Is Your Web Content Evergreen?

Evergreen content is content that, like a pine tree, stays fresh and alive for a long time. It’s not tied to current events, pop culture trends, fashion, or other things that only remain relevant for a brief moment in time.

It’s based on topics that visitors will be interested in for a long time. For example, articles about pet care or recipes can be considered evergreen content. Those pieces can offer people value for years on end, with maybe only an occasional slight refresh.

So, is your web content evergreen, or evergreen enough? Sure, sometimes you have to publish timely content, like news about events, promotions, and company updates.

But the vast majority of your website content should be evergreen, because evergreen content drives traffic, often slowly but also steadily, over the long term.

A timely piece might garner a lot of views when it’s first posted, but an evergreen piece will outpace those gains in the end. Learn the basics of writing evergreen content, and how to refresh evergreen content that you’ve already written.

Brainstorm a List of Timeless Topics

Your first task in any sort of writing endeavor is to brainstorm some topics to write about. Generate topics that are relevant to your business and your customers’ needs. You want to create content that will be valuable for readers. Consider using one of these formats for creating evergreen content:

● How-to articles
● Listicles
● Reviews
● Interviews
● Glossaries
● Buying Guides
● FAQs
● Q&As
● Tips

Minimize articles about statistics, trends, product announcements, pop culture, and news. Some examples of good evergreen content could include, “Your Guide to Buying Kayaks,” “How to Housebreak a Puppy,” or “5 Ways to Reduce Waste at Home.” These are all topics that can remain relevant for years.

Build Out Some Keywords

Before you begin to write evergreen content, you need to build out some search engine optimization (SEO) keywords for your piece. You need a primary keyword and two or three secondary keywords for each piece.

Think about the words and phrases users will enter into search engines when looking for the information in your piece. They might google “how to buy kayaks” or “how to housebreak puppy” or “reduce waste at home,” for example.

Use a keyword tool to generate some keywords that have a high enough search volume to get you traffic, without it being so high that you’ll never rank on the first page.

Write Well and With Authority

If you want to rank at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to write good content. Tight, well-written content ranks higher than poorly-written content. Make sure you proofread your content carefully to eliminate errors.

The need for professional-level, high-quality written content is part of the reason why so many marketing companies use SEO resellers to meet customer demands for content creation.

Avoid Time-Based Details

Time-based details give your piece an expiration date, and that’s the opposite of what you want when you’re generating evergreen content. Don’t name specific dates, not even years. Don’t say “yesterday” or “today” in your writing. You want the content to still feel fresh years from now.

Optimize Your Content

Of course, any content you put on your website is going to have to be optimized for search. Organize your content with titles and subheadings. Use your SEO keywords in the title and subheadings, and sparingly in the body text.

Include images and infographics or videos, and use alt tags and hashtags to improve accessibility and fit a keyword or increase brand visibility on social media. Make sure each piece of content is completely unique. Link related pieces of evergreen content together.

Refresh Your Evergreen Content as Needed

Even the most evergreen content is going to need an occasional refresh. Regularly go through your evergreen content and give it new life by updating any outdated information, and adding new information or ideas that maybe didn’t exist or didn’t occur to you the first time around. Check all the links and fix or remove any broken ones. Double-check your piece for typos, spelling mistakes, and grammatical issues. Add interactive elements to the piece if you can.

Evergreen content stays relevant for years on end, and that means it keeps drawing in traffic for years on end, too. Timely topics have their place, but if you want to focus on improving SEO, focus on filling your site with lots of evergreen content. As you build up a backlog of strong evergreen content, you’ll enjoy more and more traffic from users looking for a source of valuable information.