Struggling to keep up with the grueling content creation process, a savvy online business owner turns to Evergreen Content Marketing in an effort to build trust and authority with their audience, while freeing up time to actually live their life.

“Evergreen content marketing is often confused with content marketing. So we’re going to talk about the difference between the two of them. While content marketing focuses on publishing new content frequently and strategically promoting it via social media platforms, evergreen content marketing focuses on producing quality content that will stand the test of time.”

Here’s what I cover:

1. What is evergreen content marketing–and what are the benefits of using it?
2. How can you identify evergreen content ideas that are going to serve you and your audience?
3. How can you combine evergreen content with good keyword optimization techniques to help your website rank higher on search engines?

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Highlights in this episode:

[00:00:06] We’re going to be talking about evergreen content marketing

[00:02:14] Evergreen content is content that always feels fresh and is always relevant. 

[00:03:42] Freshening up old ideas is important.

[00:04:48] There’s a time and a place for content that has a more limited shelf life. 

[00:05:54] You really need to nail your foundational brandscaping to truly know what content is going to be evergreen for your audience. 

[00:08:15] Make it easy for your audience to navigate through a content bucket by linking.

[00:09:29] How do you know if your content is good enough for your evergreen plan? There are five tests.

[00:12:15] When you combine Evergreen Content with good keyword optimization techniques, it can help your website rank higher on search engines. 

[00:15:32] Brainstorming topics for your evergreen content.

[00:16:11] 7 examples of evergreen content you can include on your site today.

[00:17:57] By following the Sticky content principles, you can write content that is easy to read and keeps readers coming back for more.

Everything You Need to Know About Evergreen Content Marketing

Evergreen content is content that always feels fresh and is always relevant. It doesn’t have a specific shelf life or a deadline to be read. Instead, it has a long-term marketing goal, like raising awareness of your brand values or educating your audience about a topic.

Evergreen content marketing is often confused with content marketing. But while content marketing focuses on publishing new content frequently and strategically promoting it via social media platforms, evergreen content marketing focuses on producing quality content that will stand the test of time. It requires extensive research and strategic planning so that businesses can create content that’s meaningful to their customers and readers.

A Definition: What Is Evergreen Content? 

Evergreen content is content that is relevant and up-to-date for an extended period of time–certainly beyond whatever current news cycle is happening at the moment. It can help you build authority and trust with your readers by consistently providing valuable content and can also be used to consistently attract organic traffic to your website. Evergreen content is important as it can be used and leveraged in content strategies to create value for longer periods of time. And it serves as the foundation of a content-forward business, freeing you from the hamster wheel of constant content creation. By investing in evergreen content, you are able to create meaningful content that will resonate with your audience for years to come.

So why is it called “evergreen”?

The term “evergreen” content is derived from evergreen trees like the massive cedar in my front yard, which remains evergreen all year long–and kindly shades my office through the summer heat. Evergreen content is content that remains relevant long past its publication date and continues to attract readers over time, thus proving beyond seasonal power. It can be described as content that stays fresh or “green” for readers regardless of when it was published.

That said, even the most lasting evergreen sheds needles and grows new ones throughout the years–and you’ll need to do the same for great piece of evergreen content that stands the test of time.

Then, what isn’t evergreen content?

Not all content is evergreen–and that’s okay! There is a time and place for content that has a more limited shelf-life. This type of content, which I like to call “timely content,” provides value at the moment and can be helpful in capitalizing on current trends. However, it won’t continue to drive traffic or engagement months down the line. Timely content includes blog posts about current events, new product announcements, or timely tips. It will often cover trends and events that are short-lived. 

One of the more popular non-evergreen content topics is newsjacking. This involves taking advantage of breaking news to create content that is timely and engaging–and lends well to meme culture, the opposite of evergreen content! Examples of reactive content include blog posts and infographics–and they could become a part of your evergreen strategy as a consulting piece, but on their own will not be relevant long enough.

Content that covers niche topics with a limited lifespan, such as seasonal advice or tips (for example: holiday entertaining tips during the holidays)is also the opposite of evergreen. Seasonal content is especially useful in the short term, but it will quickly become outdated and irrelevant over time.

What Are Some Evergreen Topics?

Evergreen content ideas that revolve around topics that are always relevant to readers, regardless of the current news cycle or season, and focus on creating consistent and high-quality content over long periods is a popular digital marketing strategy for a reason. This can be used to keep readers engaged with a particular topic or issue for years at a time. Examples of this type of content include articles, social media posts, and videos.

How do you identify evergreen content for your business?

Contrary to popular opinion, it is true that to truly know what content is evergreen for your audience, you need to nail the foundational brandscaping of your business first. Great content requires you knowing your people.

There are a few different ways you can identify evergreen ideas that will serve you–and your audience–well.

1. One way is by brainstorming evergreen topics in your niche that are timeless and have a broad reach. Social media marketing, content marketing, and search engine optimization, for example, are broad topics I could talk about. A bookkeeper could create foundational pieces around categorizing expenses, maintaining a consistent system, and knowing your numbers at different times of the year.
2. Another way is by posing questions to your clients or audience about what content they find useful or valuable. This allows you to identify the best content that naturally leads to another topic for your audience’s guided journey of trusting you as an expert in your niche.
3. Any information or perspective shifts your best client needs to make before working with you will always make a good evergreen article for your business.
4. Creating lists of evergreen content on your site can help readers navigate content quickly and easily.
5. Searching popular questions on social media, blogs, or online forums can also provide ideas for creating evergreen content.
6. Utilizing a content measurement dashboard helps you determine what topics are lead-generating. These are topics to evergreen!

Evergreen SEO: Using Trendy Keywords to Build Sustainable Content

Content that is constantly relevant and evergreen is, in additional to building the know, like, and trust factor, also an excellent strategy for SEOs to use:

• When you combine evergreen content with popular keyword optimization techniques, it can help your site rank higher on search engine rankings.
• By writing and publishing evergreen content on your website, you can provide valuable and engaging content that will keep your readers coming back for more.
• You can take several steps to make your evergreen pieces search-friendly, such as implementing keyword optimization on the page and using image alt text.
• You can also create content that is consistent with your target audience’s preferences, values, and interests.
• This will help to attract and retain a loyal audience that remains interested in your content for a long time–and starts linking to you as a resource.
• Evergreen content that’s optimized for SEO will take 3-8 months to reach its full potential.

Use a keyword tool.

When you know what your chosen topics are after brainstorming and ensuring they lead your viewer through a trust-building journey, you can match those topics with keywords your audience is already searching. Evergreen content relies on being niche-specific and covers topics of interest to the target audience; you can use keyword research to verify it’s of interest. 

Search engine optimization company Ahrefs credited evergreen content with growing its own blog from 15,000 visitors a month to about 200,000. However, evergreen content may need to be updated so that it doesn’t become stale or old-fashioned over time.

Don’t bury evergreen content on your blog

Your content marketing strategy should highlight evergreen content on your blog. It is essential to ensure it is seen and accessed by visitors. This is where your evergreen strategy meets your social media calendar. Your editorial calendar weaves both together, ensuring that evergreen content gets attention throughout the year.

There are many ways to ensure the visibility of evergreen content on your blog, including building training guide pages, highlighting blog posts in the sidebar/banner, and re-running top evergreen posts. Re-running popular posts can help showcase work to the largest audience both on social and on your owned sites.

But what type of evergreen content should you post?

Test #1: Evergreen content is always content that doesn’t expire. 

Test #2: Authority-building content, or subject matter expertise, shared in your own voice is the next test. This type of content can help you build your brand and credibility. It provides valuable insight into your expertise. It also helps build trust with your audience and keep them engaged with your content.

Test #3: Can you maximize the topic beyond just the evergreen blog post? Increase the likelihood of success by making sure it offers you the ability to parse out into smaller pieces and repurpose to other platforms. With evergreen content, you’re always providing new insights to your audience, keeping them interested in your work and company.

Test #4: Great evergreen content is important–but it has to be both relevant to your business services and also move your best client along the journey.

Test #5: Is it sticky?

7 Evergreen Content Examples to Try

Traditional examples of evergreen content include:

1. ultimate guides (this appeals to audiences who are searching for specific information on a topic when making a decision)
2. tips or how-to guides
3. detailed reviews of products
4. competitor comparisons are popular for a reason–they do well
5. listicles (list articles) and collections are another type of evergreen content that is popular–this could be an overview of the topic in a concise way
6. resource pages and glossaries– another way to consolidate essential information
7. case studies are content you create to walk the viewer from a before to an after with results that appeal to your best client

Tips for Writing Evergreen Content

To create content that is evergreen in nature, it’s essential to identify topics that matter to your audience and do research on how to present them. This will enable you to put a fresh spin on them by addressing issues in an interesting and engaging manner.

• It’s important to avoid overly technical language and focus on simpler rhetoric instead.
• Narrow down the topic to simple ideas, as this will help you create content that is easy to follow and read.
• You should also compile the best information on the topic and create a list of ideas that is easy to understand.

By following these tips, you can create content that is evergreen in nature and capture the attention of your audience for a long time.

Aim for a balance of sustainability and timelessness.

In order to provide readers with content that is timeless, evergreen content must focus on topics that can be spoken of with relevance years later. That doesn’t mean you write it and forget it–you want to keep your content fresh.

To best achieve this balance, evergreen content should aim for a well-rounded mix of topics and expert perspectives. By crafting evergreen content, you are ensuring that your content remains “green” and helpful to your readers even after its initial wave of popularity has subsided. This ensures that your blog remains relevant and useful even if your audience has moved on to new interests or activities.

How do I make my content catchy?

Good evergreen content is catchy, or sticky, focuses on providing information that is useful, yes, but also memorable over time. Your audience is still thinking about sticky material hours after reading, viewing, or hearing it.

Other ways to ensure the stickiness of your content:

• Include engaging visuals to draw readers in and keep them engaged.
• Write headlines that capture attention and are attractive and appealing to target audiences.
• Be creative and original with your content to make it stand out from the crowd.

By following the “sticky content” principles of quality, relevance, and usefulness, you can write content that is easy to read and keeps readers coming back for more.

Connect evergreen pieces with a pillar page

Does a piece of content exist if nobody can find it? It’s important to ensure it is easily accessible to visitors! You can do this by linking evergreen content you create with a “Start” page, training guides, or a “Top Posts” section of your website. When evergreen content is interlinked, search engines will recognize it as valuable and relevant content and will likely rank it higher in search results.

Evergreen content provides long-term value to your audience as it can help them learn new skills or information years after its creation. Additionally, establishing your brand as a thought leader through evergreen content that ranks on the first page of search results can lead to increased traffic and conversions. In order to generate leads and build backlinks to give your website more credibility, you must consistently post evergreen content on social media platforms and share it via email campaigns and other marketing channels, as talked about above.

Strategies for turning timely content into evergreen content

Creating evergreen content takes time and effort, but there are some strategies you can implement to make it easier. SEO best practices such as keyword research and content writing can help content rank highly on search engines, making it discoverable and sought-after by users.

More importantly, you need to commit to a systemized way to measure your content. You’ll want to track its virality, as that helps you see which topics resonate and share well. But you’ll also want to track which content generates leads for your business. That kind of content will be great in any evergreen plan, whether that’s a months-long email sequence or a reposting plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some benefits of using evergreen content in your course creator business?

As a course creator, evergreen content can prove very beneficial for your business. Evergreen content has a longer shelf-life as compared to other content types, which ultimately results in consistent website traffic over a prolonged period of time.

Creating evergreen content consists of two steps: brainstorming ideas and then creating the content. To create evergreen content, you should look at the questions your audience asks during a launch and work backward to see what they need to know from you to make a good decision.

Besides bringing in traffic, evergreen content also helps build trust with readers by being tied to specific events and promotions. Moreover, using evergreen content will ensure that your audience remains engaged with the content for longer periods of time–a must when you’re nurturing your audience between launches.

What is evergreen content vs trending content?

Evergreen and trending content are two different types of content with different applications and benefits.

Evergreen content is content that never goes “out of style” and is high-impact, foundational, in-depth content with a lifespan of one or two years for many industries. It acts as the backbone of your content strategy because it continues to drive traffic even after a long period of time.

On the other hand, trending content is content that has a high initial search volume that drops fairly quickly. It usually covers topics that are popular at the moment, but does not retain its relevance for long periods of time. This type of content is best suited for short-term marketing campaigns (like launches) and updates on current industry trends.

To choose the right evergreen topics, look at your own site or content measurement dashboard and see what topics retain a high level of traffic over time, then check out leading blogs in your niche. You can also use Google Trends to validate whether a keyword has sustained search interest year-on-year. This way, you’ll be able to figure out what types of evergreen content will be most effective for your blog or website.

How can I find out which type of content is right for me?

Finding out which style of content is right for you can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. To determine the type of content that best resonates with your target audience, you should consider their interests and needs first.

Ask yourself: What topics are they most likely interested in? This will help guide your content strategy in the right direction. Analyzing what others in your niche are producing will give you an idea of what type of content might be worth exploring.

Once you’ve established some ideas for content types, experiment with them to see which ones work best for you. Try publishing blog posts, creating videos, or even releasing podcasts. Monitor each piece of content’s performance and track important KPIs such as engagement rate, conversion rate, and traffic to determine which content types resonate best with your audience.

How do I know if my article is good enough for evergreen in the first place?

1. Though it’s not the only test, Google evaluates content for its Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) score. This score determines if a page is of sufficient quality for evergreen content pieces.
2. Second, it is crucial to position yourself as an authority in the field you’re writing about. Show that you have a good understanding of the topic and highlight your credentials and qualifications when necessary.
3. Third, create content that is high-quality and timeless. This means content that is relevant, well-researched, and properly formatted. Additionally, content must be original and not plagiarized (harder and harder to prove in today’s AI-driven world) and should provide valuable insights into the topic at hand.
4. Fourth, find ways to repurpose content to maximize resources. For example, by breaking down blog posts into social media posts or transforming good evergreen content into various multimedia forms like podcasts or videos, proves a topic’s evergreen power.
5. Finally, ensure content is memorable and engaging so readers can easily recall information they gain from it–that’s the content’s stickiness. Focus on providing entertaining value with examples, case studies, personal anecdotes that help bring content to life and keep it relational.

Conclusion

So, there you have it! If you’re looking to create timeless marketing materials that drive brand recognition and boost your blog traffic, these tips will help you give your readers engaging, long-lasting blog posts. To learn more about how to create a great evergreen content strategy, get in touch with me for a content audit today.

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Music by Michael De La Torre. Thanks, Mikey!