The trick that helps companies build incredible search visibility, one that… stands the test of time and drives them insane traffic month after month of month? It’s writing evergreen content. And here’s everything you need to know to use it in your strategy too. The most successful companies use timeless content.
Avoid including any time-bound information
If you’re creating evergreen content, make it evergreen. Full stop.
- Don’t add the date to the headline. This could trick the user to read your article and make the advice relevant to a specific year.
How to find the best topics for evergreen content
Stay away from topics that are cool, hip, or trendy right now.
- Target information your target audience is continuously interested in
- Conduct keyword research to find out what they are interested in, then create content around that information
Interlink the page with any new relevant content you publish
To remain relevant, the page should interlink to your new content that’s relevant to the topic.
- Create content hubs to create the so-called content hubs
- Every time you publish a page on topics similar to what you cover in the evergreen content, go back and add internal links to that new content there.
Keep building links to the page
Links are still a crucial ranking factor
Brainstorm general topics that fit your SEO content strategy
These topics can be anything from descriptions of your audience’s different areas of interest to specific topics related to your business.
Evaluate the competition and the search intent per keyword before writing
Evergreen topics are often highly competitive
- To stand a chance at ranking there, you must know why people search for this information
- Understanding the intent behind their search will help you plan content to deliver on their expectations
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is content that targets topics that typically retain consistent interest over time.
- It focuses on timeless advice rather than specific or timely information, delivering information almost everyone in your audience would care about at some point.
- It religiously matches the user intent, delivering broad but generic information about the topic
What’s left is to find evergreen topics and create pages to build a timeless presence in the SERPs
Pawel Grabowski is an SEO and content marketing consultant for SaaS. He helps clients get their businesses found online, boost rankings, attract more visitors, and acquire leads with SEO-driven content marketing.
What content types work as evergreen
Various tutorials and how-tos
- Educational tips and advice
- Listicles
- Report findings
- Current news reports
- Discussions and opinionated articles
- Evergreen topics target common problems that people experience over and over again
Do not split your content into separate sections
If you want to create evergreen content, make it a single page. This way, you’ll get all its benefits and the organic reach you need for the topic.
- Create multi-page guides, but use a table of contents instead.
How to Retain Your Content’s Evergreen Status
4 Rules to Help Keep Your Content Ranking and Driving Traffic and Leads
Cover the topic in full
Write as if you were helping beginners
- Provide value even to people at the beginning of their journey into its discovery
- Expand the topic’s coverage and ensure that the page ranks for as many relevant keywords as possible
- Utilize the so-called 10x Content Strategy
Evaluate results using the evergreen topics criteria
Focus on keywords with relatively high search volume and consistent trends over time.
- Look for phrases that relate to common problems, challenges, or information that users would be continually searching for. e.g. Halloween crafts is not evergreen because it is only relevant during a short period of time throughout the year.
Review and update the content regularly
Since you’re targeting more general topics, you can write the content and leave it like that
- There’s no need for updating it, right? Wrong. To keep your content evergreen, you must review it regularly and expand or update with any new information regarding the topic
Add interactive elements, if there aren’t any
Videos, charts, graphs, interactive graphics or maps
The most common evergreen content types
Not every content type will work for creating timeless pieces of content.
- Some of them, like news reports, are time-bound by default
- Others, like technical articles, focus on topics that, with some minor exceptions, will not work as evergreen ones.
