Creating content is like growing a tree. You have the seeds of an idea, which then mature into an article or video, which attracts lots of readers with its fruitful content and colourful writing style. But how do you ensure that your content stays in flower all year round?
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is content that keeps on giving, and since it can drive ample traffic to your website on a long term basis, it should be implemented in your content strategy.
Here are a couple of examples of the kind of results evergreen content can bring, taken from our blog.
Mad Men Quotes That Sum Up Content Marketing (click here for article)
What is Blogger Outreach (click here for article)
The Best of Content Marketing Memes (click here for article)
From the Google Analytics graphs above, you can see that these posts continue to attract traffic over a relatively long time period – and in the case of the latter, traffic has been rising.
Growing evergreen content
So how do you go about creating an evergreen article?
Content – People search for how to do things, so creating well-written guides and including ‘How to…’ in your headline can really work in your favour and attract a lot of traffic.
Format – The key is making your article easy to read, so include plenty of attractive, relevant images to hook interest and make posts easy on the eye. Providing they are useful and comprehensive, a list format is a reader magnet. Think ’5 ways to…’ or ’10 quotes that…’ and you’re well on your way.
Relevance – Evergreen articles are articles that feel fresh, regardless of when they were written, so beware of adding dates which can label your content past its sell-by date.
So why do the blog posts above qualify as evergreen? The Mad Men article lists quotes in an easy to read format and since it is a popular TV programme, it remains highly relevant. The blog also contains a video, which could be part of the attraction.
The Blogger Outreach post is a simple, easy to read explanation of a concept that is becoming increasingly prominent as content marketing ripples through the world of advertising and dramatically alters the marketing landscape - so it comes as little surprise that readership has remained relatively consistent.
The Content Marketing Memes article takes advantage of the general public’s love of memes and makes good use of images. Text is minimal, amusing and informing, meaning the article as a whole is easy to skim over but still of value to readers.
Although…
Having said that, embedding dates into an article can actually work to your advantage. Deciduous or seasonal content involves working with specific dates or holidays, such as Easter or Valentine’s Day, and aims to deliver heavy traffic in the form of seasonal spikes.
Watering your evergreen content
Update content – Technically speaking, evergreen content shouldn’t need watering. However, for content to feel fresh regardless of publication date, you may need to update your content. This also helps to keep it relevant to readers, sending good vibes to Google which will continue to rank your article highly.
Internal links – Make the most of all these visitors by adding lots of internal links into the article to direct traffic to pages that are perhaps not doing so well. Remember to change links every so often to direct traffic to more recent articles.
Learn what works – You can learn a lot about successful content marketing techniques by analysing evergreen content. What is it about these articles, and why do they continually attract readers? Replicate the type of content and formats that work and say hello to consistently high traffic and a successful content marketing strategy!
Jenny Maclean
