12 Tips for Creating Evergreen Content

So just what is evergreen content? It's content that is always relevant to your readers, your brand, and your area of expertise. It has a long shelf life. It's shared regularly and does well in SERPs.

You might believe all online content is sustainable since, once published, a blog post doesn't simply disappear. Evergreen is different. It continues to be relevant, and the search traffic grows over time.

Evergreen content revolves around a relevant topic to your readers regardless of the current news cycle or the season. Evergreen topics and evergreen content are used somewhat interchangeably, and that's incorrect. Evergreen topics consistently attract interest from people searching for answers to particular questions and have search volumes that are consistent or growing over time. Evergreen content is information about one of these topics and can be updated as appropriate. 

Here are some ideas for creating evergreen content, tips on best practices, and tips on maintaining your evergreen content over time.

Forms of Evergreen Content

1. Case Studies

Many consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Take advantage of this by writing case studies, which are long-form reviews. You're telling the reader about someone's experience with your product or service. Audiences like case studies because they show how someone got the exact result that they are seeking.

You can also stand out from the more common forms of advice by pointing out mistakes that were included in a widely read post. Or talk about common grammatical or usage mistakes you see in blog posts. Instead of helping readers reach a goal, you're ensuring they don't head in the wrong direction. This type of article gets attention because it brings up a topic most people may have never considered, that they could be doing something wrong.

2. Infographics

You can compile a substantial amount of helpful information in a visually appealing manner that is easy for a reader to move through. But lovely graphics are not enough; they are necessary but hardly sufficient for evergreen content. Be sure you've also included the following:

• • Accurate findings acquired by way of in-depth research

  • Compelling examples

  • Effective, useful, and concise copy within the infographic itself

  • Helpful information that addresses the audience's questions

  • And all of this should be visually appealing while also being organized and easy to read
    
    

3. How-To Guides

Present step-by-step instructions that directly address the fact that people want to learn how to do something. These guides are not only for beginners. You can create evergreen how-to guides for every level of expertise in your audience and on any topic, even tangentially related to your product.

4. Glossaries

Give your audience a place to go for all the definitions they might need about a particular topic or market segment. Update for current usage and terms just becoming widely used, as well as noting terms that may no longer be considered relevant by the thought leaders in your niche.

Best practices for managing evergreen content

5. Refresh Content

Use rankings as a proxy for relevance and track your standing. If Google is dropping your rankings, then your topic may be evergreen, but your content is not. Common areas that become outdated include statistics, processes, screenshots, broken or irrelevant links, or use of a specific year in titles. You can also add more recent data or statistics, updated product information, and/or newer images. When you've refreshed your content you can republish and repromote it.

6. Go In-Depth

Even when you don't have something unique, you can generate traffic and attention by being the best guide on a particular subject. You have to go for quality and depth. It's not going long just to be long, but rather to be the most comprehensive. Include so many definitions that your piece is bookmarked and returned to repeatedly.

7. Promote and Develop SEO

Evergreen topics tend to outperform more time-sensitive pieces in SEO results. So master the basics of on-page SEO. Use keywords as they are relevant. Search engines don’t like keyword stuffing. Refer to this piece from other pages within your site. Work on off-page SEO by establishing backlinks from respected sites. Promote your content on social media. Facebook and Twitter are popular platforms, but if you're creating B2B content, look to LinkedIn.

8. Repromote

When you initially publish a post, it's featured on the top of your blog feed. As time passes, that post is lower and lower in the feed. You should repromote relevant older content when you update it.

9. Repurpose

You can take evergreen blog posts and turn the content into a new format. Try a white paper, ebook, presentation, podcast, or infographic.

10. Highlight Evergreen Content

Don't just set your evergreen content on your blog and forget it. Put forth the effort to highlight the content so it's immediately seen and accessible. Some things you can do to bring readers to your content:

• • Build training guide pages for beginners in your industry on your website and make it easy for your audience to find your how-to content and glossaries.

  • Use the sidebar of your blog or a banner on your homepage to highlight evergreen posts.

  • Rerun updated evergreen blog posts to get this work to the largest audience possible.

  • Help people with the basics of your niche with tutorial content posted on a Start Here page.

  • If appropriate, build a social media campaign around your content across all your networks.

  • The call-out method matters less than the fact of highlighting the content.
    
    

11. Stay Up-to-Date

It may be evergreen content, but there are new findings, new articles to link to, and new industry developments. Updating content and updating the published date can also help with SEO rankings. Once you've updated the content, promote it as a new piece.

12. More Evergreen Content Ideas

• Original Research

• Successful and What-Went-Wrong Case Studies

• Beginners How-To Guide

• Advanced User How-To Guide

• How-To Checklist

• How to Choose the Best Product

• How to Do Something Over Time

• Resource List

• Free and Paid Tools List

• Common Mistakes in Your Niche/Industry

• History of a Product or Topic

• Round-up of Greatest Ideas/Products/Services

• Best Practices to Meet a Specific Goal

• Worst Practices to Meet a Specific Goal

• Everything You Need to Know About a Particular Thing/Tool/Niche/Industry/Idea