Content Strategy Tips: Evergreen Content

If you’ve spent any time in digital marketing you’ve probably already heard of the term “evergreen content” and have been told to create it.  The problem is, what is evergreen content?  And who would write in green? 

What is Evergreen Content? 

Evergreen content is content that is continually relevant and always fresh for readers.  It is called evergreen because of the evergreen tree and how it always has its leaves (those annoying pine needles that sometimes hurt when you step on them barefoot).  Evergreen content commonly includes:

Lists

Top Tips

Instructional “How To” Tutorials

Encyclopedia-esque Entries

Product Reviews

Educational

This content can be in the form of a blog post, video, image, etc.  I’m sure there are other types of evergreen content, but these pieces tend to work well.  However, evergreen content is not commonly:

News articles

Statistics or numerical reports that changes when data becomes outdated

Seasonal or Timely content

Content about trends in fashion or pop culture

Tips for Writing Evergreen Content

Write for your audience, and write for the beginners

Why write for the beginners?  The beginners are the users who are online searching for more information about a topic that they don’t know about.  Introduce the topic and provide definitions of principal terms then lead the user into the more complex information.  Remember that writing evergreen content has a long-term benefit and can continue to provide a great return months, and sometimes years, after its publish date.  Some users will land on it, read it, leave, and may not purchase or contact you, but they will know your brand and possibly come back at a future date for more content or for a service/product your business sells. 

Pro Tip: Target these audiences with a call-to-action to join a newsletter or download a whitepaper behind a contact form to continue marketing to them and nurture them until they need your product or service. 

Keep your topics focused

When writing a piece of content, only write about one topic.  If you mention how it relates to another topic, add a link to that article and avoid elaborating too much on the current post.  Linking to it provides the reader with another source to learn from and allows them to visit more pages on your site and builds trust in your brand.  This also helps with ranking for keywords. 

Revisit your posts

Just like an evergreen tree needs water to stay fresh, your content needs updating to stay fresh.  Review your content once a quarter or year to ensure that it is up-to-date and still relevant, make any changes to the post and include a “last updated on DD/MM/YYYY” at the top so the user knows that the piece is up-to-date even if it was published two years ago. 

Should I Always Create Evergreen Content? 

Frequently?  Yes.  Always?  No. 

There are times where you may want to write a timepiece.  For example, a piece title “Digital Trends for 2017” would be great to write at the end of 2016 or beginning of 2017 because it may be a topic a lot of people are interested in during that time and could help your brand reach a new audience. 

How Does Evergreen Content and SEO Work Together? 

One might argue that SEO has become evergreen content.  In today’s digital marketing world, it is all about creating content and your business almost has to have a publishing company on staff or on hand. 

With that being said, they are different.  SEO is more about being technically in-tune with how search engines crawl and evaluate your content while writing evergreen content is just creating content.  So, when creating your content, be sure to keep SEO in mind by writing content that targets the keywords you want to rank for.  Include the keyword on the page a couple of times (not too many though) and make sure it is found in important areas on your page like the title tag, URL, alt tags, and H1 (header 1).  All while keeping your audience in mind.