Evergreen content does exactly what it says on the tin. It stays relevant to your audience months and even years after publication. For your content to be considered evergreen, it must be as relevant a year on as it was on the day it was published. If your content is optimised for the right keywords and phrases and provides value to your audience, then you’re on the right track.
But to do this, you must focus on topics your audience can learn from, enjoy, return to and recommend.
What is Evergreen Content:
Unlike trending and seasonal topics such as Christmas, Summer and topical or news events, evergreen content is designed to withstand the test of time and stay fresh for readers and search engines alike.
Examples of Evergreen Content include:
- Recipes and instruction style content
- How to guides
- Q&As
- Destination guides
- FAQs
- Glossaries
- Checklists
- Mistakes to avoid
- and more!
Unless there are significant changes or revelations to what you do or how you do it, once you press publish, your content should remain topical and useful to your audience long into the future.
It may be necessary to revisit pages occasionally to tweak certain areas, but we’ll come to that later.
What has been, not evergreen
For example, a blog post on the latest celeb hook up or break up may have driven traffic to your blog in the short term, but people won’t be searching for it a few years after the event in the same way they were a few days after.
Similarly, the latest must-binge boxset on Netflix may have been the talk of the town at the time but was soon replaced by the next.
- Seasonal articles- Christmas, Halloween, Summer.
- Trending topics- Covid.
These topics may spike traffic to your site, but they will eventually fade as the topics become less relevant. Plus, producing trending content is time-consuming.
You can use that time to generate SEO-optimised long-form content that consistently brings traffic to your site.
What makes evergreen content so powerful?
It’s not to say there isn’t a place for blog content that shows you’ve got your finger on the pulse when it comes to what’s happening in your industry, but for those looking to really reap the SEO benefits of blogging, evergreen content is where it’s at.
Evergreen content can boost your search rankings; it can be repurposed and keeps you in the mind of your readers.
There are many reasons that make evergreen content so powerful, so let’s have a closer look at our favourite few…
- Evergreen Content Keeps Your Business Relevant.
With evergreen content, you can generate trust and become the go-to business for advice. Your site visitors can later turn into customers.
Whether you provide SEO and marketing tips for the east of England or quality hair treatment tips in Luton, localised evergreen content is especially powerful for boosting local SEO rankings.
- Evergreen Content Ensures You Rank Well in Search Results.
If your evergreen content is well-researched and written and sends the right signs to search engines, you’ll continue to rank highly for the topics you cover.
Whether you’re sharing ways to explore Essex or want to be the go-to wedding cake maker in the east of England, if you’re creating useful, informative, evergreen content, search engines will recognise this.
Google tracks indicators such as the bounce rate, time on site and repeat visitors to your website and uses these quality indicators when deciding where to rank your content.
How to Create Evergreen Content:
Now that we know what evergreen content is and how powerful it can be for your customers and your business, it’s time to look at how to create evergreen content.
- Choose the Right Topics:
Brainstorm:
Come up with several topics that will work as evergreen content for your industry. Look at what the competition is doing and find new approaches to previously published content.
Ask your customers:
Ask your customers and audience what they would like to see from you. Use social media, your website or in-person chats to see what topics they find interesting and informative.
Use free and paid tools:
The most efficient method is online tools such as Google Analytics and trends. These will help you identify topics your audience is already searching for.
Paid tools such as SEMrush will help with topic suggestions and keywords.
You can qualify the topics you brainstormed and the suggestions you came up with through these tools to help make sure you have the most relevant and valuable topics.
- Choose the Right Keywords:
Now that we know the topics, we need to use the right keywords and phrases in our blogs and articles.
These are the keywords and phrases used in search engines by individuals to find websites and information.
It’s not just about what you’re saying but how you say it. If you use local slang, abbreviations or terms that are too technical, you can produce great content, but it won’t necessarily get seen by the right people in the right places.
So, using paid tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Pro is best. If you don’t want to pay for these, use free tools such as Word tracker, Ahref Keyword Generator or Google Keyword Planner.
These will still give you actionable keywords and phrases for your blogs and articles.
- Create the content:
Now you have your topics and keywords, it’s time to create the content for your website.
There are a few key points to remember when creating SEO-optimised evergreen content:
- Use keywords and phrases in the titles and tags of your post.
- Avoid dates where possible and change dates when required.
- Find a unique spin on the content you’re creating.
- Link to authority sites that back up your data.
- Avoid jargon and write to a person and not towards a search engine. You want your content to be shareable, informative and enjoyable to read.
- Where you can write in-depth guides, how-to articles and case studies; this will highlight you as an authoritative figure.
- Update your content regularly. This includes keeping an eye on dates, broken links and new insights you can include in your content.
- Promote your content through repurposing and resharing at the right time.
Key takeaway
Evergreen content, when done well, will do wonders for your website. So, find relevant topics for your industry and produce content that can be used long into the future. Evergreen content should be central to your marketing strategy, as so much can be done once it’s published.
The time invested into evergreen content is worth the returns your business will make long into the future.
If you need help identifying the right keywords and phrases to include in your content or help writing the content, get in touch – we’re here to help you make your content work harder AND smarter.
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