A Guide to Evergreen Content
What is Evergreen Content?
The question of the hour: what actually is evergreen content? This type of content stays “fresh” and relevant, no matter how many years pass. As the name suggests, “evergreen”, means that something is - usually plants - forever green, alive and blooming. In the digital marketing world, evergreen content also refers to topics that have a high search volume and are always being sought out by users. Digital evergreen content can also come in different formats e.g., blogs (most commonly used), videos, social media posts, interviews, user guides, dictionaries, listicles, reviews, etc.
A Guide to Evergreen Content - Online Traffic Graphic
“Why is evergreen content important?”, you might wonder… The main reason being is that it’s great for traffic purposes. Content that is always relevant will continue to drive traffic to your website or blog for months, or even years, to come. This kind of content can do wonders for your SEO efforts and keep your brand and its online material up-to-date.
Some evergreen topics could include: “How to drive traffic to your website”, “How to lose 10kg” or “How to study more effectively” or “How to Stay Organized”. All of these topics are super relevant and commonly searched for by the average Internet user.
On the other hand, some examples of content that aren’t evergreen (e.g. trend driven pieces, which are also known as “timely content”) would be topics surrounding COVID-19 (e.g. The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Marketing), news articles, statistics or reports that will become irrelevant in a short period of time. These kinds of topics and informational formats are quick to become inapplicable once the “trend” or “period” is over.
Evergreen Content Marketing
As mentioned above, evergreen content can provide your website with huge amounts of constant traffic that timely content would likely never reach. Even though certain trends and hot topics could be interesting and drive a lot of intrigue and clicks, this power, usually, quickly wears off and leaves your website flatlined and lacking traffic. Not adding evergreen content to your blog page could potentially hurt your SEO and content marketing efforts, unless you continue to create more and more content to ensure that your blog doesn’t lose traction.
The results speak for themselves - that’s why it’s vital to incorporate evergreen content into your digital marketing strategy. Below we will explore different evergreen content ideas that you can include in your website’s blog to give your readers valuable and compelling material that will still be applicable even if they revisit it in 10 years.
Evergreen Content Ideas
There are numerous evergreen content ideas out there that you can add into your content marketing strategy. Here are some of our top picks (with examples):
A Guide to Evergreen Content - Checklist
How-to guides. E.g., How to Create an Attractive Digital Lookbook.
Listicles. E.g., “Staying Fit Forever in 10 Steps”.
Top tips. E.g., “Top Tips on How to Create an Online Catalog”.
X ways to… E.g., “7 Ways to Boost Your Energy in the Morning”.
Recipes. E.g., “Recipe: How to Make a Killer Tiramisu”.
Best practices. E.g., “SEO: Best Practices”.
Solutions to common issues. E.g., “How to Clean Without Chemicals”.
Pros and cons. E.g., “Pros and cons of PDFs” - i.e., The Death of the PDF.
Interviews with famous people. E.g., “Interview: Oprah with Meghan and Harry”.
Checklists. E.g., “Vacation Packing Checklist”.
How to Write Evergreen Content
Now that you have a more rounded idea of what evergreen content is, what formats it comes in, and you have some evergreen content heading ideas - it’s time to put pen to paper and start writing/creating evergreen content for your business.
Below we will outline a brief overview of things to consider when writing evergreen content:
Keep Your Business in Mind
While the aim of this “evergreen content” game is to create content that is forever relevant to users, it’s useless to write a blog post about “Types of Dog Breeds”, for example, if your company is an expert in coffee. As you can see, the content and the writer (i.e., the coffee company) have nothing in common. This can lead to your brand losing credibility and can easily confuse customers.
In this case, as a coffee brand, you could write about “The 10 Most-Consumed Coffee Beans in The USA”, for example. This not only aligns with the nature of your company, but also shows your industry knowledge, and could even improve your conversion rates.
2. Keywords
A Guide to Evergreen Content - Searching on a Search Engine
Ensure that you have researched all the possible keywords and keyword phrases surrounding the evergreen topic that you wish to write about. Make sure each keyword has a good volume, and if you have a lower Domain Ranking (DR), that the keywords also have lower “Keyword Difficulty” (i.e. how difficult it is to rank on the search result pages for that specific term).
Key takeaway: there’s no use writing about something that has never been searched for.
3. Don’t Shorten the Lifespan of your Content
When writing evergreen content, you should avoid adding dates; talking about current affairs; mentioning topics that won’t be relevant in the future; etc. Of course some pieces of content have dates in them and they do attract views and clicks, e.g., Guide to Influencer Marketing in 2021, however, once 2021 is over, these kinds of posts lose people’s interest as they try to find more up-to-date content (e.g. for 2022, 2023, etc.)
4. Headlines are Everything
As we mentioned above, in the “Evergreen Content Ideas” section, it’s important to use these types of headings, in order to convey that your content is relevant to the reader. These kinds of headings are timeless - perfect for an evergreen blog.
5. Track Rankings
Once you’ve written your evergreen blog post, it’s essential to keep track of how well your post is performing and how much traffic it’s driving. By doing this, you can see how effective your content is in increasing engagement. This also enables you to see what you can do better in future evergreen content posts.
6. Update Your Content
After tracking your analytics, you can update your content to make sure that it’s constantly refreshed with new information that will be valuable now and in the future.
A Guide to Evergreen Content - Flipbooks
Flipbooks and Evergreen Content
Flipbooks and evergreen content almost go hand-in-hand. Flipbooks enable you to create content in a real-page turning format, and keep it updated at all times. All you need to do is use the overwrite feature, and nobody has to know that you’ve edited or changed a thing because the same URL for your flipbook will be displayed, no matter if you’ve already shared it on social media or embedded it onto your site - your readers will always see the newest version.
Fun fact:
Did you know that Paperturn flipbooks have a nifty SEO-friendly feature? Just add in your keywords and easily let Google and other search engines index your evergreen content, for added traffic!
We hope this quick guide on evergreen content will help you get to grips on how to create posts and other digital content formats that will generate increases in traffic for your website for a long period of time.
