What is evergreen content and how to create it
Producing content for your target audience is an important marketing technique, but not all content is good content. To stay relevant and engaging, your website and other platforms need to contain evergreen content. Trendy and current content is important and can be used to increase traffic and engagement, but once the trend or hype has faded, so will the traffic and engagement.
To maintain traffic and engagement, evergreen content needs to be used across your website and online platforms. Once you understand how to create evergreen content, the content you produce is sure to be timeless and relevant no matter the date.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is the type of content that is timeless. This content refuses to fade or become irrelevant because it is based on a topic that will be relevant and important for a long period of time, if not for the foreseeable future. An example of evergreen content is “how to write a good essay”. High school and higher education students will need content like that for years to come, therefore making it evergreen content.
An example of content that may not be evergreen is “how to make your own face mask”. This type of content was relevant during the pandemic, but once the pandemic ends this type of content becomes irrelevant. But this type of content is trendy and can be used as a temporary way to increase traffic to a website.
How to create evergreen content
- Choosing the right topic is vital
Choosing a topic that is timeless is the first step to creating evergreen traffic, but determining which topics are timeless may prove to be an obstacle. To find evergreen topics you can use an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics will show you which topics have a high initial search volume that decreases over time, and which topics have a high initial search volume that is sustained over time. The topics that have a high initial search volume that is sustained over time would be evergreen content. - Use the appropriate keywords
Just as the topic needs to be evergreen, so do the keywords. Similarly, to finding an evergreen topic, you can use an SEO research tool to find out which keywords have consistently high search volumes. Examples of these SEO research tools are Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush. Evergreen keywords should have at least 1,000 monthly searches. This will indicate consistent and genuine interest. - Optimize your evergreen contentThis tip relates to finding the evergreen content more than creating it. The content you create can be perfect, but if it is not SEO optimized, you won’t have website traffic. Therefore, it won’t be evergreen. To SEO optimize your evergreen content you should build backlinks and include the main keyword/keywords in the title and subheadings.You should also include outbound links to specific high-authority websites, mention cited data points if used, and avoid complicated and technical jargon in the content. Another good tip is to offer the answer or solution to the user’s problem at the top of the content. A user is likely to exit your website if they must scroll down and search for what they are looking for.
- Keep your content updatedCreating evergreen content may need some tweaking as time passes. The topic may remain evergreen, but the content may become outdated. For example, data and statistics used in the content are likely to change and become updated over time. To ensure that your content stays evergreen you should revisit your content and update it with outbound links and recent data points as it changes.
Start creating evergreen content today
Using evergreen content is a smart marketing technique to increase organic traffic, keep your audience engaged, and become a trusted source in your field. Before starting the creative process, be sure that you have done your research and sure that the content you would like to create will be evergreen content. Once it’s been created and shared online, be sure to update it as time progresses to maintain its evergreen quality.