You’ve probably heard of the term ‘evergreen content’ before. Does it make you think of tall, evergreen trees? Perfect.
Evergreen content is just that. Like evergreen trees, evergreen content retains its leaves throughout the seasons. That is to say, it always stays fresh and can offer readers valuable information months, even years after it’s been published.
Evergreen content is great because it never expires and has the potential to keep driving traffic to your website long after you’ve hit that publish button. You may still have to tweak some things, but evergreen content blooms and keeps driving traffic to your website with time.
Want to learn more about the benefits of creating evergreen content? Keep reading to find out all about it!
Long-term Relevance
It’s easier to understand what evergreen content is by examining what kind of content isn’t evergreen. News articles, statistics, articles focused on clothing and fashion trends are some examples of non-evergreen content. Although creating such content may drive traffic to your website for a while, you can bet that people will most likely not be interested in outdated fashion trends six months from today (not the people who search for that kind of stuff anyway).
That is not to say that news blogs (or fashion blogs for the matter) can’t be successful. It just means that content on those websites has a short shelf life. Its goal is to drive as much traffic as possible in the shortest possible time frame.
Blogs about great colour combinations and beauty tips are much more evergreen than blogs about the latest fashion trends. You see, people will always be looking for great colour combinations and beauty tips, but the same cannot be said about the fashion trends of today (that will be yesterday’s by tomorrow).
Seasonal or timely topics could be useful to your blog, but shouldn’t be your main focus. You should aim to create evergreen content that’s relevant to your business or industry. The narrower the topic, the higher the chances that you’ll rank higher with Google. If you do have to cover a popular topic, then make sure you do it in an original way that will make you stand out.
Examples of Evergreen Content
OK, that is all great, but where do you even begin with evergreen content? The truth is that evergreen content requires additional time and money to create, but it’s well worth it. Ranking high with search engines is all about driving consistent traffic to your website and evergreen content can help you do just that. Here’s how to do it.
How-to Guides and Tutorials
This a rather broad field, which is exactly why it needs to be broken down into several different subcategories.
How-to guides and tutorials for beginners make for amazing content that is bound to do well. The more narrow the topic and the more in-depth, the better. The truth is that there aren’t enough true beginner guides and tutorials out there. Most of them assume some kind of knowledge on the topic and users who are looking for the most basic of information are usually left frustrated and dissatisfied.
When creating how-to guides for beginners, you need to make sure you’re as thorough and descriptive as possible, even if you know your audience well (and they seem to be familiar with your content and subject matter).
Think about this way: People will always want to try out new things. Whatever the topic is, if you’re writing a beginner’s guide, then you should assume that your reader truly is a beginner. Think of all the people who know nothing about digital marketing or SEO but would like to give it a shot. That’s right, there’s probably many and you want to be targeting them.
Advanced guides, on the other hand, work a bit differently. They are usually easier to write since you already share expertise and a common, technical language with your audience. Advanced guides (just like beginner guides) should explore a topic in-depth. You may want to approach the topic from a different angle by putting your expertise and experience to good use.
Guides (both beginner and advanced) are usually heavy on the word count side of things, which means you need to find a way to keep your readers interested and engaged throughout. Consider breaking up your content into smaller chunks or make use of checklists. Checklists are a great addition to any how-to post or guide; add them to the end of your guides, or make them available as downloads or content upgrades.
Lists
Lists never go out of fashion. They are as evergreen as evergreen gets. Just like how-to guides and tutorials, people will always appreciate content that’s able to provide them with a lot of information in as little space as possible.
The list of lists that you can create is endless. Depending on your niche and industry, different topics may be appropriate, but as a general rule of thumb, ensure that your lists are simple and easy to follow.
Let’s say you’re running a digital marketing blog. You could offer your readers some tips on how to overcome writer’s block or ways of creating content that will resonate with their own readers. Are there any writing techniques or tools that you make use of every single day? Write about them!
Online tools help people in many different ways. What kind of tools do you use and how do they help you get things done? If you’re being honest about it all, chances are you’ll be creating evergreen content: The mentioned tool or software will continue to be used by more and more people, increasing the chances that someone might end up reading about it on your blog.
Tools for List Posts
Great tool lists (just like great how-to guides and tutorials) are thorough and descriptive. Don’t just mention a specific tool or piece of software. Go deeper. Include short tutorials on how to get started with it, add relevant screenshots (or a short video), give some tips on how to make the most out of it.
What are some of the best paid and free tools for X? What are the pros and cons of said tools? Why should your readers even consider them? What do you have to say about them? These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself.
Evergreen content thrives on its own, but always does best when it’s kept informed and updated. Tools and software receive updates on a regular basis, which means that your posts should be updated to reflect significant changes. You might have to change a word or two or just replace some pictures with newer ones (e.g. in case the interface’s been recently updated). Make sure that the information on your blog is always accurate and current.
Other Types of Evergreen Content
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- History-focused topics – History is probably not changing anytime soon, which means that content based on history is inherently evergreen. It can be hard to write an interesting and engaging blog on the history of a specific topic or product. But you can do it, as long as you put your own twist into the story and somehow manage to bring the discussion into the here and now.
- Best & worst practices-style topics – People often resort to Google to find solutions to their problems. If you got a problem, chances are you’re doing something wrong. Sometimes it’s good to turn away from your run-of-the-mill do-this kind of blog and focus more on the negative side of things, e.g. things people should not be doing or things that they are doing wrong.
- Everything-you-need-to-know topics – Definitive and ultimate are properly words you’ve heard a thousand times before. Definitive and ultimate guides are risky in the sense that they require a lot of knowledge and expertise to pull off, but users love them! All-in-one guides work great as people prefer information that’s neatly packaged in one pretty bundle.
As you’ve probably already guessed, it’s not easy being evergreen. Evergreen content is important and the idea of content that will be relevant for years to come is something that you should always keep in mind when writing your blogs. What’s more important, however, is that you create content that’s useful and valuable to your readers. If you think about it, that’s what evergreen content is all about: providing users with quality content that they can return and refer to for a long time to come.
Content is king, and evergreen content is queen. If you want to rank high, you’ll need to make sure you create content that puts your readers’ needs first. Click here to find out why filler content is not your SEO friend.
Article source: EVERGREEN CONTENT: WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT?
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