Content marketing is an important aspect of your digital marketing strategy. And one of the best forms of content for your website is Evergreen content. Evergreen content is search-optimized content that has long-term relevance and stays “fresh” for readers over a long period of time. It’s content that isn’t time-sensitive and doesn’t need to be updated very often to be relevant. This makes it ideal for SEO because it can continue to attract visits and views long after it is published.
How To Create Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is search-optimized content that has long-term relevance and stays “fresh” for readers over a long period of time.
Recently, Backlinko analyzed 3.6 billion articles to better understand evergreen content and discovered a lot of helpful information on how to create this type of content.
While the topic of a piece is understandably a key element in its interest over time, the format plays a role as well.
Highly Evergreen Formats include:
- Lists
- How-to posts
- Tips and tricks
- Product reviews
- Videos
Producing in these formats does not automatically make your piece evergreen, but these types of content do tend to lend themselves better for it than others. For example, web-based videos are a great way to deliver this content, but not all web video formats produce evergreen content. Some types do lend themselves better than others such as instructional videos, like how you can change a tire, which tend to have more longevity than other less practical ones.
Writing Evergreen Content
Now that you know what evergreen content is and is not, along with the types of formats that work best, here are some specific tips for writing evergreen content:
- Choose the right keywords – use the keywords you have selected as part of your SEO strategy
- Optimize for Search Engines – make sure you have a good meta description, an effective title, and images with relevant keywords in the description at the very least
- Write for beginners – don’t assume your reader has any industry knowledge or prior expertise with the topic
- Avoid technical language
What’s Not Evergreen
One of the easiest ways to ensure your content is evergreen is to understand the type of content that is not evergreen. This includes:
- News articles
- Clothing or fashion trends
- Statistics or reports that will quickly go out of date
- Articles focused on pop culture
- Articles about events of other time-sensitive subjects
In addition to this, Backlinko’s research also stated that podcasts are low on evergreen formats. Podcasts are 4.28 times less likely to be evergreen compared to a list post. So, when thinking of what to create for evergreen content, podcasts are typically not suitable.
Why You Should Create Evergreen Content
Now that you know more about what evergreen content is, some of the most vital information is why you should be creating it in the first place. 5 good reasons to create evergreen content include:
- Continually drive traffic to your site
- Improve search engine rankings
- Drive prospects to your sales funnel
- Position your brand as an industry leader
- Content with your audience on social media
The goal is to create content that provides value to your particular audience that they can return to time and time again. Whether that’s a roundup of the “bests” or “worsts”, a how-to, or resource list, that’s up to you (or your content creator!)