Every single blog needs evergreen content

There are different types of content that you can publish on a blog but evergreen content is what always stands out. Unfortunately, it is also the one type that I often see overlooked.

When I talk to people, there are some reasons that keep getting mentioned in regards to why evergreen content is not published. These are:

• People do not know what evergreen content is.
• People think that news and hot topics in the industry are more important.
• People don’t know how to create great evergreen content so they simply do not create it.

Obviously, it is so much easier to write about industry news and something that just happened. It is faster and you do not need to do much research. The problem is that when you do this, you miss out on one of the most important parts of blogging, which is developing content that will always be relevant for the audience.

So What Is Evergreen Content?

To put it as simple as possible, evergreen content on a blog or a site is simply content that is useful for a really long period of time, preferably forever or at least a number of years.

Usually, evergreen content has these characteristics:

• Timeless Content – Evergreen content is relevant for a long period of time, with just minor tweaks being sometimes needed.
• High Quality Valuable Content – If you want to actually benefit from evergreen content, it needs to be as high quality as possible and very valuable. You practically want the content to be noticed. If the article you write falls into the evergreen content category but its content is not really valuable, it will not be as beneficial for the blog as it could be.
• Canonical – The evergreen blog post is practically the most important article on the covered topic on the entire site. It is always detailed and offers in-depth information. This also means that it takes a lot longer to create the quality blog post than with most of the other articles.

Creating evergreen content is very simple in some industries but it can be very complicated in some specific niches because things can change really fast. However, what needs to be remembered is that evergreen content should at least last one or two years in terms of validity.

Why Do You Need Evergreen Content?

It is completely normal not to understand why evergreen content is so important. What has to be remembered is that it is valuable, but why is that? The main benefits associated with evergreen content are the following:

• Higher search engine rankings

Because the content is timeless and high-quality, it tends to rank really well in the search engines. Sure, this does not immediately happen and it does take some work. However, evergreen content always has the highest possibility of ranking really high since Google wants to showcase high quality articles.

• Higher traffic

As the article ranks higher, more traffic appears. Basically, you get a continuous, steady traffic amount into your website/blog.

• Continuously generating leads

Due to the continuous traffic generated, the evergreen articles can easily be optimized to generate leads. As the content remains in search engines at higher positions for longer, leads are continuously generated.

Simply put, evergreen content is really valuable because it works for you for a really long time after you publish it. The blog that does have it has a clear advantage. When you just focus on news and what happens right now in your industry, the content you have is relevant for your audience just for a limited period of time.

Evergreen content is different. It keeps generating traffic and even leads.

Evergreen Content Maintenance

Usually, topics do not change as time passes. This is why you choose them in the first place and is an indicator or something that has evergreen potential. However, this does not mean that maintenance will not be needed over time.

Every 6 months, audit the evergreen content you created. See if it is still relevant and if you can improve it. Since it keeps generating leads and traffic, you have to be sure that it is fresh.

You do not need to do much but you should at least do the following:

• Identify Evergreen Content

Obviously, you need to look at Google Analytics (you have it installed, right?) and sort articles based on top views. You can thus easily label your top-performing evergreen content. It is also possible to analyze keyword metrics to see what the blog posts rank high for.

• Update The Content

This should be pretty straightforward. You want to see what you can add to the article based on changes that might have happened. Also, if things changed, they have to be reflected in the blog post.

The really important thing to remember is that you want to update the post that already exists. You do not want to write a new blog post. This is what leverages SEO benefits.

• If You Have CTAs

Call to actions are very important and you want to be sure that they are as high-performing as they could be. There are many cases in which your CTAs might end up looking bad due to site design changes or might be improved with some extra incentives like a new ebook.

• Double Check SEO Optimization

When you create a lot of content, as it so often happens with many blogs, it is normal to overlook many parts of on-page SEO. You naturally do this since SEO optimization does take really careful consideration and a lot of time. Getting lazy from time to time is completely normal.

On the other hand, if you identified some evergreen content on your site and you have good rankings for it, you want to double check everything related to on-page SEO for that blog post, from image ALT tags to META descriptions. Just in case.

Leverage Evergreen Content

Simply creating evergreen content is obviously just a part of the equation. You also need to do all that you can to maximize all the benefits you get from the articles you created.

There are countless ways to do this but there are 2 that always work:

• Linking to articles in other articles

The evergreen content is timeless and is most likely your very best content. This is why it is a really good idea to link to that content from the new content you create. You thus increase traffic and take advantage of internal linking.

• Promoting articles through social media

Your social media promotion can benefit a lot from evergreen content. Since the quality of the post is high, better results can appear when it is shared online.

Final Thoughts

Not all the content that you publish on the blog will be evergreen content. This is quite obvious. It is always a good idea to have a mix of timely or newsworthy content and evergreen content. The best thing you can do for a blog is to create both types of content. However, if you do not have enough time available, focus on evergreen content!