Evergreen content can help you stand out. Creating content that is valuable no matter how much time may pass is key to establishing yourself and your site as an authority and timeless resource. Here are a few ways to make the most of your evergreen content.
What Is Evergreen Content?
So before we start let’s just explain what evergreen content is. The name is really the perfect place to start. Much like the tree evergreen content is good all year-long. It retains its value, relevance and usefulness despite the passing of time.
Creating evergreen content depends a lot on the focus of your site. Are you niche specific or do you have a broad range of topics you discuss? This will determine how you select the topics for your evergreen content.
Why Evergreen?
Next up is why do you want to create evergreen content? I mean don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with writing about the latest trend yet as a trend that content may not be relevant 6 months or even 2 weeks from now. Afterall, the very definition of a trend is something that is ‘it’ for a short yet intense period of time, right?
Evergreen content allows your site to remain relevant, searched for and used as a resource months even years beyond that first publish date.
Finding a balance between what’s happening now and what will be happening then is a great way to keep your content fresh.
How Do You Evergreen?
The first step to creating evergreen content is research. Research is essential to discovering the topics that are most relevant to your audience and sharing them in a way that turns the content from a one time search to a consistent resource.
I discovered the value of evergreen content by keeping an eye on my site’s statistics. The posts that seemed to get the most traffic during a set time of year or season. Those posts became my focus for evergreen repurposing. That’s right. There are times when a post can become evergreen by accident!
One example for me is a post I wrote a couple of years back about Day Date Ideas. I wrote it in February for Valentine’s Day but somehow it became something people began to use as a consistent resource throughout the year. I saw it reaching my daily top posts far beyond February and into the summer months.
This gave me the idea to try to repurpose it so that it would remain relevant no matter when someone looked for or happened to find it.
Keep Things General
One thing that can prevent a piece of content from remaining evergreen is to be too specific. Including time reference can make people feel the content is no longer useful. To avoid this I began to write in more general terms.
I stopped saying things like ‘every holiday’ or ‘this november’ stuff like that. Instead I would keep things a bit more general. If I can avoid mentioning specific time frames I do. Don’t worry, I know there are times when dates are unavoidable. I have a solution for that too.
Take my post 21 Fun Easter Events. This post makes a return to popularity every year. Yet obviously many of the fun easter events are time and date specific. That’s when you learn to stay up to date.
Stay Up To Date
Keeping your evergreen content up to date is something you can plan ahead for. I know that my Easter post tends to hit peak popularity around 2 weeks before Easter. That’s when most families are preparing for Spring Break and trying to get their plans in order.
Since I know this time frame I can schedule a time to go through my post, review the events and make any changes needed for the present year.
To let my audience know the post has been updated I insert an image (see below) at the top indicating the last time it was updated. That way they automatically know this post is still relevant.
Change Things Up
You’ve got your topic, your content and you’ve hit publish. Now what? Well now is when you promote it. Share it across your social networks, with friends, within relevant groups. Yet what do you do after that first share?
The best part about evergreen content is you can re-share it with a few simple changes to a few words here and there you can make your evergreen content as good as new – no matter how far you are from that first publish date.
For example, here is the first line to my Easter post:
Easter is right around the corner and so is the Easter fun right here in Fayetteville, NC! So get our your planners, smartphones and calendars and start marking down which of these 21 fun Easter events are the perfect fit for you and yours!
When I re-share it in the upcoming weeks I can play with that wording by making it relevant to right now.
Ex: Set out your Easter best for these fun events happening right here in Fayetteville.
Changing the promotional wording will give the post a fresh take as well as bring new readers to the site.
Evergreen Ideas
I admit it, stumbling across evergreen content isn’t ideal. since my first accidental evergreen piece I’ve since learned to take the above tips and use them to help me create evergreen content on purpose and with intent. From there I am able to make the most of that content.
Creating evergreen content doesn’t need to be hard. Here are a few topics that can make for great evergreen content and fit within a variety of niches:
Tutorials
How To Guides
Solve A Problem
Answer A Question
List Post (ex: 10 Ways To…)
How do you add evergreen content on your site?
“Believe in yourself, your passions, and your dreams. Your voice is unique – build on that. Embrace what is different about you and make it your greatest asset!”
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