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Evergreen content – a powerful content marketing strategy that delivers long-term value and fuels consistent website growth.
In today's dynamic digital landscape, marketers and content creators constantly struggle to secure consistent, high-quality traffic and establish their brand as an authority within their industry.
Short-lived content bursts often fail to deliver long-term value, leaving marketers scrambling for the next "big thing".
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is content which stays focused on topics that are relevant and remain engaging over time, making it a valuable digital asset for your brand. A well-researched evergreen article is a great source of reliable long-term traffic. It consistently delivers value, generating ongoing interest and awareness. This is crucial for businesses aiming to build credibility, connect with their audience, and boost organic traffic and market share.
2 Types of SEO Content
What is not evergreen content? Anything time-sensitive, such as news, current affairs, and time-based statistics. That’s because it will go out of date at some point. Likewise, trending content—current fashions, culture, celebrity, politics, and sport - may offer a brief spike in interest but will not stand the test of time.
Everlasting value: the SEO benefits of evergreen content
Any content that performs well over time with minimal tweaks is a great investment.
Search engines favour high-quality, "bookmarkable" content that is worthy of your audience's time and attention, generating organic traffic year after year. As search engines become more sophisticated, they increasingly reward genuine, high-quality content over spammy, keyword-stuffed articles.
The benefits of quality evergreen content will compound over time as it solidifies and enhances its ranking with a steady stream of traffic, generating even more traffic.
And so, evergreen content is one of the most valuable digital assets available. When combined with effective keyword strategy, it’s a worthy investment of your content creation efforts.
How to craft evergreen content
Here are a few tips on how to generate ideas, research, write, and optimise your evergreen content.
Certain content formats lend themselves to evergreen. These include:
- An “ultimate guide” for a particular subject
- A “beginner’s guide” to the same
- Explainers – clarifying concepts in a particular sector or industry
- Listicles – e.g. top 7 best SEO strategies for skin care brands
- Instructional articles
- Case studies
- Checklists
- Common mistakes to avoid
Some key considerations to keep in mind when developing your content:
01. Keyword research and targeting
Evergreen content is a pillar of any effective web content marketing strategy, and it is essential to combine it with effective SEO techniques.
Evergreen pieces may require a considerable investment in research and writing, so target the keywords your site aims to rank on. You want to ensure that people are actually searching for the topic and keywords you are creating content on, but it’s also specific enough to stand out.
02. Make it unique
There are often hundreds or thousands of content pieces on a given topic, all vying for attention.
To overcome this challenge, consider tweaking your content to add something unique to the subject, contribute more depth, and/or provide a niche angle of interest. Using long-tail keywords to balance competition and interest ensures your content resonates with your audience and amplifies your brand's unique message.
Ultimately, this comes down to your audience, your brand, and what you offer.
03. Optimise for SEO
Always use standard best practices for SEO optimisation. Ensure your chosen keyword is in the title and URL and appears throughout the body copy. Add alt text to images and ensure related articles are hyperlinked to improve your page rankings.
04. Keep it fresh
Depending on the subject, your evergreen content may require occasional updating.
This may be as simple as updating the links to new relevant articles or updating some of the content as new information and findings in your industry. Updating older evergreen content pages will boost SEO rankings and improve your overall website quality.
05. Promote it
Feature and promote evergreen content across your website and social media channels. Incorporate it into other content promotion as part of a wider suite.
Real-World Success stories
Every business has a different target market with its own motivations, questions, interests, and goals. So, the key to creating quality evergreen content is understanding your audience and providing material that addresses their questions in valuable ways.
Here are some examples.
01. Curated lists
Lists or listicles are among the most popular and effective content formats for a reason. They distil complex information into insightful, bite-sized chunks that require little upfront commitment from the reader.
This blog post by Sprout Social effectively boils down the overwhelming number of digital marketing tools to 21 essentials.
02. Answer specific questions
People ask Google questions, and you provide the answers. Again, effective evergreen content demands the subject matter find that “just right” level of specificity and breadth.
This article from Big Commerce, triggered by “how to set up a good ecommerce site” google search, focuses on customer expectations.
03. Beginner’s guides and how-to guides
Like listicles, these are the essence of evergreen content.
There are always newcomers to an industry or market looking to learn the ropes fast or make an informed purchase. A good beginner’s guide could also offer value to the experienced by reminding them of key lessons.
Skincare is a massive category, but this article by Allure, The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Skin Care, makes the first page of Google. Publishers tend to rank well with Google due to the sheer amount of relevant content they produce in their subject categories, leading to trusted page rankings.
In a similar vein, skincare retailer Bondi Sands features an article on its blog, How To Create A Daily Skincare Routine:
This article by Semrush, Google Analytics for Beginners: Getting Started with GA4, teaches the basics of Google Analytics.
04. Case studies and best / worst practice examples
Case studies are always appealing for those looking for lessons and avoiding pitfalls on any given subject.
SuntechIT published this piece on Medium, 10 Mobile Marketing Case Studies, focusing on some examples of successful campaigns and apps launched by some major retailers and food and beverage chains.
05. Reveal your “secrets”
Any title with the word “secret” in it draws the reader in with the promise of niche content and expertise beyond the generic.
This article by Strike Social focuses on the secrets of successful social media buying.
SEO Impact: Evergreen strategies and organic traffic
Developing an evergreen strategy will give you a holistic approach to creating evergreen content as a cornerstone of your content marketing approach.
While one successful piece of evergreen content will do well on its own, the true benefits of evergreen content only come at scale. Aim to create a comprehensive range of evergreen content in your market.
Over time, this will generate an exponential growth in traffic, and your brand visibility will grow. This can help shift the dial in how your brand is perceived in the market and increase conversions.
How to get started
An evergreen content strategy is essential for achieving strong SEO and content marketing results and providing lasting value to your audience or customers.
As always, in 2024, that means keeping your finger on the pulse of your audience and understanding their goals, values, and concerns and how these are shifting.
Some questions to get started:
- What are the macro factors in your industry, nationally and globally, impacting sentiment?
- How can you reach out in that context to provide valuable content?
- What knowledge, skills, or experience can you bring to your market today that will truly add value to your audience and where they are now?
- How is your market changing, and can you offer fresh insights?
The best evergreen content strategy in 2024 is one that shifts subtly with the times but continues to offer long-term value.
FAQ about evergreen content
To do so, it is essential that the article is specific, niche, and contains high-quality information from a reputable source. This is where a combination of creativity, understanding your market, and research counts. Longtail keyword research is essential, as is research and a healthy understanding of your market.
A combination of the quality of the article, its niche, and how specific it is. Tweak your subject matter to find long-tail keywords that are niche enough for you to compete and still be relevant to your audience.
Write with authority, provide in-depth information, and promote your article widely. If your article provides genuinely useful and unique.
Trending content is written on topics that include an expiration date and relevance. A news article on a current event is an example of trending content.
However, evergreen content is timeless and stays relevant for a long time. “How To Take Care of A Kitten” is an example of evergreen content.
Since evergreen content stays relevant, it can generate consistent traffic as it ranks well in search engine results for related keywords. This content type tends to accumulate backlinks and maintain engagement, which can lead to increased organic traffic.
- Choose a topic relevant to your brand
- Use appropriate keywords for SEO
- Avoid adding dates for the timeless factor
- Update your content regularly
Evergreen content is crucial for SEO because it can continually attract visitors to a website, contributing to steady traffic and higher rankings. Search engines favour content that remains useful and relevant, which means evergreen content can help improve a site’s SEO performance over time.
How does evergreen content affect website traffic?
Since evergreen content stays relevant, it can generate consistent traffic as it ranks well in search engine results for related keywords. This content type tends to accumulate backlinks and maintain engagement, which can lead to increased organic traffic.
Types of evergreen content include how-to guides, tutorials, product reviews, frequently asked questions (FAQs), educational articles, and resource lists. These formats typically provide timeless information that remains relevant to users.
To identify keywords for evergreen content, conduct keyword research to find terms with a steady or growing search volume over time and low to medium competition. Focus on topics that are consistently relevant to your target audience and industry.
While evergreen content is designed to be long-lasting, it should still be reviewed periodically (e.g., annually or biannually) to ensure the information is current and accurate. Updates may include revising stats, refreshing images, or addressing any changes in industry standards or practices.
The success of evergreen content for SEO can be measured through metrics such as organic traffic, search engine rankings, time on page, bounce rate, backlinks, and social shares. These indicators help assess the content’s performance and long-term value.
Evergreen content remains relevant over time and does not have an expiration date, while time-sensitive content is related to specific events, trends, or news and loses its relevance relatively quickly. Time-sensitive content may initially attract a surge of traffic but typically does not provide long-term SEO benefits.
Evergreen content can benefit most industries, especially those with topics that do not change rapidly. However, its effectiveness may vary depending on the nature of the industry; for instance, technology-related fields might find certain topics become obsolete more quickly than in other sectors. It’s important to tailor evergreen content strategies to the specific needs and dynamics of the industry in question.
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