Bloggers want their blog to have more visitors, have other blogs link to their posts, have people visit their site through word of mouth, have their site rank high on search engines, and have people become leads. Evergreen content can help you achieve many (if not all) of your marketing goals. In today’s lesson, we will cover what a sitemap is, why it is necessary for any website that wants to succeed online, and how to create one.
What Is Evergreen Blog Content?
Evergreen blog content is content that remains useful and relevant over time, with little or no need for updates. Its value does not diminish over time, making it a useful resource for anyone who reads it. If you’re wondering what makes blog content “evergreen,” it typically encompasses the following three characteristics:
- Timeless: As mentioned, content that is evergreen stands the test of time. Except sometimes needing a few tweaks here and there, evergreen content won’t change much and is practically everlasting.
- Valuable and High Quality: To reap the true benefits of being evergreen (which we’ll cover in the next section of this post), blog content must be valuable and high quality enough to get noticed. If a piece of blog content that you intended to be evergreen isn’t valuable to your readers and doesn’t attract substantial views when it’s first published, it will never become evergreen.
- Canonical: Evergreen content is usually the canonical, or definitive, piece of content your business has on that given topic. It’s in-depth and detailed, and it likely took you a lot longer to create than some of your other, non-evergreen blog content.
But we’re talking about the web .ght? Where do things change lightning-fast? The speed of change in your industry will determine how difficult it is to create evergreen content. It is important to remember that content on the web that is a few years old could still be relevant for your particular industry.
What Is NOT Evergreen Content?
The relevancy of some pieces of content diminishes over time. There are many different types of articles you can write depending on the type of blog and topics you want to cover. Some of the trees are not evergreen. Let’s see what does not usually pass as evergreen content:
- News articles.
- Statistics and reports are likely to change from one period to the next.
- Posts related to seasonal matters, such as holidays or events.
- Posts related to specific trends that are likely to change, fade, or become something else.
- Technology articles need constant upgrades and changes as the hardware or software you talk about become obsolete, changes, or improves.
Evergreen content is the type of content that is not outdated and can still be relevant even after a long period of time. When creating evergreen content, choose topics that are timeless and have a lasting value.
What ARE Evergreen Topics?
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant and interesting for a long period of time. The perfect balance between evergreen topics and evergreen article types is achieved when the content is both informative and timeless. Topics that are always relevant and generate a lot of traffic from organic sources like social media are evergreen topics.
- Weight loss.
- Cooking.
- Traveling.
- Fitness.
- Gardening.
- Interior design and remodeling.
- Literature/arts/music.
- Health and lifestyle.
I could give you more examples, but you understand what I’m saying. Topics that are not likely to change significantly over time are called evergreen topics. These topics are usually complex and require a lot of research.
What ARE Evergreen Article Types?
The majority of evergreen articles are detailed, in-depth pieces on a certain topic. You can update old articles to make them more relevant and interesting for both users and search engines. Even if you add new content to these articles, they will still have value. Let’s see some examples:
- How to guide – How to cook chicken breast in 10 different ways.
- Top tips – 10 tips to care for indoor plants without making a mess.
- Lists – 50 free places to promote your website for free advertising.
- Product Reviews – Best five dishwasher machines for small apartments.
- Encyclopedia-like articles – Underfloor heating: A Brief History and Uses
- Videos – What is content marketing?
The topics and article types have an intrinsic sustainable value that is not affected by world events, politics, or the randomness of life. This means that chicken breast is not going to change anytime soon. You can improve your article’s ranking in search engines by optimizing them. The list of free promotion websites can grow with new entries. For example, if a new opportunity arises, a new website can be added to the list. It is beneficial to you to add new examples, update the information, and include new keywords.
Now that you know what evergreen content is and is not, you can start creating your own. But why is it so important? It is important to have a blog for your business website, but you don’t have to plan some evergreen pieces for it. If you’re wondering why you should add evergreen articles to your dental practice or restaurant, it’s because they can help with things like search engine optimization and establishing yourself as an authority in your field.
Why Evergreen Content is Crucial
So now you understand better what makes some blog content evergreen, but you may still be wondering why it matters. Why is evergreen content so valuable to a business? There are three main benefits that evergreen content can provide for a blog:
- High Search Engine Rankings: Because of the quality and timelessness of evergreen blog content, it will typically rank very well in search engines over time. This makes it critical for bloggers to make sure evergreen content is well-optimized with the keywords for which they’re trying to rank in search engines.
- High Traffic: Because evergreen content typically achieves high-ranking positions in search engines, it gets found more, which means it contributes a steady, continuous amount of traffic to your blog and website, even long after it was initially published.
- Continues to Generate Leads: As a result of the continuous traffic it generates, evergreen content that is optimized for lead generation also has a powerful capacity to continually generate leads over time. The HubSpot Inbound Marketing blog, for example, which has published nearly 3,000 articles to date, can credit a lot of the day-to-day leads it generates to articles that were published months and even years ago.
Evergreen content is valuable because it continues to generate results long after it is published. A blog that has evergreen content will do better than one without it. If you focused only on creating content about breaking news in your industry, your blog content would quickly become outdated and irrelevant, and wouldn’t generate long-lasting traffic.
This type of content will continue to bring in traffic and leads long after it is published. And in today’s marketing world where it is a marketers job to regularly and consistently create content, who wouldn’t appreciate the benefits of content that are always relevant?
Examples of Evergreen Blog Content
Are you still confused about what types of blog content you can consider to be evergreen?
Considering the three characteristics we discussed above, here are some examples of blog content with evergreen potential:
- Resource lists of curated content (e.g. 36 Awesome Social Media Blogs Everyone Should Read)
- Your business’ everlasting stance on an industry issue (e.g. 6 Reasons Every Small Business Should Be Blogging)
- Answers to frequently asked questions in your industry (e.g. When Lead Scoring is a Marketer’s Waste of Time)
- Historical accounts (e.g. The History of Marketing: An Exhaustive Timeline [INFOGRAPHIC])
- How-to guides/tutorials on topics that don’t change (e.g. How to Create a Facebook Business Page in 5 Simple Steps [With Video!])
With that in mind, here are some examples of content that wouldn’t be considered evergreen:
- Date/time/situational-specific content (e.g. Brian Halligan’s 2010 Marketing Wish List)
- Breaking news (e.g. BREAKING: Facebook Announces New Subscribe Button)
- Data and statistics (e.g. 25 Eye-Popping Internet Marketing Statistics for 2012)
- Speculative content/Opinions about news (e.g. How Path is Making ‘Small’ the New ‘Big’ in Social Media)
- Content about specific events (e.g. The FIFA World Cup: The Biggest Event in Social Media Yet?)
Topics that don’t typically change much over time are more likely to maintain their relevancy. The key question to ask when making a decision is whether or not people will still find the subject interesting a year from now.
How to Leverage Evergreen Blog Content
Great! You’ve identified your existing evergreen content and you know how to start creating even more of it. Other than continuing to promote your evergreen content, there are a few more things you can do to make the most out of it.
- Link to Evergreen Blog Content in Other Content: Because your evergreen content is virtually timeless and also likely some of your best content, it behooves you to link to it in the other content you create (e.g. other blog posts, ebooks, web pages, etc.). This will drive even more traffic to it and help you leverage the power of internal linking, which is an overlooked yet important part of search engine optimization.
- Promote Evergreen Blog Content in Social Media: Evergreen content can be a great pool of content to fuel your social media promotion. It’s some of your best content, and while search will naturally generate a lot of traffic for your evergreen content, social media can also help drive traffic. When HubSpot first started incorporating evergreen content into its social media strategy, our initial experiment more than doubled the amount of social media traffic we were sent to the blog. Today, the promotion of evergreen content is a regular part of HubSpot’s social media strategy, and since we conducted our first evergreen promo experiment, we’ve seen even more tremendous growth in social media referral traffic to the blog.
Not all blog content needs to be long-lasting and relevant. There are benefits to having a healthy mix of both content that is always relevant and content that is timely and newsworthy.
The Importance of Evergreen Content for Blogs
When creating a blog, it is important to include content that will remain relevant and useful for a long time. So let’s check them out today!
It Establishes Your Expert Status
Readers appreciate well-researched, long-form articles. The Internet is full of a lot of information, but you usually have to look at a lot of different sources to get a full understanding of a topic. If you can collect all the bits of information in one place, it will be much easier to work with. Answer as many questions as you can and simply explain complex things. Do it considering your target audience. If this is the case, readers will give you their attention.
It’s worth mentioning that Google also loves in-depth articles, considering them to be potentially beneficial for users. It is important to write at least 1000 words for better results, making sure that all sentences are there for a reason and not just to make the text longer.
It’s important to remember that writing informative content is not enough. You cannot sacrifice quality even if you have data that nobody else has. A text full of grammar mistakes will appear to be a parody of an expert opinion.
To create trustworthy and respected content, you can use online services that provide editor assistance and proofreading tools. Of course, you should properly promote your evergreen content. If you want people to read your post, you can try mentioning it in other articles or sharing a link to it on social media. However, if your post is high quality, it will be successful on its own and people will eventually find it.
It Saves Your Resources
Evergreen posts usually require more time to prepare. It may seem unreasonable to invest in time-dependent content at first glance, but if you sum up the efforts you make to make your content go viral and compete with other companies that publish articles on the same topics, it may be worth it. Your work on current trends may not bring the expected results that will soon impact your success, while your work on more “stable” topics will pay off in the long term.
It Can Be Repurposed
To maximize the reach and engagement of your evergreen content, consider repurposing it into other formats such as videos, podcasts, and infographics, and sharing it across multiple platforms beyond your company blog.
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