What is evergreen content and how it fits into your content marketing strategy? Well, it is content that doesn’t age and isn’t time-sensitive. It stays fresh and green forever, and thus requires minimum updates.
Ahrefs grew its blog from 15K visitors per month to 200K+ visitors a month with evergreen content:
When done right, evergreen content boosts SEO and drives organic traffic. And it continues to drive organic traffic naturally.
Not sure where to begin and how to make evergreen content work for your business? This actionable guide covers everything in detail.
What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is a type of content that stays fresh and doesn’t go outdated. It remains relevant and useful for the readers in the long-run. You don’t have to update or tweak it very often. For example, an article on how to lose weight will stay relevant and fresh for years to come. You’ll not have to tweak it too often as the weight loss methods don’t change and will remain the same.
On the other extreme, there are news articles and content that cover recent trending stories. This content is highly relevant to a trend or current happening but it has a short-life. It doesn’t remain useful or relevant after a certain time. For example, articles covering elections have a short-life. After the election, people aren’t interested in searching for the election anymore.
Here is how evergreen content compares with other content types in terms of traffic growth:
Evergreen content isn’t seasonal and the interest in the topic and keywords either remains the same or grows over time. The topic is more important than the content format for evergreen content.
For example, you can write a how-to article (known as an ideal evergreen content form) on a seasonal topic (e.g. how to buy iPhone X) won’t be counted as evergreen. People will stop searching for iPhone X after a certain time.
The topic, therefore, is central to evergreen content instead of the content format. If the topic is evergreen, the content format doesn’t matter.
Why Create Evergreen Content?
Your content marketing strategy must focus on producing evergreen content. Of course, you have to create seasonal and trending content too to stay active and show your authority but a high percentage of content you produce must be evergreen.
Here are some reasons why producing evergreen content should be your top priority:
1. Stays Fresh and Relevant Forever
The best thing about evergreen content is that it stays fresh and relevant almost forever. Here is an example:
Whether it is 2010, 2020, or 2030, people will keep searching for weight loss tips. The topic and the content will stay fresh for years to come.
This is what makes evergreen content the best content type.
However, the way you craft your article (the content) is essential. The weight loss tips covered in the article are evergreen too. None of the tips talk about a seasonal or trending weight loss method. The content you are writing must be evergreen too and not just the topic or keywords.
2. Low Maintenance Cost
Once you write and publish an evergreen piece of content, it needs minimal updates and tweaks. Here is an example:
The list of healthy fats won’t change and it will remain the same for years to come, right?
If you publish evergreen content smartly, you can reduce maintenance cost significantly. Normally, you have to update content regularly to ensure it adds current and updated information. This turns out to be a costly process. Imagine you have 500+ articles that you need to check for updates every year, it will cost you a lot of money every year to do it.
Evergreen content when done right doesn’t need regular updates. Again, if you are covering an evergreen topic in a way that it requires updates, it won’t reduce maintenance cost.
For example, if you are writing an article on SEO tips, you have two options:
- Mention tools and plugins and add their screenshots to help readers follow instructions
- Cover SEO tips without any mention of tools or plugins and focus on general SEO tips that are universally accepted.
If you go with the first option, you’ll need to update your article regularly as tools and plugins are updated several times a year, add new features, and, therefore, you’ll have to update your step-by-step guide and screenshots accordingly.
This costs money and time.
If you go with the second option, you can sit back and relax as you’ll not need to update it regularly rather once or twice based on changes in the SEO scene.
3. Ideal for Repurposing
If you have to repurpose a piece of content, always pick evergreen content.
It isn’t just easy-to-repurposing rather it is ideal for it. You can convert your evergreen article into a video, infographic, presentation, and other formats fearlessly.
Plus, you’ll have a lot of time to repurpose your content. There is no hurry.
In the case of trending content, repurposing is risky as you aren’t sure how and when interest in the topic declines. Even if you decide to repurpose it, you’ll have to do it quickly.
It provides you with unlimited repurposing opportunities.
4. Traffic Continues to Grow
If you are consistently publishing evergreen content, you’ll never have to worry about traffic. Here is how your analytics will look like:
This is because older content ranks high in SERPs. It takes, on average, 3 years to reach Google’s first place and top 10 rankings belong to content that is at least 2 years old:
And this only happens if interest in the keyword remains. It doesn’t happen for trending topics though. Evergreen content drives traffic and the traffic continues to increase as your content ages.
Conclusion
If you know what is evergreen content and how beneficial it is for your business, you’ll stick with it like glue. The benefits it drives make it the best content type for any business.
However, producing evergreen content isn’t always possible. For example, if you run a news channel or a news blog, you can’t publish evergreen content rather a large portion of content will have a very short life.
In such a case, look for evergreen topics and ways to convert trending stories into evergreen or semi-evergreen content. Covering only trending and seasonal topics is a risky business model which isn’t recommended. Make sure you don’t miss evergreen content.
Featured Image: Pexels
