Adding evergreen content to your content marketing strategy has many benefits. While creating content frequently can be hard to sustain, creating evergreen content may be a better investment, especially for smaller businesses with fewer marketing resources, because it can drive traffic for a longer period of time without the need to write more frequently.
What is evergreen content and why is it important?
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant long after it is initially published. The content is not time sensitive and continues to attract visitors because it adequately answers their questions and provides the information they need. These types of articles rank well in search and drive a large portion of your website traffic.
The benefits of having timeless, relevant content as part of your content strategy is that it:
- Educates your visitors. Evergreen content gives your visitors all they need to know about a particular topic. It should be a definitive piece on a topic that is read when someone wants to learn about a subject.
- Provides value to your readers. Valuable content is that which addresses a particular user’s need. It should be detailed and informative and helps users achieve their goals.
- Raises your visibility in the search engine results. Evergreen content needs to be written and optimized around specific strategic keywords that are valuable for your business. The content not only help to educate your visitors, but will also help search engines direct readers to your page.
- Builds your authority in your industry. Publishing high-quality, timeless content about areas in your industry for which you are the expert, allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and influence.
In addition to these benefits, focusing on producing content that educates and informs, is of higher quality and remains relevant for a longer period of time is a good strategy for small businesses who lack resources to produce content frequently.
What type of content is evergreen?
Common types of evergreen content include:
- Answering reader questions
- Providing industry tips
- How-to for beginners
- How-to for advanced users
- Best practice information for your industry
- Product reviews
- “Best of” lists
- Checklists
- Podcast interviews
- Video interviews
- Training guide
One of the benefits of evergreen content is that you can repurpose the content into many formats for different uses. If you have a how-to guide, checklist or user guide which you have promoted via email, turn it into a video for easier consumption. Then promote it on the proper channels for video (i.e. Facebook or YouTube). This will drive even more traffic to your website.
Tips for writing evergreen content
- Choose the right topic based on an important keyword for your business. For example, a piece called “How to Avoid the Biggest Exercise Mistakes” would be a great evergreen piece for a personal trainer if they want to be found when someone searches for “exercise mistakes”.
- Once you’ve written the piece, make sure you use on-page SEO best practices. Optimize image file names and use alt tags, put the keyword in the title, URL and throughout the content.
- Write so that anyone who reads the content can understand it. Avoid jargon and technical terms. Clearly explain your thoughts, ideas and processes.
- Keep the content updated. Although the point of evergreen content is its long-term relevance, you may want to review the content at least once a year to add new information on the topic and to be sure that links work and images are fresh.
Cornerstone content vs. evergreen content
Evergreen content sounds similar to cornerstone content, and in many ways it is. But there are a couple of differences:
Cornerstone content is:
- Long-form, timeless, content found in your website pages that provides the basic knowledge visitors need to gain the most value from the rest of your content.
- There to create a positive first impression to site visitors. The term cornerstone is part of the foundation of a building and as such, cornerstone content should be the foundation of your content across your entire website.
Evergreen content can go beyond the basic content that defines your area of expertise. This content isn’t necessarily for the new visitor or someone who isn’t familiar with your industry, but it is also not for the experts.
Evergreen content can be published as a blog post. If you do choose to publish evergreen content as a post rather than a page, don’t let it get lost in your blog.
- Make it a “sticky” post, so that it always appears at the top of the blog index page
- Republish that post regularly to bring them back to the top of your feed. Take the time to refresh the post by updating images, links and adding new information as needed. If you do republish the post, keep the same URL as the original. If this content has gained visibility in the search engine results, you don’t want to lose that.
- Create a category for your evergreen posts and list that category of posts where it is easily found.
Add evergreen content to your content strategy
Evergreen content is a long-term investment that takes a bit more thought and effort than other types of content, but it will pay off in the long run. Make sure you take the time to research your topic to provide the best piece of content available.
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