If a piece of content is evergreen, it stays relevant and fresh regardless of when it’s been published.
Think of an evergreen plant that remains green and luscious for more than one season. That’s what you should aspire most of your content to be.
Unlike, say, a blog post about winter hair trends, evergreen content isn’t seasonal. On the contrary, this type of content can stay “hot” for years on end, and the value it provides may also increase with time.
The multiple benefits of evergreen content include:
- Improved SEO due to keyword usage (especially if it’s a long-form guide!)
- Providing value to readers in the form of relevant content.
- When done well, it can be a single source of healthy website traffic.
- Increased potential for lead generation.
Arguably, the best part about creating evergreen content is that it can be tweaked rather than fully rewritten. It’s ideal for time-strapped marketers who don’t have the time to regularly create and publish original pieces.
Today, we’ll go over some of the ways you can start creating high-quality evergreen content.
Blog Posts
Great news: a lot of your blog posts may already be evergreen.
If you revisit your blog posts and find topics that aren’t seasonal, it’s a great idea to optimise those existing posts into a source of evergreen content. As long as it…
- Delivers all-year value to readers
- Contains relevant keywords
- Provides “shareable” content
…you can do a great job of creating “fresh” content. No one will notice it hasn’t been written in the past few days! Just be sure to mark the article as “updated” whenever possible.
A great example of an evergreen blog post is The Benefits of Content Marketing.
Stories
True stories never change. While a story may sound different when told by different people, its essence remains the same.
Plus, humans need stories to thrive. Believe it or not, stories have the ability to change our brain chemistry by releasing oxytocin, a chemical that plays a role in empathy. That’s also why storytelling is such a widely discussed marketing technique.
Your website is the perfect place to tell stories. Even About Pages, which are typically cast off, can be home to remarkable SEO-friendly evergreen content.
Try it: tell your business’s story on your About Page, but be intentional about it. Don’t just dump words on the page. Our (evergreen!) blog post 5 Tips for a Great About Page will help you get started.
“How To” Content
If you take a look at the most popular marketing content of last year, a great chunk of titles start with “How To.”
Except for one article from HubSpot titled Inclusive advertising tips for 2021, the other 9 examples are evergreen tutorials with best practices shared by experts.
This type of brief, actionable “how to” content is always in demand for a reason: people are always seeking to improve their lives and their craft. Especially marketers.
From how to declutter their website menu to how to collect customer testimonials, the more marketers learn, the better they can connect with their audiences. So don’t hesitate to write tutorials for your business – be it a bite-sized article or a humongous ultimate guide.
Lists
Love it or hate it, BuzzFeed is known across the globe. Not only is its snappy listicle-style content a breeze to read, but it also incorporates plenty of images and shareable humour.
Typical listicles come in an “X Ways to Y” format, such as 7 On-Page SEO Tips for Your Business. On-Page SEO has been and will be around for a long time – and since this post doesn’t include a date, it’s most certainly evergreen.
Not only that, but lists are a snap to write, as well!
Testimonials
User-generated content is golden. Think about it: a happy customer took time from their busy lives to create authority-building content for you. So it’s in your best interest to use it wherever you can.
One single well-written testimonial can boost your credibility for many years. Of course, the more testimonials you’ve got and the more detailed they are, the better.
Pro tip: testimonials are incredible when customers describe how your product has solved their pains. Saying how great you are is a plus, but if visitors relate to a pain, they’ll be more likely to see themselves on the page.
One Last Word of Advice…
If you want your evergreen content to perform well, don’t just set it and forget it. Google’s Freshness algorithm vouches for regular updates and optimisation, as up-to-date content is always better for users.
Part of your content monitoring should include:
- Testing new headlines.
- Including and targeting new keywords.
- Adding up-to-date information.
- Checking for broken links/updating links.
In closing, evergreen content has the potential to draw lasting attention to a single piece – that is, if the content is relevant and well written. So always be sure to create content that resonates with your audience, above all. And if you ever feel like “all topics have been covered,” evergreen content usually prospers with Brian Dean’s Skyscraper technique. It’s a method you can use to give your content a unique angle, even though it’s all been said before.
