These days, there’s more content online than there ever has been before. So if you’re looking for information on a topic, you’ll probably find more than just a few blog posts about it. You’ll probably also come across infographics, Pinterest pins, videos, and reports.
That’s why you’ve got to be strategic about the content you produce and share to promote your business. You might think this means producing MORE content than your competitors do. But there’s a better way to win the content marketing game: create evergreen content.
Evergreen content helps you maximize the mileage of your content (and, therefore, the results you get from it) while minimizing the time you spend creating it. In other words, it’s a mega win-win!
So if you want to boost your traffic, build your email list, or make more sales from your blog posts, YouTube videos, social media updates, or podcast episodes, keep reading below. That’s where you’ll learn what evergreen content is and why it’s critical to make if you want to leverage the power of content marketing to grow your business.
Ready? Let’s get to it!
Need help coming up with ideas for evergreen content your audience AND Google will love?
Download my free list of 14 evergreen content ideas.
What is evergreen content?
Before we talk about why it’s so important to create evergreen content, we need to talk about what it actually is. Evergreen content is content that’s timeless because it’s relevant to your audience long after you publish it.
Just like evergreen trees retain their leaves all year round, evergreen content stays “fresh” for your audience for a long time because the information in it continues to be valuable.
Here are some examples of evergreen content:
- How to Cook the Perfect Restaurant Steak
- The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads for Busy Entrepreneurs
- 50 Fun Winter Activities
In comparison, content that isn’t evergreen is content that’s relevant for only a short period of time. This includes news stories, information about events, and statistics about particular months or years. Here are some examples:
- 5 Things You Need to Know This Friday
- 7 Trends That’ll Be “In” for 2017 — and 3 That’ll Be “Out”
- Things To Do in Toronto This Weekend
5 benefits of evergreen content
Why should you create evergreen content? It provides lots of benefits that non-evergreen content doesn’t:
1. It helps you rank higher in search engines
When you create evergreen content, you typically produce a comprehensive resource that provides information on a key concept for a particular audience. Because evergreen content is packed with details and value, search engines tend to rank it higher.
Related: How to create blog posts that Google loves + Free blog post template & example
2. It drives continuous traffic to your website
Because evergreen content tends to rank well in search engines, it can drive more traffic to your website. However, good evergreen content doesn’t just give you a temporary boost in traffic. Because it remains relevant, it can give you a steady and growing stream of traffic over time.
That’s why many businesses find that a small fraction of older, evergreen blog posts account for most of the traffic they get to their site. So if you’re looking to get a steady stream of targeted traffic from Google, create evergreen content.
Related: 11 ways to increase blog traffic for more leads & sales + Free blog post template & example
3. It helps you generate a steady stream of leads
When you create evergreen content, you don’t just help your business boost its traffic online. You also get access to more people you can convert into leads. After all, when more people visit your website or blog, you have more people you can convince to sign up for your email list in exchange for a content upgrade.
Related: 9 easy list building tips to grow your email list + Free list of 27 content upgrade ideas
4. It helps you stand out and deliver value
At the beginning of this blog post, I told you that evergreen content helps you stand out online. Here’s why: when you create evergreen content, you provide your audience with comprehensive answers to the questions that keep them up at night, prevent them from living the life they want, or hold them back professionally.
By taking the time to produce content that gives your audience the detailed information they’re looking for, you’ll stand out among competitors who aren’t making the same effort to create outstanding resources.
5. It helps you position yourself as an industry leader
By creating evergreen content, you also position yourself or your business as an expert in the industry.
When your audience sees that you create valuable and comprehensive resources on core topics in your niche, they’ll realize that you know your stuff. They’ll start to see you as their go-to expert. And it’ll make it more likely that when your audience is looking for someone to buy from or hire, they’ll be more likely to think of YOU.
Need help coming up with ideas for evergreen content your audience AND Google will love?
Download my free list of 14 evergreen content ideas.
Tips for creating effective evergreen content
Ready to grow your business with the type of content audiences and search engines love? Use these 8 tips to create and promote evergreen content:
1. Use the skyscraper technique
When you create evergreen content, you might feel like you’re covering topics that have been covered hundreds or thousands of times before. And you wouldn’t be wrong. Businesses tend to produce more content about general core concepts than they do about super specific technical ones. This doesn’t mean that you can’t create content on these topics. But it does mean that you need to think carefully about how to go about doing it.
How do you create evergreen content on a topic that’s been covered thousands of times before? Use the skyscraper technique. Take a look at the content that’s already out there and create something that contains all of that and more.
2. Write posts based on strategic keywords
If you want to reap the full benefits of evergreen content, you’ll want to optimize it for search engines (SEO). This means creating content based on longtail keywords that have a decent search volume but aren’t highly competitive.
Related: How to do keyword research for blog posts in 5 simple steps + Free SEO for Blog Posts ebook
3. Optimize your content for SEO
Although keywords are an important part of SEO, they aren’t the only component. In addition to incorporating keywords into your content, be sure to optimize your images, use the right headings, and add links.
Need help mastering the basics of SEO for blog posts and other types of content? Check out my free ebook “SEO Basics for Blog Posts.” It’ll help you easily optimize your blog posts for Google and other search engines even if you don’t have a tech bone in your body.
Related: How to implement on-page SEO to boost blog post visibility + Free blog post SEO ebook
4. Write for beginners
Evergreen content typically covers basic, fundamental concepts. As a result, most people searching for it are probably beginners. Make your content accessible to them by writing in a way that’s easy for a novice to understand. Use simple language, define key terms, spell out acronyms, walk through concepts step-by-step, and include video tutorials.
Related: Scannable copy: How to write for your audience online + Free scannable copy checklist
5. Promote evergreen content on a regular basis
When you create evergreen content, you end up with a resource that will be valuable to your audience for months or years to come. But if you promote it only when you first publish it, people who follow you on social media later on may never see it. That’s why it’s strategic to promote your evergreen content on social media every few months.
6. Add a link in your email signature
Another way to subtly promote evergreen content is to link to it in your email signature. Because evergreen content stays fresh for a long period of time, you can add a link to your signature and leave it there for weeks or even months before swapping it for another one.
Related: 19 ways to get more social shares for your blog posts + Free blog post template & example
7. Repurpose it
When you create evergreen content, you can end up spending a lot of time on it. That’s why it’s helpful to repurpose your content to get more mileage out of it.
How do you repurpose content effectively? Take one of your top blog posts and turn it into an infographic, podcast episode, or checklist. You can use repurposed content just like new content or turn it into a content upgrade.
Related: 9 strategic ways to repurpose blog posts + Free blogging tool list
8. Update it
Extend the life of your evergreen content by updating it with new facts, statistics, and links. This keeps your content from going stale and can give you a boost in search engine rankings. Updating old evergreen content is also a great way to create “new” content to share.
Related: 7 ways to increase blog traffic by updating old blog posts + Free SEO ebook
Create evergreen content to generate more traffic and leads
Evergreen content doesn’t have to be the only content you ever produce. But if you want to optimize the results you get from the content you create, prioritizing evergreen content is the way to go.
It’s the best way to create content that provides tons of value to your audience, thrills search engines, gives you a steady stream of targeted traffic, and helps you generate the leads you need to grow your business. That’s exactly what you want, right?
Need help coming up with ideas for evergreen content your audience AND Google will love?
Download my free list of 14 evergreen content ideas.
Hi, Nadia,
You provide awesome content, I love learning from You, glad I subscribed to your e-mail!
Can you give me a few tips on starting a blog?
Hi Alma,
I’m so glad that you’re enjoying the content! Here are some tips for starting a blog:
1. Identify your target audience and write posts that (a) solve a problem they have or (b) improve their life in another way
2. Post regularly but only as often as you can produce high-quality content (aim for 1 post per week if possible)
3. Optimize your posts for search engines (check out my SEO ebook for more info: http://www.inpressionedit.com/seo-basics-blog-posts/)
4. Add content upgrades to your blog posts so that you can start building an email list from Day 1 (see this post for more info about content upgrades: http://www.inpressionedit.com/2017/10/27/content-upgrades-benefits/)
5. Use Pinterest to boost traffic to your blog
I hope these tips help! Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or have a topic you would like to see a resource on.