If you want to drive consistent traffic to your website, one of the best ways to do that is with evergreen content. When used optimally, it can attract new readers months and years after it is released. In this article, we’ll discuss what evergreen content is, why you need it, and some tips to create and maintain it.
What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is any content that stays fresh regardless of age and season, even long past its publication date. The term is named after evergreen trees, which stay green all-year-round.
The purpose of this content is to provide timeless and useful information. That way, the content will always bring in constant traffic and shares from readers.
That being said, evergreen content is not time-sensitive. They are not about the latest news or trends. Neither is it specific to certain holidays or seasons. Though this type of content can drive traffic within the appropriate timing, their search volume will drop when the topic is no longer trending.
Instead, evergreen content focuses on glossaries, how-to articles, tips, listicles, and comparative pieces that can be helpful now and in the future. The topic itself should be related to the field of your brand or business.
For instance, if your expertise is in health, an evergreen content idea could be “how to maintain your mental health.” The subject matter is not time-specific and can be read many times over after its release.
Of course, the fact of the matter is that tons of people have created content about many topics – coverage overlaps. That’s the trick with evergreen content – other people have probably written about what you want to write about. Nevertheless, there are ways you can navigate around this problem, which we will talk about later.
Why Do You Need Evergreen Content?
The key advantage of evergreen content is its potential to bring in consistent traffic. Since it will always remain relevant, there will always be people looking for it.
Furthermore, it’s a great strategy for maintaining SEO. Search engines favor high-quality and useful content that answers common search queries and is indexed for a long time. If your evergreen content is comprehensive and helpful, your chances of securing a higher rank on search engine result pages can increase.
When that happens, more users will use your content as a reference. Consequently, the number of backlinks will increase. So will your social media shares. As a result, you’ll be strengthening your website authority. When your page becomes more credible, it’s going to be difficult for other sites to outrank it.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that you can gain these benefits as long as you release unique and high-quality content. If you’re not presenting a beneficial perspective, your content probably won’t result in any significant traffic.
Tips for Creating and Maintaining Evergreen Content
If you want to create evergreen content, here are some tips to guide your process. Also, we’ve included some more tips for maintaining the content so that it stays evergreen.
Conduct Keyword Research to Choose Your Topic
Before creating your content, you need to determine the topic. You should do this by researching potential keywords.
When doing research, look for keywords with a healthy amount of search volume and lower competition. You want to create content that appeals to many users and can easily get a high ranking. Use keyword research tools like Google Trends or Ahrefs to help you.
Instead of targeting broad topics, look for specific queries. They’re usually in the form of long-tail keywords, which are – as the name implies longer – consisting of multiple words or phrases. Shorter keywords usually have harder competitors and are more difficult to rank, so it’s better to find a niche market that has potential.
Having said that, pay attention to search trends. Most keyword research tools will give you a chart overview of a search term’s performance. If there seems to be a growing interest in the search query, the term could be a potential topic for your evergreen content. Otherwise, it’s best to avoid topics with decreasing or seasonal search volumes.
For example, if you want to create content about “affiliate marketing,” you can enter the search term on your chosen tool and see its search volume. As suggested in the chart, there seems to be a positive trend overall. Thus, this topic seems to have good potential.
Evaluate Your Competition to Create In-Depth Content
Once you have your keywords, you will find hundreds of articles about the same topic you plan to create. Use the ones on the first page to your advantage to find out their strengths and weaknesses.
Look for the last time the page was updated. Then check if the information provided is still relevant past the date.
Most importantly, evaluate their usefulness and readability. Take notes of how the content is helping readers understand the topic. Read all of them and search for what one page has that the others don’t. Figure out how to combine their strengths to complement each other.
Remember to also find a gap within the content and try to fill it yourself. This way, you’re presenting a new angle on the topic.
It’s okay if it’s taking more research and time when creating your evergreen content. This will ensure that what you’re creating will be in-depth and high-quality. When your content covers all the necessary information, your readers won’t need to look to your competitors.
Target a General Audience
With evergreen content, you want to be able to reach out to a wide audience. This is to ensure that your content can attract more visitors to your website.
Therefore, it’s better to target newcomers, nonexperts, and the general public rather than advanced readers. Your topic should answer common questions from beginners in your industry.
For example, if your expertise is in finance, you can do articles on taxes, how to write a check, or tips for managing savings. They require less technical language, so it’s guaranteed that any reader can understand your content.
You can also create glossary articles or videos for terms or concepts used often in your field. Not only do they provide basic information, but they also have a better chance of being used for internal links in future content.
Avoid Time-Specific References
Since your content needs to be relevant at all times, it’s best to not include a date, time, period, or season into your evergreen content.
Additionally, don’t insert any trending news or pop culture references. They could drive traffic when the time is appropriate – but when the trend has gone down, the allusions won’t age well.
Track Your Content’s Performance
Once you’ve published your content, don’t leave it be and move on. Go back to your content once in a while to see how it’s doing. Set a time to perform content audits to improve performance and relevance.
There’s a chance your page could be ranking lower than before. In that case, you need to analyze your competitors and come up with a new strategy from your analysis. For one, you can find out what other pages have included to outrank you. Consider incorporating them as well or adding something new that they don’t have yet.
Also, keep track of the freshness of your information. Check for irrelevant or false data, broken links, and outdated screenshots. Make sure your content is as up-to-date as possible.
Maximize the Use of Your Evergreen Content
To keep gaining attention from your content, you should feature it as often as you can.
If you have a large collection of basic topics, you can compile them into several categories. Say you have a blog about digital marketing. You can create a category page for your basic marketing glossaries and name it “Digital Marketing 101”. Newcomers can access those pages to understand all they need to know about specific marketing terms.
You can also set a schedule to promote your content regularly on social media. Since evergreen content is timeless, you don’t really have to feature it based on what’s trending.
Remember to also add internal links to your evergreen content when writing other articles. This will help optimize your page for search engines and drive traffic to other pages.
Conclusion
When used wisely and optimally, evergreen content has the potential to drive consistent traffic for long periods of time. It can also be a great strategy to maintain SEO and increase website authority.
However, evergreen content is only beneficial when it’s high-quality and useful for readers. Therefore, it’s important to invest your time and research to make your content as good as possible for a wide audience. Don’t forget to keep maintaining the content’s quality once it’s released – make sure it remains fresh, relevant, and updated.