You may be wondering, "What exactly is evergreen content?" Evergreen content is content that remains consistently valuable and applicable to your audience, your brand, and your field of expertise. It stands the test of time, continues to be shared, performs well in search engine results, and drives traffic to your website. Evergreen content won't easily expire.
So, how do you create evergreen content?
You might believe all online content is sustainable since, once published, a blog post doesn't simply disappear. Evergreen pieces are different. Authentic evergreen content remains relevant to your business and drives traffic to your site. Effective content marketers understand that sustaining the lifespan of their content is crucial and make it a core element of their Content Marketing strategy.
Writing evergreen content revolves around a topic that is relevant to your readers regardless of the current news cycle or the season. Evergreen topics and content are used somewhat interchangeably, and that's incorrect. Good 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.
Evergreen content often garners more shares compared to trending subjects. As topics remain perpetually relevant, individuals will continuously share them on social media, year after year.
Here are some ideas for creating good content that checks the evergreen box, best practices, and tips for writing evergreen content and improving your content strategy over time.
Evergreen Content Examples
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 tell 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 errors you see in blog content. Instead of helping readers reach a goal, you ensure 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: 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, sound, 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 why 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 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 words 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 drops your rankings, your topic may be evergreen, but your content is not. Common areas that become outdated include statistics, processes, screenshots, broken or irrelevant links, or the use of a specific year in titles. You can add more recent data or statistics, updated product information, and newer images. When you've refreshed your evergreen content piece, 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 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 content tends to outperform more time-sensitive pieces in SEO results. 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. Include search-optimized content in your social media marketing. Facebook and Twitter are popular platforms, but if you create B2B content, look to LinkedIn.
8. Repromote
When you initially publish a post with new content, 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 on social media 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. Make an 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 on your website for beginners in your industry 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 your content, promote it as a new piece.
12. Examples of Evergreen Content
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
