Do you struggle to maintain your website traffic and stay relevant? It’s a common problem many content creators have as only chasing trends, while fun, can lead to inconsistent results and wasted effort.
The solution is creating evergreen content.
It provides lasting value by staying relevant over time, ensuring your audience continues to find your content useful and engaging. It also drives consistent traffic, boosts SEO, and establishes you as an authority in your niche.
In this article, I dive into the benefits of evergreen content, share real-life examples, and offer tips for writing your own timeless content.
What you will learn
- What evergreen content is and how does it differ from trending content
- The benefits of creating evergreen content
- Evergreen content examples and formats
- Tips for writing and optimizing evergreen content
- Tracking how well evergreen content performs
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content refers to articles, blog posts, videos, and other media that remain relevant and valuable over a long period, regardless of when they were published. Unlike seasonal or trending content with a short shelf life, evergreen content addresses timeless topics and common problems that continue to attract interest.
For example, “How to care for a puppy” is a timeless topic. While interest in the topic peaks and declines, Google Trends shows that people are always interested in learning how to care for a puppy.
How evergreen content differs from seasonal content
A seasonal or trending topic sees a spike in interest at specific times of the year and gets short-term attention, while evergreen content maintains a steady level of engagement.
Evergreen content is timeless, focusing on longevity and offering long-term value. Trending content is what its name implies: trends, pop culture, breaking news, current events, and holiday-specific topics with an expiration date.
A Google Trends comparison between a seasonal topic like “best Christmas movies” and an evergreen one like “weight loss exercises” shows that the former peaks in December each year while the latter remains consistently popular year-round.
Here are the results for the “best Christmas movies” topic:
And here are the results for the “weight loss exercises” topic:
Why is evergreen content important?
Evergreen content consistently drives search traffic and generates leads over time. Its lasting relevance ensures ongoing audience engagement and visibility.
Here are the other main benefits of creating evergreen content:
Increased exposure
Evergreen content improves your brand’s reach and exposure by encouraging consistent sharing. As people continue to find value in your content, they are more likely to share it, increasing its visibility.
Credibility and authority
Publishing authoritative, value-packed, evergreen content enhances your site’s credibility. It positions you as an expert in your field, fostering trust with your audience.
Natural backlinks
The continuous value of evergreen content encourages other websites to link to it, boosting your SEO and driving more organic traffic.
Evergreen content types and examples
Evergreen content is often educational or informational.
When you create evergreen articles, consider these formats and examples of evergreen content:
Listicles
A listicle provides a curated list of tips, tools, or resources, offering valuable insights in an easily digestible format. Evergreen list articles remain relevant and frequently referenced.
An example of a listicle is an article that lists the foods to eat and avoid on the keto diet.
How-to guides
These guides have detailed step-by-step instructions on a specific topic and are timeless resources.
MoneyHelper has a comprehensive how-to guide for talking to your kids, no matter their age, about a tricky topic: money.
FAQs
FAQs address frequently asked questions in a particular niche and provide clear and concise answers. These are often included in guides and informational articles.
Nerdwallet included FAQs like "How do I know which stocks to buy?" in its "How to Buy and Sell Stocks" article.
Expert interviews
Expert interviews enhance credibility by sharing insights from industry experts and providing evergreen insights and advice.
For example, if you're writing an article on heart health, you can interview leading nutritionists and other medical healthcare professionals. Include quotes from the experts in the article, or publish the interview as is.
Here's how in this “Heart health diet tips” article, the author included quotes from a cardiologist.
Resource libraries
A resource library is a comprehensive and authoritative collection of valuable resources, such as templates, ebooks, and tools, on a particular subject, which users can access when needed.
HubSpot has a huge library of business and marketing resources. There are 480 resources, including ebooks, webinars, templates, courses, and guides, ranging from advertising and blogging to website design.
How to write evergreen content
Creating evergreen content requires careful planning and execution. Here are the steps you can follow to write evergreen content.
1. Choose evergreen topics
Evergreen content is based on timeless and relevant topics. When choosing such topics, consider whether they will continue to interest readers in the future, regardless of trends.
Avoid time-sensitive topics and instead choose ones that users consistently search for.
For instance, “How to get fit” is a valuable and sought-after topic in the fitness and health niche. Mayo Clinic published an article on this in 2023, and the article holds the coveted featured snippet spot, ranking at position zero.
These are the types of topics you should focus on.
To find evergreen topics, you can rely on your industry knowledge or use a tool like Surfer's Topic Explorer.
Simply enter your main topic in the Topic Explorer, and you will receive a list of relevant topics to cover.
From there, you can pick which topics are evergreen.
2. Do keyword research
Now that you have your topic, it's time to do some keyword research.
Thorough keyword research is essential for finding relevant, high-ranking, evergreen keywords. Long-tail keywords are especially valuable for evergreen content, as they often have lower keyword difficulty, consistent search volume, and higher intent.
Use free tools like Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask (PAA), and Related Searches to identify long-tail keywords.
Using my “how to get fit” example, Google Autocomplete suggests more long-tail keywords, like “how to get fit”… at home, without a gym, and in a month.
PAA has plenty of FAQs, giving you keywords and content, like “What is the fastest way to get fit?” to cover in your article.
The Related Searches also has more evergreen content ideas you can use.
Check keyword trends for stability using Google Trends to ensure long-term viability. As you can see, “how to get fit” remains a highly popular and sought-after search query.
Besides their long-term viability, there are three things you should consider when choosing which keywords to target:
- Keyword difficulty: how challenging it is to rank for a keyword based on competition and search engine algorithms
- Search volume: the number of times a keyword is searched for within a given period, reflecting its popularity
- Business potential: the potential impact a keyword can have on your business, considering factors like relevance, conversion potential, and audience interest
Ideally, you should focus on keywords that have moderate difficulty, high search volume, and strong relevance to your business goals.
You can assess the above using Surfer's keyword research tool.
3. Write high-quality content
Based on your keyword research, write high-quality evergreen content that covers the topic comprehensively.
High quality content is valuable content that fulfills the user search intent.
Analyze top-ranking search engine results for your target keyword to understand what users expect from the content.
Examining the search results for “how to get fit” indicates that a how-to guide or listicle with tips is the best format for your blog post.
Next, get to writing.
You can do it manually or use an AI writing tool like SurferAI to streamline the process.
SurferAI will create a comprehensive draft that aligns with the user's search intent and is optimized for search engines.
You can then focus on humanizing the AI draft by adding your unique insights and tone of voice to it.
4. Optimize for search engines
Making evergreen content SEO-friendly is essential for sustained visibility and traffic. Key aspects of content optimization include:
- Keyword placement: Integrate keywords naturally throughout your content to improve search engine visibility.
- Internal linking: Connect your evergreen content with other relevant pages on your website to enhance navigation and SEO.
- Page title: Craft an engaging and descriptive title to attract clicks and improve search rankings.
- Meta description: Write a clear and concise meta description to summarize your content and boost click-through rates.
- Image alt text: Use detailed alt text for images to improve accessibility and help search engines understand your content.
These elements help search engines understand and rank your content better.
Surfer’s Content Editor can help you optimize these areas. There, you can see which keywords to include in your content and how often.
Or, let the Auto Optimize feature do that for you. With just one click, Surfer will naturally add keywords throughout your content.
From within the Editor you can also automatically Insert internal links throughout your article.
5. Regularly update your content
Update your evergreen blog content regularly to keep it current and accurate. If industry standards change or new information is available, revise your content accordingly to maintain its relevance and value.
You may point out that the article has been updated to ensure readers that it remains relevant.
For example, Orbit’s “How to Get Fit Fast” article was published in 2017 and updated in 2022.
You may also update your content when performance starts to decline.
To figure out which content to update, periodically compare its performance on Google Search Console.
Or, you can use Surfer's Content Audit to find the best improvement opportunities at a glance.
Evergreen content best practices
Ensure your evergreen content stays timeless and ranking high by following these best practices:
1. Create comprehensive content
Cover your evergreen topic in-depth to ensure it remains useful and informative over time. Comprehensive content is more likely to satisfy user queries and rank well in search engines.
Shopify's "How to start a dropshipping business" is a comprehensive evergreen post. It covers all aspects of dropshipping from A to Z.
2. Use evergreen language
Using evergreen language ensures your content remains relevant over time.
Avoid time-sensitive phrases like “recently,” “two months ago,” or “last summer,” which can date your content.
Also, avoid overly technical language. Instead, use plain language to make it accessible and beginner-friendly for all readers.
For example, Healthline’s “How to Start Exercising” article uses evergreen language. You won’t find technical jargon or time-sensitive phrases. The author uses everyday phrases instead of jargony ones, like:
- “Mental health” instead of “cognitive health”
- “Good energy levels” instead of “optimum metabolic energy”
- “Chronic diseases” instead of “persistent health disorders”
- “Mood” instead of “emotional state”
3. Include compelling visuals
Including compelling, optimized visuals can significantly enhance the readability and shareability of evergreen content.
Infographics, images, and charts make information more engaging and digestible.
Ensure the visuals are lightweight to avoid slowing down your page and negatively impacting user experience.
“How to Start Seeds Indoors” from The Spruce includes original and helpful images that complement the text effectively. For example, the author included photos for each step to help visual learners with seeding.
4. Maximize the visibility of your content
Maximizing the visibility of evergreen content is crucial for long-term traffic.
Feature these posts prominently on your homepage or in a dedicated section.
Promote the content regularly through social media and other channels to keep it in the public eye and encourage your readers to share your evergreen articles.
How to track the performance of evergreen content
Tracking the performance of your evergreen content is essential. Use tools like Google Search Console and Analytics to monitor key metrics like:
- impressions
- clicks
- social shares
- engagement time
- backlinks.
This data gives you insights into the content’s visibility, reach, and ability to satisfy user queries.
Regularly monitoring these metrics ensures that your evergreen content performs well and excels, adapting and evolving to remain relevant to your business and target audience.
Key takeaways
- Evergreen content provides sustainable value and consistently draws more traffic because of its timeless and relevant nature.
- Create evergreen content to generate leads, earn natural backlinks, establish credibility and authority, and improve brand exposure.
- Examples of evergreen content formats are listicles, how-to guides, FAQs, expert interviews, and resource libraries that inform and educate.
- To create an evergreen content strategy, choose timeless topics, find relevant keywords, write high-quality, search-optimized content, and update it regularly.
- A few more tips include using evergreen language, creating comprehensive content, adding compelling visuals, and maximizing content visibility.
Conclusion
Evergreen content is a powerful tool for maintaining consistent traffic and engagement. You can ensure its ongoing relevance by choosing timeless topics, conducting thorough keyword research, and optimizing your content for search engines.
Incorporate high-quality writing, compelling visuals, and strategic promotion to maximize visibility. With these strategies, your evergreen content will continue to engage and inform your audience for years.
