What Is Evergreen Content?

In this day and age, there is high competition to see who can rank higher in search engines, get more traffic, and therefore, more online success. And the truth is, it is extremely time-consuming to work on your content every day, having to post newly fresh quality content 10 or 20 times per week to meet this goal. If you’d like to save a great amount of time and stay at the top of search results, the solution is very simple: evergreen content.

Evergreen content is a type of content that is timeless, sustainable, and lasting over time. In other words, it is always relevant to our audience despite the passage of time. Moreover, it is of high quality, original, and gives value to the reader. All in all, it is the type of content that we should aim to create and have, not only for our visitors but also for Google.

Why is it important to do evergreen content and what are the benefits for businesses?

The Internet is flooded with low-quality content. Companies often opt for the cheap and easy resource of just constantly generating content that has no value for the readers and does not resonate with what they need. Also, this type of content may drive some traffic to your website, but it will most likely decline after a few days.

Instead of following their example, you should avoid this mistake and try to produce content that will do your brand justice. Evergreen content is what you should focus on for several reasons. Apart from time-saving, there are a lot of advantages from creating this type of timeless content, and here are some of the most important ones:

1. It boosts rankings in Search Engines. 

The majority of people never scroll beyond the first page of search engines. That is why it is very important to stay as high as possible to be found. Evergreen content also helps boost your E-A-T score over time (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). If you have a high E-A-T score, it is more likely to secure a first-page ranking on Google. More specifically, it will give you authority in your industry because Google recognizes how important it is for someone to offer advice if they are qualified in the field. 

2. It continually drives consistent organic traffic to your site. 

Organic traffic refers to the people who find your website through search engines. People are consistently looking for information and very likely this will always be the case. Evergreen content should answer a question that people care about now and will remain relevant over time. Therefore, other readers are more likely to find your content since there’s a sustained level of interest. 

3. It keeps your business relevant. 

All stated before will make your business stay relevant. And it’s not just because of generating more traffic. Is about valuable and relevant content. This type of content will generate lower bounce rates, which means people will stay longer on your page. Search engines will therefore see that your articles are useful for readers which will also help boost the first point we talked about: your search rankings.

4. It generates a good Return on Investment (ROI). 

A high ROI indicates that the investment’s gains compare favorably to its cost. This means that in comparison to what you invest, what you get is bigger. Creating evergreen content does not take the biggest budget and also does not consume a great amount of time. In addition, as we have mentioned before, it stays high on search results and still drives traffic for a long period, helping your brand become an industry leader over time and constantly generating new leads and prospects.

How to create evergreen content

As we have stated before, evergreen content never expires, which is the biggest reason to aim for this type of content. Have you ever wondered why online newspapers (e.g. The Guardian or The New York Times,) post several times a day? It is because their content is only relevant for the moment - maybe even for a week but, after that, the traffic will decline since the topic won’t be relevant anymore.

That is why dated content, trends or events are only relevant for the time being, but won’t create traffic over time. For example, content related to Apple’s newest iPhone operating system will only drive traffic until the new one is announced. That is why there are some points we think you should cover to create evergreen content:

• Choose the right topics

The first thing to do is to decide on writing about the topics which can drive persistent traffic. You need to understand your audience and what they need. It is a very important step since you don’t want to waste your time and effort on a topic that won’t give you the results you want. 

One great tool that can help you here is Google Analytics since it can help you to analyze which type of articles you created have been driving traffic for the last 2-3 years. Think that the topics that are not evergreen will have a high initial search volume that then drops pretty quickly. This way you can understand which topics are still relevant since people are continuously looking for them. Then ask yourself: are there any related topics I can cover? Remember that you don’t want to talk about the same thing - it has to be original. 

You can also check the leading blogs in your industry or niche. Is there something they are not talking about? Or, what are they talking about that you can adapt to your readers specifically?

• Use the right keywords

You can use Google Trends to do keyword research and choose the topic around that keyword that is missing on the internet. Also, remember that even if the keyword may have a good search volume, you want to make sure that the topic is evergreen by checking the search volume over time. For example, “Christmas gifts” is a seasonal keyword, which won’t be a good evergreen topic to write about. But “lose weight” is a term that people have been looking for since a long time ago and that they are probably going to search for many years to come.

• Optimize for SEO

Don’t forget about SEO practices once you have chosen your keywords and topic. To help you get started, you may want to use the help of applications, for example, rankingCoach 360.

• Check your links and media

It is completely plausible to link to other sources or media in your content. However, you should continually double-check that they won’t become irrelevant in the near future. 

• Avoid dates and technical language

Take note that there are certain things you should avoid to create good evergreen content that will resonate with your audience. As mentioned before, it is best to avoid events and dates, even phrases or words like “last month” or “yesterday”, so the content is non-perishable.

Moreover, it is better to not use overly technical language as long as your audience does not require it. Think about writing also for beginners. As stated before, showing your expertise helps build trust and authoritativeness, but you can do that in a way that beginners can also understand. Plus, experts aren’t very likely to be searching for a broad topic since they are already familiar with it, and you want to create content for a larger audience. 

Forms of evergreen content 

When we talk about content, probably the first idea that comes into our minds is to write articles on a blog. And this is a very good resource since having a blog is a great way to include articles about the “History of” something and “How to” guides, which are good examples of evergreen content. But this is not always the case. That is why it is important to know that articles are not the only way of creating evergreen content that will help you keep your brand relevant. Here are some examples of forms of content that are evergreen and you can experiment with:

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Lists
• Tutorials (or recipes)
• Reviews
• Testimonials
• Glossaries
• Interviews

You can include some of these elements in your site or blog. If you don’t have these elements on your website, maybe it’s time to think about creating and adding them since they can be a great evergreen asset. Also, it is important to note that evergreen information doesn’t just have to be in the form of written articles; it can be posted in many other formats like videos or infographics.

How to maintain your evergreen content

Unfortunately, content is never 100% evergreen; let’s not forget that the world is in constant change and the internet even more so. If you are in the Digital Marketing industry, for example, Google releases new algorithm updates every few months or at least once a year. Therefore, a post on “How to do SEO” is going to be outdated at some point and it will need to be changed for the content to stay relevant for your audience. But all you need to do is to refresh your content every year, so it is still a minor time-consuming asset.

Here are the important aspects of the content you should focus on to keep it valuable and relevant for your visitors:

• Stats: If you give some numbers and stats to support your information, check that the numbers are still correct and relevant. 
• Links: Check your links to know they’re not broken. Not only your audience but also Google will notice if these two are outdated.
• User search intent: Customers look for certain topics because they have a need. This need, or search intent, can change. That’s why you need to make sure this content covers the needs of the people who look for this keyword and repurpose the content.
• Analyze your competitors: In case you are being outranked by your competitor, analyze his content to check what you can improve. In any case, it is always good to analyze your competition.

Generate evergreen content now and stay at the top of Google!

To be clear, not all your content has to be evergreen. Probably your readers also want to know the new trends in your industry, to stay updated and know how this impacts them. However, evergreen content is one of the most valuable assets you can generate for all its benefits, therefore is definitely worth producing a solid hub of everlasting, enduring content that will impress your audience and maintain yourself always on top of your competitors.