Creating evergreen content can be an incredibly important part of building a website.

While it is easy to create one-off content to push for a certain promotional angle or boost your SEO, evergreen content ideas stick around in the long term.

Typical web content will eventually become obsolete, either because it is no longer relevant or because it simply is not pulling in traffic like it used to.

No matter how long you spend carefully crafting an article, there is always a chance that it will lose steam after a few weeks of success.

Creating evergreen content, while difficult, is the goal of most content specialists.

Having content on your site that retains value and relevance in the long term can be invaluable for driving more traffic to that platform – but to do that, you need to understand what evergreen content is.

What is Evergreen Content Supposed to Be?

Named after evergreen trees (trees that keep their leaves for multiple seasons), evergreen content is any kind of up-to-date content that is designed to extract as much attention as possible from an audience.

As up-to-date and relevant content, the point of evergreen articles is to sit there and passively generate traction over a longer period of time.

Evergreen content is content that has been optimized for search marketing, with the goal of making it relevant and fresh for a long period of time.

For example, evergreen articles may have been specifically written and edited to provide value about a particular topic long after its publication date.

This tends to include forms of content that have some active value to the people reading them, either for informative purposes or as a source of entertainment.

For example, list articles (listicles), tutorials, and product reviews are very easy to make evergreen. While not all tutorials are evergreen content, the nature of a tutorial means that it is more likely to see relevancy for a long period of time.

Common Examples of Evergreen Content

Some of the most notable examples of evergreen content include things like reviews, tutorials, and lists. Anything that could be relevant long past its original publication date can become evergreen, but it is not a guarantee.

For example, a “how-to” article might see some lingering popularity since how-to guides are useful until they become too outdated to be relevant.

This can make how-to posts a form of evergreen content, although this is not always the case. A typical evergreen post will be something that users keep coming back to, and tutorials like this can be a great example.

Longevity is the most important factor here. Evergreen writing needs to be relevant and worth reading in the long term, and that means that evergreen pieces often focus on subjects that are going to remain important for a while.

The Benefits of Evergreen Articles

Evergreen content offers a range of useful benefits to any business that creates it. While the actual value of this content will change depending on your business goals, the core benefits should not be overlooked, especially in the context of a content marketing strategy.

While it is obvious that evergreen content sees a lot of success and value over a long period of time, not many business owners initially understand why this is important. If you have not been producing evergreen content ideas, then here are some reasons to start.

SEO Benefits

Evergreen content provides some core benefits for search engine optimization. Not only does this content tend to get more traffic, but it will also be more likely to get links from other sites that want to use it as a reference or source.

Incoming links naturally boost your SEO, especially if they are from major websites, which can turn this kind of content into quite an effective source of new links for your site.

Even beyond that, a successful page tends to perform better in SEO. Keeping your content relevant and accessible often means boosting the SEO anyway, which will have a positive impact on your site as a whole.

Getting higher in search rankings is important for content marketing as a whole, and if you want to rank high, then evergreen content is a very good way to approach that issue.

Traffic

As you might expect, evergreen blog posts tend to draw in quite a lot of traffic. Since they are meant to retain relevancy for a lot longer than other content types, this traffic flow will also continue for much longer, meaning that you will always be getting more visitors.

This can be important since it allows you to direct more users to your site, both within and outside of your target audience. A higher volume of traffic can usually mean more conversions overall and increases brand awareness dramatically.

If you focus on relevancy within a particular niche, then it is easy to get a lot of relevant traffic directed to your site. This tends to mean more interested users, leading to a much higher chance of conversions with each new wave of visitors.

Building Relationships

While it is easy to overlook the idea of a relationship between a site and its users, building a relationship with your customers can be a difficult but worthwhile goal. Using evergreen content can actually make this easier for a few core reasons.

The most notable benefit is that this content sticks around for a long time. Certain kinds of content, such as tutorials or informational breakdowns, might even become a major part of how a person learns a hobby or refreshes their memory on how an important task is supposed to work.

This can build up a reliance on the information that your site is providing them, helping you develop a simple relationship with them as they visit your site more and more.

If your site continues to provide useful information to them, then this relationship may blossom into them becoming actual fans of your site. This can also massively increase the chance of conversions or them recommending your site and services to other people they know.

Increased Value

While making your website more valuable to users does not change much for you directly, it can still make a big difference. Greater value usually means that your site will be mentioned more often, spread around faster, and recommended in niche spaces.

A website that offers value to people within a certain audience has a good chance of becoming a popular option in that same audience.

Even if it is just because your tutorial articles are recommended often, this still means more visitors and a wider range of influence over that community.

Backlinks

Having evergreen content on your site can often lead to your site getting linked to by other platforms far more often. These backlinks can hold a lot of value for SEO, as mentioned above, meaning that it is easy to “snowball” your site’s search rankings larger and larger.

Having good long-lasting content gathers more links, which ranks your site higher. From there, your content becomes more visible, which allows more users to discover your evergreen content.

If handled correctly, evergreen content can be used as a way to slowly build up a solid backlink profile through content marketing. This means more value, better SEO, and increased organic traffic on any relevant pages.

Greater Relevancy

While no content has a perpetual life, most types of evergreen content will last for quite a while. If you choose the right subjects to turn into evergreen posts, you can retain your relevancy within a particular community or niche for quite a long time.

Writing evergreen content relies heavily on using relevant information to your advantage. If you are sticking to well-researched and properly-checked information, and conveying it in a way that your audience likes, then you can stay relevant to their interests for a long time.

Relevancy spreads brand awareness alongside greater overall SEO success, meaning that it can be a good idea to chase relevancy if you want your business or site to remain well-known.

Brand Loyalty

If you can get customers to continually return to your site for the posts that you create, then you might be able to instill some brand loyalty in them. This customer loyalty can ensure that they always think about your business first if they ever need one of your services.

For example, a home improvement supplies business may create content about home improvement options. This can make them a major source of information for home improvement while also associating their brand with that niche as well.

This does not just keep traffic coming back but also provides them with a connection to your products and services. This might increase the chance of them converting in the future, meaning that you can secure more business from your audience without doing much extra work.

Authority

Regardless of the kinds of content you are creating; there is no denying that having a stronger presence online can really help a brand.

If you create evergreen content regularly enough, you can establish yourself as an authority in that particular market or niche, giving you more power and reach overall.

For example, if you produce content that remains relevant to that audience while also being genuinely good and useful content, then you might end up being treated as a reliable source for information like that.

This not only directs more traffic to your site but also means that you have more sway in that market. If done correctly, you can leverage your own content’s value to nudge users towards your products and services or even take business away from competitors.

The Basics of Creating Evergreen Content

The process of creating evergreen content can be overwhelming at first since there are not really any sure-fire ways of approaching evergreen marketing. Evergreen material will not just appear in your hands, ready to use – you need to craft those evergreen posts yourself.

This can be incredibly difficult at first since creating your own evergreen content requires an understanding of which articles would actually work as evergreen articles.

To get the proper results you want, you need to pay attention to the markets you are targeting and the content that they are most likely to care about.

Research

Having examples of evergreen content is not enough – you need to do your own research to figure out a content strategy that is likely to work.

Primary research should concern things like Google trends, topical articles in your particular niche, and the right keywords for each target audience you are aiming for.

It can also help to look into other successful evergreen posts to get an idea of what audiences are looking for. That way, you can create relevant content in the right style and tone for that audience.

Trending content comes from a combination of quality, relevancy, and suitability to a given audience. If you want to create evergreen content of your own, then you need to understand what your audience wants and how you can capture their interest in the long term.

Uniqueness

If you want to capture audience interest, then it helps to produce content that offers something unique or otherwise hard to find. For example, a how-to article on a specific product might be one of the only articles of its type, so users will flock to it.

While you can succeed by putting content in a highly competitive content niche, you also need to know that you are offering something useful. If multiple articles are available, most users will go for the one highest up the search results.

Remember that uniqueness does not mean never-before-seen information. Instead, it might be something like a FAQ section that answers some important questions visitors might have or condensed how-to guides that can resolve a problem in only a few paragraphs.

High Points

“High Points” are the idea of adding something that sticks out and gives your evergreen content a reason for users to share it around, recommend it, or refer back to it more often.

This will obviously change based on the nature of the content itself. An article that is meant to entertain is going to have very different high points from one that provides information on how to use a particular product, but it is still important to consider.

Long-lasting evergreen posts usually have particular segments that give them their value, whether that is a brief tutorial or a particular set of information that users keep referring back to. When writing evergreen content, you need to think about which parts the users will be most engaged with.

Creating Quality Evergreen Content

While the basics above are useful, they are also probably quite obvious when you think about the kind of content that you would need to create. However, producing good-quality evergreen content is about more than just these simple ideas.

There are a lot of factors that go into any content marketing strategy, and sometimes you need to get very granular with what you are doing.

While it can be daunting to try and produce this content from scratch, a lot of it comes down to common sense and thinking about what your audience would actually want.

The important thing is to consider the kind of content you want to create, the way that the content will be made evergreen, and the general details that influence how long it will stay relevant. With evergreen marketing material, there can be a lot of factors to keep track of.

Types of Evergreen Content

Some of the common examples of evergreen content ideas up above are common for a reason – they work very well for long-term content.

In general, you are usually going to fall into a specific set of ideas when creating this kind of evergreen content. You cannot force a piece of content to turn evergreen and become a long-standing source of traffic, but some content types are much more likely to do so.

Lists

Lists are an incredibly versatile way to build some content that lasts a long time in your audience’s consciousness. Not only that, but lists tend to draw in quite a lot of attention, especially if they focus on exactly what the user is looking for.

This all depends on the kind of list that you create, though. A blog post like “Top 10 Gutter Cleaning Tools” is specific but also gives you a direct link to a niche audience and a place to promote whatever products you want (ideally those you sell).

On the other hand, there are the clickbait lists. While these might get a lot of traffic, they often do not retain it very well. These are lists that do not really provide any value or information and instead try to get the maximum amount of clicks possible.

When creating a blog post list, make sure that you include information and details that make the post worth reading. This is a way to increase the chances of your content getting noticed.

Guides

Guides are a great way to create something evergreen. Not only does guide content draw in a lot of attention from people who might need your expertise, but it also remains relevant as long as the related product/service/technique exists.

This can allow you to quickly and easily gain attention and remain relevant simply by posting guides and how-tos online. Even a basic how-to article, as long as it is factually correct and well-written, can draw in traffic for multiple years.

Creating a guide that stands out – such as blog posts full of images or video demonstrations or something – can help you elevate those articles above others. Of course, this all depends on the context of what you are creating a guide for, so use your own judgment.

Informational Articles

An article that combines a lot of relevant information into a single place can also become a great choice of evergreen content. Rather than making an ultimate guide to something, you can instead pull together facts and statistics into a single space.

While this might not be as immediately successful as other options, it is still something that could be continually relevant. For example, a US construction company might have blog post articles about contraction laws across each US state.

Having all of this information pulled together – and, ideally, properly fact-checked – can really make a difference. This is something you see often with news articles: statistics make the article stay relevant long after it has been published.

Not only can this gain you more links than other options, but it might also lead to some major advantages in gaining interested traffic. If you write the article well, you might be able to nudge visitors into looking over your services or products.

Reviews

While it might sometimes be a bit odd for a business to review another business’ products, there are ways that you can get around this. If you want to create review content, it is important to not have it reflect on your business as a spiteful act.

For example, a construction company might review particular material types in certain contexts, and a cooking-focused site might review pre-packaged meals by major chains.

What matters here is creating content that is relevant and is a clear, genuine review of that particular thing. If you do this well, you can bring customers to your site and promote your own products at the end of the review, potentially securing more conversions.

This can be a difficult type of content to pull off, but reviews of something well-known are almost always guaranteed to bring more traffic in. Many reviews are considered evergreen articles simply because they are still relevant even months after being posted.

Other Posts

Almost any kind of content can become evergreen content under the right circumstances, so you always have the option of experimenting.

Some sites will try using video content, while others might delve into making daily blog posts about something that is happening in that particular month. Anything with long relevancy potential could be turned into an evergreen article.

While some of the suggestions up above are the common examples you will see, there is not a single “best” content marketing strategy, and that applies to evergreen content as well. Some will be easier to manage than others, but any post could turn evergreen in the right context.

Topics and Keywords

Choosing the right topics and keywords for your evergreen content is important. Like any kind of marketing, you need to draw in an audience by appealing to their interests and goals.

This can seem tough at first, but if you have been doing any other kind of marketing, you most likely have a good idea of what they want. Using existing information about your audiences’ habits can be a great way to target them with evergreen articles.

Longevity

Ideally, you want to write an excellent post or article about something that is going to remain popular and relevant in the long term. This could be a particular subject, a process, or even a guide for using one specific piece of equipment.

The longer an article is going to be relevant and wanted, the more likely it is to generate additional traffic and attention. A beginner’s guide for a popular product can see constant search traffic until that product is no longer sold, for example.

Business Relevancy

Make sure that you are choosing topics that are relevant to your business, too. While irrelevant evergreen content will draw in traffic, it will not be for the right reasons, so they may read your blog posts without actually looking into the rest of your site.

Blog posts and articles that are connected to your services and products are much more likely to generate conversions. They also open up more opportunities to advertise whatever you are selling in a natural way.

Unless you have absolutely no other option, it is a good idea to slow down and look through topics that connect to your business. That way, you can get a good idea of what might be worth targeting with your new content.

Audience Relevancy

Make sure you are hitting the right audiences with the right content, too. Your business will have specific audiences that you target, and you want evergreen content that is also targeted at those niches.

Make sure that you are creating content that your audience will actually care about and want to engage with. If the target markets for your content do not match that of your site, there may not be much overlap, so users will not be as willing to convert on your site.

Be Date-Agnostic

Mentioning dates and years can be good for getting attention during that period, but it is important to either update content regularly or remove the date after a while.

Evergreen content, like an evergreen tree, will always be desirable. However, adding a date is like decorating a tree with Christmas ornaments – it is the same basic thing but targeted at one particular time.

Providing up-to-date information and keeping no obvious hints of the article’s age can really help since users will not be concerned that they are reading an article that was published two months ago.

Offer Resources

Offer something worthwhile. Most common evergreen formats are set up to allow for search-optimized content, but you also want to be producing content that has some kind of practical benefit behind it.

While it is important to avoid overly technical language or confusing masses of data that your audience will not understand, you want to create something that has value.

The more value your evergreen content holds, the more people will engage with it. This also increases the chance of it being shared around social media channels or linked to by other sites.

All common types of evergreen content can be used as a way of creating a page full of data and resources. From there, you can sit back and allow users to rely on your information.

Fads vs Niches

Do not get roped into short-lived trends. Writing long articles of meant-to-be-evergreen content that becomes irrelevant after a month can be painful and will not have nearly the amount of success that you expected.

While it can be hard to identify a fad from a sudden upswing in popularity, remember that your evergreen content should be relevant for as long as possible. Hyper-focusing on specific products that may soon be irrelevant is a bad idea unless you know they will remain popular.

Short-term fads and sudden pop culture shifts are best used for things like social media marketing, where immediate popularity is more important. The evergreen gold standard for content is something that would not lose popularity for at least a few years.

Tools and Techniques

There are a lot of different ways to approach creating evergreen content, but it is not as complex as you might think.

Applying the right tools for each situation is a huge part of getting this content right. If you already use a range of marketing software and tools, then relying on those is always a good way to gather more information and expand your content further.

Tools for Search Engines

Most search platforms have monitoring tools that can help you track how well your evergreen content is doing, how high your website is ranking, and the amount of traffic that comes from those platforms.

If your main goal is to push your search engine ranking higher, then it is important to use relevant tools to gain an edge. Standard industry practices are standard for a reason – they work.

Remember that keyword research tools can allow you to see what your audiences are generally looking for in Google searches, and you can gather search volume information to pick out the right keywords for your business needs

Language

As mentioned before, it is important to avoid using overly technical language or complex vocabulary unless that is the audience you are trying to target.

If you have to include these details as part of a guide, then be sure to offer simplified explanations or breakdowns.

While it can be useful to have long articles filled with detail, a beginner’s guide will get more attention overall due to its extra accessibility.

Should You Create Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content is invaluable for social media marketing, SEO, and a range of other marketing and promotional techniques.

While the common evergreen formats work best, there are countless ways to approach the idea: online marketing copy, guest post attempts, blog posts, articles published to an editorial calendar, or even up-to-date product reviews.

What matters most is that you take your time and figure out a strategy that suits your business as well as targets the right audience.

Remember: evergreen content relies on both relevancy and user interest. You can create great stuff that drowns under a sea of more relevant content or something that is incredibly relevant but boring to read.

Like all marketing efforts, you need to approach the idea of evergreen content with some common sense and a critical eye.