Evergreen content is one of the most valuable assets a website or blog can have. It will not only help you increase your organic traffic but it can also guarantee long term success in the world of digital marketing.
In this article, you’ll learn why is evergreen content important and the best practices to follow to make sure that you use evergreen content correctly.
- What is evergreen content?
- Why is evergreen content important?
- How to use evergreen content to increase your traffic
- How to ensure that your content stays evergreen
- Should you mix evergreen content and non-evergreen content together?
What is evergreen content?
In the context of digital marketing, evergreen content is content that is always relevant and not associated with a specific time period.
Evergreen Content Characteristics
For content to be considered “evergreen”, it needs to have the following characteristics:
It is not time-sensitive - Meaning it is not associated with a specific time period but it’s relevant whenever you read it.
It is unique and original – It’s content that it’s not an exact duplicate of what is already published on the internet.
It is useful - Not all original content is useful. When you read an article that is considered as ‘evergreen content’, you should learn something from it.
It’s optimized - In other words it is published on a web site that follows some basic on-page SEO optimization rules.
It’s detailed and informative – Although there is no word limit, usually ‘evergreen content’ is comprehensive and informative.
It is searchable - For all the above to have a real value, the topic of evergreen content needs to be something users search for in Google otherwise even if you rank high in the SERPS, you won’t receive any visits to your website.
Anything that does not comply with ALL the above rules cannot be considered as ‘evergreen content’.
Evergreen Content Examples
Let’s see some real examples to make things easier:
‘How to’ type of articles is considered evergreen content because:
- They are useful since they provide a solution or answer to a problem.
- They are always relevant. An article on ‘How to tie a tie’ will always be relevant whether you read it now or in 5 years.
- ‘How to’ articles are usually detailed, giving you the exact steps (sometimes with images and video) on how to solve a problem.
- People like to search for ‘How to’ articles. And this is the beauty of the Internet, anything you want to do or learn just search for it.
- Provided that the content is unique together with some work on SEO optimization, ‘how-to’ articles are the perfect example of evergreen content.
Note: Another nice example that satisfies all the above criteria is the article you are reading now.
Other types of articles that are in the evergreen category are:
- Listicles
- Tips
- Wikipedia style content
- Comparison articles
- Step-by-step guides
- Storytelling
What is not considered evergreen content and why?
‘News articles’ - this type of article is not evergreen content because even if they satisfy 4 of the 5 rules (unique, detailed, useful, SEO optimized), they fail in relevancy. A ‘news’ article is relevant only for a specific period of time.
‘Fashion and technology articles’ - They cease to be relevant in a short period of time. For example, I may write a great review of the iPhone 12 but this will be obsolete in a few years and nobody will care or want to read about a model that is out of date.
‘Statistical data and case studies based on a time period’ - Not a lot of people want to read today a case study on how banks were affected by the millennium bug or about the percentage of people that were using twitter in 2019.
Why is evergreen content important?
When you start a website or blog it is common to wonder what kind of content to publish so that it will get you more organic traffic.
There are many parameters to take into account like the type of content (text, images, videos), length (should I write short or long posts?), how often to publish, how to choose your article titles and many more.
A very important factor that many publishers don’t follow and this often leads to failure is that they underestimate the necessity of publishing evergreen content.
Evergreen content is important because:
It can help you increase your traffic over time. SEO optimized evergreen content will eventually rank in Google and potentially generate traffic for years.
It can help you get more links. Backlinks play a very important role in search engine ranking algorithms and one of the ways to get more links to publish high-quality evergreen content that other publishers will link to it, over and over again.
You can use it in your social networks. Evergreen content can be shared multiple times on social networks so that you don’t always have to create new content.
It helps you build E-A-T. EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. These are three factors that play a huge role in Google rankings.
By publishing evergreen content, you can establish your website as an authoritative resource on the topics related to your business.
To help you get inspired, by publishing evergreen content we managed to get our traffic to over 120K visits per month, in one of the most competitive online niches.
How evergreen content increases your organic traffic?
Non-evergreen content is not bad, don’t get me wrong. People want to read news, celebrity gossip, fashion, technical reviews, etc. and fortunately there are thousands of websites, publishers and reporters doing that every minute.
What evergreen content will do for you as a blogger or website owner, is to help you make better use of your time.
I take it for granted that the time you can devote on your blog, or website is limited and you want to make use of that time (or paid resources if you outsource content publishing) in the best possible way, and evergreen content is the answer to your time constraints problem.
If you have unlimited time then, by all means, do all types of content but if your time is limited then better spend it on something that will bring you traffic and income for years to come.
Let’s see some real-life examples of evergreen content I have created over the years:
What is SEO and why it’s important – Initially published 6 years ago, the article has so far generated thousands of organic visits to my site. To ensure that it’s always evergreen, I review the article every 3 months.
How to become an SEO Expert – Article was published 2 years ago and it ranks high on Google for the target keywords. It’s a how-to article that describes the steps to become an expert on SEO.
The list of examples is big but just wanted to show you the power of evergreen content to help you understand why evergreen content can help you create a strong a solid foundation that can be expanded by publishing more evergreen content.
How does evergreen content create organic traffic?
Evergreen content will help you rank higher in Google search results because it satisfies all quality criteria set by Google when ranking web pages.
Yes, Google is always looking for the most relevant content to present to users but it is also searching the web to find content that is unique and original, detailed, informative and proven to be useful to users.
By writing SEO friendly blog posts and promoting your content correctly (think social media), sooner or later you will start receiving the reward from your hard work which is no other than an increase in organic traffic.
The more organic traffic you get, the more money you can make from AdSense or any other monetization method you choose and the more important your website becomes in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
How to ensure that your content stays evergreen?
There are cases that content has initially all the characteristics of evergreen over time to become less relevant.
For example, a few months ago I published a post on “how AdSense works” and while I wrote it with the intention of becoming an evergreen post (if I can use this term), it may become outdated if AdSense changes the way it works in the near future.
The solution to this problem is to make sure that you review your articles and make changes to them so that they are always relevant.
When doing so, avoid changing the article as a whole (this may have a negative impact on its rankings) but try to make minor changes to fix any issues or references that may be wrong or out of date.
Should you mix evergreen content and non-evergreen content together?
Definitely, a good website should have all types of content. Evergreen content will help you establish a good presence in search engine results pages and non-evergreen content to attract visitors looking for current trends (especially from social media networks).
Even for ‘News/fashion’ websites, you can use evergreen content to elaborate more on trending topics.
For example, if you are posting news about celebrities and you have the post “Look how Kim looks after losing 10 pounds”, you can also write a post “How to lose weight like Kim” and make it closer to ‘evergreen’ but within your website’s context.
Key Learnings
If you have a blog, eCommerce website or corporate blog and want to gradually start building your organic traffic, raise Google trust and create useful content for years to come, then the answer is in evergreen content.
It does take more time and effort to create it but the benefits and gains are long-term.
Evergreen content is what will differentiate your website or blog from the rest and it is the only way to build a solid foundation that can be expanded and become stronger over time.
