If your any sort of internet marketer or involved in search engine optimization, even a beginner one, it is likely that you have heard of evergreen content. But hearing about something, and understanding what it is, and more importantly how to create it, are very different things. So, what is evergreen content and why should make sure you are always posting it?
This article will explore evergreen articles, including how to create an evergreen post or article and explore how evergreens can make your SEO strategy stronger and takes it to the next level.
The first thing we must do however, is define evergreen content.
Evergreen content, put simply, is content that could be read years from now and have the same impact it does now. Basically, it is content that always reads as “fresh.” Evergreen content is so named because evergreen trees (like the ones you chop down and put in your living room at Christmas-time) is a symbol of perpetual life. In essence, the evergreen never dies – and that’s exactly what sort of content that you want.
In order to more fully appreciate what is not evergreen content – that is – will not be relevant a year from now. Here are some types of content that are definitely not evergreen content.
- News articles and political ramblings
- Articles that contain statistics or reports that will be outdated eventually.
- Articles about a holiday or season or year.
- Articles that are about a current trend, fad or pop culture item.
- Articles that are about this year’s (or any year’s) fashions.
Evergreen content will be relevent to readers years (and maybe even decades) from now and will still be valuable to readers when they come to it long after the post date. For example, if you write about politics in general, it will probably be relevant for many elections to come, but a post about this year’s candidates or issues will expire as soon as the election has run its course. The reason for this is clear – the keywords that people use to find that expiring post will stop being used and you will get no traffic to your site for that content. If you want to write evergreen content, here are some great formats that you can use to create it. This doesn’t automatically mean that your content will be evergreen (this depends upon the topic) but it is a useful way to know how to structure evergreen content.
- Lists – especially lists of more general things rather than specific, dated things.
- Top Tips – Again, these should be general tips not very specific ones.
- Instructions – How-to tutorials and guides
- Product Reviews – These may not last as long as others depending upon the product/version.
- Encyclopedia Articles – Think Wikipedia
- Videos – Especially how-to videos that will last for a very long time.
There are also quite a few topics that are so timeless that they will remain evergreen as long as human beings walk this earth (and surf the web).
- Food & Recipes
- Taking Care of Your Pets
- Losing Weight & Fitnss
- Financial Topics
- Parenting Tips
- Jobs, Careers, Work Relationships
- Love, Romance, Dating
Obviously, you want to cover topics that are related to your business, not just any topic that you come across. So, for example, if you are in the business of dentistry, you want to cover topics like taking care of your teeth, what different procedures are and benefits of dentistry among others. No matter what type of business that you are in, you are sure to find ways that you can post content related to your business.
However, do keep in mind that many of the common (in fact, most of the common) evergreen articles have already been covered, and covered, and then covered again. If you cover the same topics that everyone else has already covered to death, you probably aren’t going to get much traffic, unless you can rank higher than all of that other content. However, you can cover topics that are more specialized, more unique, and most importantly, have long-tail keywords. In case you aren’t familiar, a long-tail keyword is one that is several words long. For example: ‘blue octagonal shaped widgets’ is a much more effective keyword than ‘widgets’.
Examples of Evergreen Content
Here are a few examples so that you can understand better what evergreen content is and how to create it.
How to Care For Aging Cats – There is no danger of cats going extinct anytime soon, and as long as people have them, they will have to care for them when they get older.
10 Great Chocolate Treats You Can Make at Home – Again, people will always love chocolate and want to make chocolate treats.
How to Sooth a Crying Baby – People are always going to have children and babies will always cry. This is a great piece of content that can be used for years or even decades.
As you can see, all of these are titles and articles that will be relevant far, far into the future. Some of the top websites that create evergreen content regularly include: About, Wikipedia, IMDB and Ehow.
These are great sites that consistently get recognized by the search engines for producing quality, evergreen content. Pretty much anything you search for will have a Wikipedia page in the first ranking spot. They don’t always have quality content however, which is where you might be able to sneak in and offer something better to the search engines.
Combine Your Evergreen Strategy With The Right Keywords
Evergreen content is your best strategy for sustainability but without the right keywords, you will have great content that doesn’t get found. That’s why you need to combine evergreen content with keywords that people search for. When you have an evergreen piece to post, research the right keywords – keywords that will bring people who buy what you have to sell to your page.
You should also ensure that you are following normal SEO strategies like optimizing your site (on and off) for the right keywords, using relevant images with the right alt text and including social media sharing buttons. The more of the correct strategy that you use the higher you will rank in the search engines. You want your content to be seen, linked, shared and ranking as high as possible.
Four Tips For Writing Evergreen Content
- Don’t Write For an Expert Audience: Just because you are an expert in a field doesn’t mean that you show off your expertise with your topics. The majority of your readers aren’t going to be experts, they are going to be beginners that want the basics. Also, experts don’t search for help very often anyway – thus the reason that they are called experts.
- Don’t Use Technical Language: You want your readers to read your entire piece and find value in it, and too much technical terminology will make them go find an article that is easier to read.
- Avoid Broad Topics: The more narrow a topic that you can write about the better – as long as it is a popular topic that gets a lot of search traffic. Most of your readers are going to be looking for a specific idea or answer, not an explanation of the entire topic. You want to answer the question that they are searching for, not answer every question that they might have in the future about the topic.
- Link Your Related Posts: Readers will often read related posts, so if you have several posts around the same basic topics, then link them together and you will see traffic increase. Besides the value for readers who want to learn more, there is also value for the search engines in linking related content. It will help you rank higher if you interlink relevant content across your site.
Write Other Stuff Too
You should definitely write a lot of evergreen content, but there can be value in other types of content as well. If you publish the right piece at the right time, you can get a huge amount of traffic, and while it may not last as long as your evergreen content, it will bring in serious traffic while it lasts.
For example, suppose that you wrote an article about the current presidential election. Obviously, after the election was over, the content would slowly wane and eventually you would get almost no search traffic from it, because people stopped searching for the keywords you used. But in the meantime, you can benefit from a huge amount of people searching for the keywords that you used. Six months worth of traffic on a hugely popular topic can rival an evergreen article that lasts for years.
So, don’t think that you only have to write evergreen content. While this should definitely be your main strategy, here and now content also has its place. Your goal is to drive as much traffic as possible to your website and then sit back and reap the rewards.
