What is Evergreen Content?
Relevance and longevity – these are the two benchmarks that every piece of content on the web hopes to achieve. Retaining quality and still being read after 5 years of being published might sound like a fever dream, but it is more than possible. This type of content is what is referred to as evergreen content. There are two distinctions in what evergreen content is, and they are as follows:
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Evergreen topics
As the name suggests, these are the topics that will most likely never run out of interest. They can be defined as non-seasonal topics, which do not rely on certain time periods or occasions to be relevant.
For instance, local elections are seasonal. They might happen on a regular basis, but they only gain traction before or while they happen. But a non-seasonal topic that retains its value throughout the year can be termed as an evergreen topic. Here are a few examples of evergreen topics:
- How to cook rice
- Who is Albert Einstein
- Best breathing exercises
- Tips for taking care of dogs
- Cooking guide for beginners
As you can see from these examples, these topics do not rely upon an event or a time period to be relevant. They will always be searched for by the users.
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Evergreen content
Evergreen content is an amalgamation of a relevant topic, coupled with highly informative content that will never run out of juice. It retains its value all the time and has very little chance of losing regular traffic. The right content strategy with smart choices of topics and keywords can ensure that it continues generating interest with time, and users will always visit or revisit it even after months or years.
Let us take an example. For a digital marketing company like Infidigit, evergreen content would be something like “building a content strategy”. While the topic might seem time-sensitive as new updates and changes in the SEO world are not uncommon, the content can always be updated and kept fresh to maintain its relevance.
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Unlock higher rankings, quality traffic, and increased conversions through tailored award-winning SEO strategies.
Why Is Evergreen Content Important in SEO?
When India won the World Cup in 2011, news websites ran multiple articles to cover this giant victory. The traffic generated for this coverage was huge for these websites, but it only lasted for a couple of months. This resulted in the amount of traffic on these articles diminishing majorly after a few months.
Every time a website publishes content on a trending topic, it sees an initial burst of traffic, which is also termed “spike of hope” by many content creators. However, as time goes on, the interest in the topic starts decreasing, and so does the traffic.
This is why websites always have to keep publishing new content to ensure that the traffic keeps coming organically, even if it is for different reasons.
This is precisely the reason why evergreen content ideas must be a part of your strategy. Targeting the search intent of the users in the long term is always a good idea. Creating content around evergreen topics can help you accomplish two things –
- Less Work – You do not have to continuously create new content as the traffic on the previous one starts decreasing. You don’t even have to update your content often, which means you save a lot of time that can be devoted to other activities.
- Regular Traffic – Evergreen content will always bring organic traffic to your website. Google ranks the results based on their relevance and how up-to-date they are. Since you chose an evergreen topic, you do not have to worry about being up-to-date, and the organic traffic to your articles will keep flowing in even after years!
Common Evergreen Formats
There are many types of formats one can use to create evergreen content. Here are the ones that usually are the most effective formats:
- Tips
- Guides, “How to” topics, or Tutorials
- Listicles
- Product Reviews
- Informational Videos
Using these formats does not guarantee that your content will become evergreen, but they are the most common formats that turn into evergreen content.
Evergreen Content Ideas
There really is no end to evergreen content ideas. Given that you would focus on your domain, you can easily scroll around the web to find ideas that can help you produce evergreen content. For instance, here are a few domains where you can get a multitude of evergreen content ideas:
- Food and Cooking
- Finance and Saving Money
- Love and Romance
- Pet Care
- Healthcare
- Parenting
- Travel Hacks
- Jobs and Careers in your domain
- Self Care
- Mental Health
Focus on your domain or industry and explore various areas where you can find evergreen content ideas. For example, if you are a business that sells stationery items, some good evergreen topics can be “how to organize your desk” or “different types of pens and when to use them”.
Evergreen Content Examples
Now that we have looked at what wider domains you can find evergreen content ideas from, here are a few specific examples of some:
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- 10 Ways to Cook Chicken – Chicken will always be an item that is cooked across the globe. So it is a good evergreen topic to have a simple guide on the various ways one can cook chicken at home
- Best Parenting Tips for New Parents – New parents will always be on the lookout to find ways to make their child’s life better. This is a great example of an evergreen topic that will never run out of searches.
- What to Look for Before Renting a House? – There will always be people who shift to new cities and are on the lookout to find a house to rent. This evergreen topic can help them in finding the perfect fit for their requirements.
Evergreen Websites
There are many websites that produce evergreen content on a regular basis and are often the go-to options for people looking to get educated. Here are the best evergreen websites:
- Wikipedia
- About.com
- IMDB
All of these websites rank on the first page most of the time whenever a relevant search query is searched by the users. You can surf through these websites to find content ideas too!
8 Tips for Writing Evergreen Content
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Do Keyword Research
Keyword research is crucial to ensure that your article ranks under the topic you have chosen. While informative and relevant content is an absolute necessity, using keywords relevant to the topic organically in the article will help your article rank high on SERPs.
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Analyze Google Trends
Checking if your chosen topic is trending, or looking for its trending chart can be crucial in determining if it is an evergreen topic. Google Trends is a tool that can help you find how well your topic’s performance has been in terms of searches and trends over time.
The charts on Google Trends can help you determine if the topic is seasonal, or if it has a consistent search trajectory. For instance, “Diwali gifts” is obviously a seasonal topic and it will show up on the charts on the tool. However, you will see a more consistent line in a topic like “resume templates”.
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Check for Search Intent
The goal of users who search a certain term can be defined as search intent. It is crucial that you analyze the search intent of the users to determine whether your content has the potential to become evergreen or not.
If it is unclear what the search intent for a keyword or a topic is, or if it is something that can change over time, chances are the topic will not be evergreen. To assess this, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to check the ranking history of the targeted keywords. If you see that it has a non-seamless trajectory, then the content might not have a good chance of becoming evergreen since it has a volatile search intent.
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Write Content for Beginners
Evergreen content should be accessible to all types of demographics. A layman reader should be as engrossed in the content as an industry professional would. Hence, it is crucial that you make the content as easy to understand as possible. Taking the approach of creating content for a beginner is a great way to accomplish this.
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Avoid using Technical Language or jargon
Carrying on from the last point, to make the content simple, you must ensure that it is easy to understand. Using too much technical language can prove to be a barrier in achieving this, and so is using industrial jargon. A beginner or a layman reader will not understand those terms, and will most likely not like their usage in the content.
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Don’t Write for Broad Topics
If you choose a broad topic, it will likely be very long and have too much information loaded in it. This will increase the chances of the readers losing interest.
Instead, try to be more specific while choosing a topic to ensure that the user gets the most out of reading it. For instance, a simple and specific topic like “A beginner’s guide to Facebook Advertising” will have a bigger potential to become evergreen content than a broad topic like “All types of Advertising”.
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Increase your Internal Linking opportunities
Carrying on the last example, a topic like “Beginners Guide to Facebook Advertising” has a great potential to add internal links to articles that are more specific. For instance, you could have a detailed short article on “Facebook Image Ads” which can be internally linked for the convenience of the reader in your pillar post. Internal linking practice is also very good for SEO and can help your content rank high.
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Repurpose Your Content
Evergreen content is not exempt from aging or slowing down after some time. It is imperative that you keep a list of all your evergreen content, and revisit it to see if there is any scope for improvement or updates.
You can even repurpose your content by chucking the old one and creating a new piece. If you do this, remember to use the same URL as the old piece, so that you can have a head start in attaining good rankings.
Benefits of evergreen content in SEO
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Boosts Traffic and Leads
Evergreen content is a great long-term source of generating regular organic traffic on your website. Since the content is already searched for all the time on the internet, you will never run out of organic clicks on your content. This is a great way of not only bringing in a diverse range of audiences to your website but also enticing them to explore your website even more.
Since there is regular organic traffic on your evergreen articles, you can make the most out of it by making the page more interactive and presenting the readers with options to explore further. One way to do this is by incorporating internal links in your content that can take the readers to other content on your website that provides them more details about a certain term or topic.
Another way is to have the most relevant menu items on your website presented on the sidebar of the page for easy access. This can include short but impactful CTAs. If a reader finds your content useful and wants to explore more of what you have done, you should make it easy for them to access other resources on your website from that page itself.
Doing this will ultimately help you convert users into leads, which is one of the greatest benefits of evergreen content. The organic leads coming to your website with the most potential to convert are the ones who are either impressed by your content, or the ones who get strong recommendations from their trusted ones. You can easily caption the former audience with evergreen content.
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Easier to Sustain
As pointed previously, evergreen content does not require constant updates or much attention. It is the most easily sustainable type of content for any website in the long run. All you need to do is ensure that the page is SEO-healthy, and that is most of the work.
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Needs less output
Producing time-sensitive content is an approach that is usually the main hassle for websites for their content strategies. Creating content at a regular pace is imperative to grow traffic to your website based on the trends and news cycles. Evergreen content does not require this effort, as it is mostly self-sustaining and keeps bringing in traffic regularly.
Maintain your Evergreen Content’s Status
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Monitor your traffic & track rankings
Keep a close eye on the traffic and rankings of your pages with evergreen content. This will help you make decisions on adding or replacing keywords based on the trends so that you can achieve higher rankings on SERPs.
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Don’t miss out on refreshing your content
Don’t be lazy after posting evergreen content. While it’s self-sustaining to an extent, it is important to keep it fresh and updated. Make sure all the statistics, figures, and technical details in the content are up-to-date; and swoop in for edits when they need to be updated.
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Build Backlinks
Backlinks send a positive signal to search engine algorithms about the quality and authority of your content. Create a solid link-building strategy, and try to obtain backlinks for your pages with evergreen content to attain higher rankings.
Evergreen Content – Worth The Investment and Efforts
Evergreen content can prove to be a very valuable asset for businesses, and generate great results in the long run. While it is a difficult element to put into practice, it also is worth the effort. Having the assistance of a professional SEO partner like Infidigit can prove to be of great help here. With proficiency in compiling the best evergreen topics in any domain and also SEO professionals who can take your rankings to a whole new level, Infidigit can help you in creating the best content strategy for your website. Contact us today to learn more.
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