fitting for your industry.
How-to articles: Clear and instructive tutorials, such as an article about how to write a resume, usually prove helpful for readers;
Guides: Educate site visitors using your know-how, providing detailed accounts that cover all of the major ins and outs of a particular topic;
Tips: Share your insights and skill sets by compiling lists of tips and advice you’ve mastered along the way;
Step-by-step instructions: Walk readers through a process they need to perform by breaking it down into concrete and actionable tasks.
When done well, an evergreen article has the advantage of becoming an online reference point. People will go back to it again and again if found to be an indispensable resource.
Choosing an evergreen article or blog topic
When looking for your evergreen subject, think about what will make you stand out and attract your target market.
Keyword research is one way to help refine your topic choice. This process entails finding the keywords, or search terms, that users would type into search engines in order to find businesses like yours. If you haven’t previously been involved with SEO or content marketing, then conducting keyword research may sound challenging at first, though it’s actually pretty simple.
First, you need to brainstorm potential words. Then, you’ll be able to choose the right keywords from your bag of terms determined by their relevance and search volume.
Take a look at one case study of evergreen content based on keyword research. Let’s say you’re a business owner looking to launch your restaurant website and hoping to target the cold brew coffee crowd.
With the help of a few of the best keyword research platforms, you may find that your subject, cold brew, has some high volume keywords that are not too competitive and are worth your time.
After finding a good keyword, the next step is to decide on the format where you will develop your evergreen subject. One good option would be to incorporate a tutorial explaining how-to brew coffee on your site. Alternatively, you could create a vlog exposing your top coffee brewing secrets and tips.
Now it’s time for you to start creating evergreen content.
Best practices for writing evergreen content
Use easy to follow language: Think of your audience as having landed upon your site from all walks of life by the driving force of your evergreen topic. Therefore, avoid overly technical jargon in your article.
Optimize for SEO: Include your keywords naturally into your content writing, without stuffing them in everywhere. Add relevant hyperlinks throughout your copy to boost SEO ranking and help your business get found on Google.
Avoid using language with a short shelf-life: While it may be tempting to start your blog post with phrases like “Here’s what we’ll be looking into today,” remember that you don’t want to slap an expiration date on your evergreen content. Refrain from words that are too timely, such as yesterday, today, earlier this month, or two hours ago.
Aim to be a definitive source of your topic: Be as detailed as possible about the subject you’re covering. Use your evergreen content as an opportunity to go in-depth. You may find yourself investing more time in your evergreen content than on other parts of your site. That’s perfectly understandable, as it usually requires a more thorough approach than timely issues.
Continuously update your evergreen content
Just like watering a tree so that its leaves can keep growing, your content also requires some regular maintenance in order to stay "green" over time.
Every once in a while, check in on your older pieces’ performance and make sure that the content continues to feel relevant and reflects well on your practice. Just like you would when updating your website, you can add links to newer pieces, making sure it’s still accurate, and polish any visuals that are starting to get stale.
Updating your content is not only valuable for your readers, but it also sends freshness signals to Google algorithm, showing that the page is up-to-date and cared for. As a result, optimizing your evergreen content can have positive SEO implications.
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