Much like investing, creating content that always brings visitors to your website or social media can have compounding returns over time.
Evergreen content is anything you create for your website, blog, or social media that has sustained interest over time. For example, evergreen content might be “How to Start Eating Healthy” for a nutritionist.
A study by Parse.ly found that over half of the top 100 sites in their network get more than 5 percent of their page views attributed to evergreen content.
For content creators and anyone running their social media, being able to plan content that will always have interest from your audience is key to success.
Although evergreen content usually refers to blog content, there are many ways to apply it to different parts of your marketing efforts. Here’s how you can start creating evergreen content as part of your content strategy.
Evergreen content
Evergreen content refers to any topic with an always-on level of interest or relevance. There is always an audience that wants to consume content around these topics, and the information in evergreen pieces should reflect that.
In addition, it should remain fresh for readers who are looking to answer a question or learn more about a topic. While there might be an up or downturn in interest over time in the long term, evergreen content is not impacted by seasonality.
Of course, these ideas won’t be relevant for everyone – you’ll need to do research specific to your industry and audience to come up with the right topics.
The opposite of evergreen content is seasonal content – topics tied to a time of the year or a trendy event ubiquitous in the news or social media. This content is more likely to see a drop in interest once enough time has passed.
For example, The World Cup is picking up a lot of interest as it’s getting into full swing, but that interest will taper off once it’s over.
Another example of not-evergreen content is the lifecycle of TikTok dance trends. Once they come, they explode over the platform’s discovery page, but they see a sharp drop when interest wanes.
Importance of evergreen content
Evergreen content is important because it remains relevant long after it’s posted initially. This is because it isn’t tied to specific events or trends. Some other benefits of evergreen content include:
Future-proof with a growing impact over time. The nature of evergreen content implies that it will always be interesting to your audience, which means you can create it now without worrying about losing relevance.
Quicker SEO improvements. Since evergreen topics are often searched, your content is likely to rank quickly on the search engines and keep growing in the results if it’s high quality.
Increase to your website traffic. Evergreen content will always drive traffic to your website, especially if you support it with other relevant content (i.e., don’t just publish a few evergreen pieces of content and leave it at that).
Creates value for both you and your customers. Evergreen content addresses a common question that your audience has – by creating it, you can kill two birds with one stone. That is, provide your audience with answers to their burning questions and provide steady organic results for your brand.
Generates leads. By showing your expertise through publishing relevant evergreen content, you can encourage visitors to your website who haven’t yet tried your product or service to do so.
Promoting it over and over again. One of the best perks of evergreen content is that you can re-promote it with minimal changes to the original work.
Less work for you. It can take time to develop new ideas and identify new content opportunities. Still, if you approach your existing strategy with an eye for evergreen topic opportunities, you’ll never be short on ideas.
Key takeaway: Evergreen content provides value to your audience long after you’ve hit publish. It has several benefits, such as driving traffic to your site and setting you apart as a thought leader in your space.
Evergreen content samples
One of the challenges you might run into when creating evergreen content is finding an original angle, as a lot of the topics you want to tackle might have been covered already.
To make your content more valuable and improve its chances of being discovered, you should try to add your unique spin on the content you create and avoid overly technical language if you’re targeting a large audience. Evergreen content can come in many other forms:
How-to guides: These are among the most popular types of evergreen content, especially since anyone can create them. All you need to do is gather your unique expertise + some research, and you have a piece of content that will continue to work for you long after publishing.
For example, if you sell second-hand clothing on Depop, you may write an article or create a TikTok video that quickly breaks down how to spot the best items in thrift stores.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Answering often-asked questions from your audience can also be great evergreen content, especially if you provide helpful advice and directions. Check out this G2 article that covers some great FAQ page examples.
Case studies/Testimonials: Customer stories are a great method of creating evergreen content and also getting social proof for your brand. For inspiration, check out our Case Studies page or Notion’s Customer Stories.
An ‘Everything You Need to Know About…’ post: This type of content will encourage viewers to bookmark or return to the content for reference.
Evergreen content can also come from one-off pages that you create and leave up with minor updates from time to time. These pages will always have visitors to them because they are an important part of engaging with the brand.
Researching and write evergreen content
Evergreen content revolves around keywords. So, before you can start writing evergreen pieces, you need to find out what terms are relevant to your business and can make an impact.
Follow these steps to find keywords:
1. Make a list of topics
Start by thinking about what topics are relevant to your business and how they can help your audience. For example, if you are an insurance company, your list of topics may include these:
- Certificate of insurance
- Liability coverage
- Deductibles
2. Use a keyword tool
While the topics are important, they aren’t content. Keywords will lead you to your evergreen content. To find what makes sense for you, use a keyword tool, such as Google Trends or Moz. You want to find terms that:
Have high search volume. Search volume is the number of searches for a particular keyword over a period of time. If the term doesn’t have a high search volume, then it’s not likely that audiences will find it.
At the same time, remember that you may have more competition for keywords with higher search volume. The ideal keywords have both high search volume and low competition.
Trend well. If a keyword peaks and drops, then you know it’s not suitable for evergreen content. You want to look for keywords that aren’t declining in popularity. Instead, they will trend upward or remain consistent over time.
Have consistent search intent. Look for search intent (the reason someone conducted a search) that doesn’t change over time. For example, before 2020, a person may have typed “best face mask” into a search engine to find a beauty product.
However, in the past year, they were likely looking for masks to wear outside their homes, as the pandemic made it necessary. Therefore, that keyword does not have consistent search intent.
Following those steps will help you build out your keywords. For the insurance company in the example above, the keyword results may look like this:
- Certificate of insurance
- “What is a certificate of insurance?”
- “How to get a certificate of insurance”
- Liability coverage
- “How much is liability coverage?”
- “What does liability insurance cover?”
- Deductible
- “Deductible vs. copay”
- “Deductible vs. coinsurance”
Once you have your keywords and know what stories you want to create, it’s time to write your evergreen pieces. You should ensure the following:
Your content ties into the keyword. It’s hard to outsmart Google, so if you’re aiming for traffic for the keyword “best practices for email list building,” don’t write about how to communicate with a potential customer over the phone.
When someone reads this piece, they should find out exactly what they need to build their own email list. In other words, don’t try to use a popular keyword to drive traffic to an unrelated piece you want to promote.
Your content is well written. Well-written content tends to rank higher than sloppy content, so before you publish, pore over it to check for errors. Professional-looking content that shows attention to detail and writing quality helps your audience trust you.
You sound credible. Fact-check your content. Double-check that your research is correct, and use language that makes you sound like an authority on the subject.
You communicate clearly. Avoid jargon and overcomplicated explanations. Make it as clear as possible; your audience will respond to simple, concise content.
You use sections and subsections to make it easier to read. While the goal is to get your audience to read the entire piece, the truth is that they may only scan it.
Since this might be the case, you should make it easy for them to find the exact information they want by breaking up your content into clearly labeled sections.
You avoid time-based specifics. Try to avoid using years or the words “today” or “yesterday.” You don’t want the content to appear outdated when someone reads it months or years from now.
Key takeaway: Your starting point is to find relevant, high-ranking keywords for your content. From there, if you focus on writing clear, well-written content that helps your audience, you’ll be able to build evergreen pieces that engage them.
Refreshing evergreen content
You should regularly check to see if your evergreen content is still ranking well. Regardless of how much work you put into it or how good it is, it could fall in the rankings over time. If you see your articles’ traffic slip, it may be time to refresh your evergreen content.
This doesn’t mean you should completely rewrite your content. You want to add to whatever you already have. Google will be able to tell when you have updated your pieces, which can push you back up in rankings if you do it well.
Here are some ways to update your content:
1. Correct any outdated information
While true evergreen content generally stays accurate as time goes on, sometimes things change.
For example, if you published a piece about how to use Twitter a few years ago, it may be out of date because the social media channel has made updates, such as increasing the word count of tweets.
While the general concepts and principles the article explains might still apply, you also want the details and numbers to be up to date.
2. Add new text
Revisit your piece and consider what angles you may have missed on the first go-around. It might be quotes from experts or an entire section that you didn’t include. In the example of “How to Use Twitter,” maybe you can add a new section that describes how to become a verified user.
3. Check your links
Are there any broken links in your text? Are the links the most relevant ones you could use? Can you find more credible sources to link to? Do an audit of your links to make sure everything still makes sense and adds value.
4. Add new media
An easy way to breathe fresh life into your content is to add new media. For example, you could create an infographic that summarizes the information in a certain section, or embed a podcast that further explains the points in the article. You could also add videos or slideshows.
5. Make it interactive if possible
Interactive elements such as polls and quizzes encourage your audience to stick around longer and maybe even share the piece. This will signal to Google that this is relevant content that needs to rank higher.
6. Double-check your grammar and spelling
Even if you were thorough before publishing your piece the first time, it might still have spelling and grammar errors. Read the piece out loud or the sections in reverse order, which helps to pinpoint patterns and mistakes you may have missed.
Improve consistency with evergreen content
Creating evergreen content boils down to finding out what your customers want to know and answering those questions. By effectively making evergreen content a part of your content strategy, it can become a powerhouse that drives ongoing growth with everything you publish.
