Evergreen content is content that targets evergreen search queries with more or less constant search volumes, a reason why it has to be constantly up to date.
The Importance of Evergreen Content
There are a number of reasons why evergreen content gets the attention that it does. Firstly, evergreen content stands for publishing content on topics that do not go out of date. Thus, over longer periods of time evergreen content allows for a constant flux of inbound traffic. In other words unlike regular content which may be time-bound, evergreen content targets such search queries as “i.e. Keyword Research; Onpage Optimisation; Technical SEO Audit” that have more or less constant search volumes month over month.
Because of the certainty that these topics will continue to have search volumes moving forward, evergreen content deserves a special kind of attention. It permits a significantly higher amount of time investment in the hope of ranking for these everlasting search queries and thus benefiting from inbound traffic over longer periods of time.
Especially relevant to those who are eager to do SEO to benefit their Digital Marketing Strategy, Evergreen Content should be the cornerstone of your Content Marketing Strategy. There are, of course, several reasons for this including the fact that Evergreen Content is designed to bring long-term value in the form of inbound organic search traffic. Evergreen content is most likely to bring inbound backlinks. Lastly, it is quite frankly good for SEO as it takes into account the long-term advancement of the website landing pages in organic search engine rankings for relevant search queries.
The Evergreen Content Creation Process
The evergreen content creation process can be best explained by a circular three-step process. It begins with finding evergreen search queries using keyword research. Secondly, as a result of keyword mapping – create the evergreen content aiming for the longest timespan possible. Thirdly, reinforcing the evergreen content through keyword tracking, content updates and building backlinks.
1. Finding Evergreen Search Queries
Finding evergreen search queries is all about focusing on search topics with consistent search traffic potential. Brainstorm a few seed keywords, enter them into Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer and play around with the keywords ideas tab to extend the list of potential evergreen search queries. You may also navigate back to the keyword’s parent topic to ensure you don’t miss any high-level keyword options. Next, determine a keyword’s search potential based on Search Volume and Keyword Difficulty Score. You may also check the Organic Traffic for Top Ranking Pages to determine if your search query topic is evergreen.
Checking the search volume alone is not enough. It’s important to check the search volumes over time to ensure that the parent topic isn’t on a declining trend and is not seasonal. You may either use Google Trends or the Trends Graph in Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer.
Lastly, a good idea is also to settle on the uncertainty that can be brought forward by a keyword’s Search Intent. Especially relevant for new trending search queries, the search intent (the objective the user has in mind when typing in the keyword) can change over time affecting the kind of landing pages the search engines will select to display in search results. This can be identified by SERP volatility, visible in SERP Position History in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. If over time, the search intent remains volatile, so will the organic rankings in SERPs decreasing the attractiveness of the Evergreen topic, or in other words making it less desirable.
2. Create the Evergreen Content
In simple terms, to succeed at Evergreen Content you need two things. First you need content where timelessness plays a key role and secondly, it has to be significantly better than any other search result on that topic. For one to publish an excellent piece of Evergreen Content, one must aim to outperform the competition on three aspects: Expertise; Authoritativeness and Trust.
In simple terms, content that isn’t designed to address the search query better than its competition isn’t likely to rank. The content that is only marginally better than the competition is only likely to be prioritised in search engines until a stronger competitor comes along. So in order to take full advantage of Evergreen Content, one must employ the so-called skyscraper technique, where you take a topic and supercharge the article in response to it, so much so that the user won’t need for another piece to fully answer his/her search query.
Lastly, an important thing to keep in mind when designing new Evergreen Content is avoiding content angles and language that are of a short lifespan. Again, what this means is avoiding the use of examples that are likely to quickly become irrelevant as they go out of date and instead try to use those which are everlasting. The better you plan this side of content the less time and effort it will require in the future for edits to keep it up to date.
3. Reinforcing the Evergreen Status
To reinforce the rankings of your Evergreen Content you will first need a way of tracking them to better understand how and the reasons why they change over time. This will ensure that you’re first and foremost aware of your content’s evergreen status running out and secondly give you the opportunity to try different things among different Evergreen Content pieces to see what works and what doesn’t.
The insights gathered at this stage will allow you to have to look at the content and figure out what is no longer relevant in the eyes of the search engines. Similarly, a good idea is to look for landing pages that have outranked yours in SERPs to better understand what your pages are missing.
Finally, regardless of the efforts you put into crafting your content, Evergreen Topics are known to be strongly powered by links. This happens as a reinforcing circle, where landing pages with the most backlinks occupy the highest organic positions in SERPs, and because they occupy these positions over extended periods, they tend to accumulate a lot of links. This is the reason why if you want to rank for Evergreen search queries, you will have to rely heavily on backlinks and outreach to get your foot in the door.
The Evergreen Content Key Success Factors
Keeping in mind that the goal of evergreen content is to drive traffic to your site for years to come, your first step must be to choose a keyword that’s stable over time or trending up. The risk with trending topics is of course, that the trend can reverse any day, leaving you with a detailed piece of content on a topic that is no longer of interest to users.
Secondly, it is paramount you choose an Evergreen Content format. Although just about any piece of content can be evergreen, there are a few content types that work better than others:
- Ultimate Guides: One characteristic of guides is that they cover the most important aspects of a topic, which are unlikely to change overnight.
- List Posts: Unless your list is going to contain details that are going to expire in a few months, a list post can continue to provide value without much editing or updating for years.
- Case Studies: this case might be trickier since it may contain time-bound details. However, these can always be updated with a new version should it be required.
- Videos: Many people don’t consider videos “evergreen”. However considering many videos get visitors years after they have been published, videos can indeed serve as evergreen content.
- Checklists: Checklists are particularly easy since if an item is no longer relevant it can easily be replaced or deleted.
- How-To Guides: How-To, similar to Ultimate Guides may require updates, however, they are not characterised by frequent updates so they can be considered safe for Evergreen Content.
1. Regularly update your content
Regardless of how evergreen your content is when you first publish it, it will get out of date. Another risk is that the other SERP competitors may be in the same game for Evergreen Content, constantly working on their own content. So beating them to the punch by constantly improving your existing content based on its SERP performance can go a long way toward establishing sustainable organic traffic from Search Engines.
For example, it could be as little as updating the dates and the years on the post if it uses any as well as re-creating the screenshots and could go as far as giving it a complete make-over where no piece of content is too big to be replaced or removed. It could also include or exclude internal and external links and change anchor texts.
2. Promote on Social Media (once again)
Especially relevant to those who run their websites in a Blog format, once you publish a post it gets featured on top of the Blog feed and with new content it gets buried behind new posts and is harder to find by users. So when you make an update to your content, it’s a great chance for you to get another round of promotion on Social Media.
3. Relaunch or Repurpose
In the event some of your evergreen posts have gone so out of date that it would require to be half remade, you may just relaunch them as a new post entirely. You may also be presented with the option to relaunch the content in a new format. Repurposing content is when you turn your blog content into a new format like a video, ebook, podcast or infographic.