How to Create Evergreen Content for SEO While Increasing Traffic

How are you creating content? Are you copying trends that die over time, or are you creating content on topics that will benefit your audience for years to come?

In this blog, I’ll explain what evergreen content is and how you can use it to improve your overall SEO strategy.

What You’ll Learn

• What is Evergreen Content? 
• 9 Types of Evergreen Content for Your SEO Strategy
• Selecting the Right Evergreen Content for Your Specific Needs
• Pro Tips for Evergreen Content Creation 

Amber’s Expert Insight on Evergreen Content

As the Director of Content here at Ignite Visibility, I understand the importance of posting timely content when a big development happens in an industry or there’s a newsworthy event, but I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of evergreen content.

Evergreen content is going to keep people coming back to your site, long after it’s been written. I’m talking about information that you know, but your audience might not. If you can continue to educate and entertain your audience with content like instructional how-tos, product reviews, or educational blogs, you’ll keep getting that coveted organic traffic without doing too much work.

Actionable Tip: Sit down and make a list of topics you can use to develop your evergreen content strategy. Think of things that seem obvious to you but might be overwhelming to someone without your expertise.

What Is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content is the type of content that remains valuable and relevant long after it’s written. This type of content can drive links to help SEO, generate steady streams of traffic, and help your website’s popularity grow with time.

Anything super timely in nature is not considered evergreen content. News articles or articles written about holidays or seasons, the latest trends, or popular fads are not evergreen. Oftentimes, content like that is only relevant for a few months and then it dies out. While it has its place in a solid content marketing strategy, it is not evergreen.

It’s important to remember that evergreen doesn’t mean setting it and forgetting it. Even though your content will remain valuable over time, it is essential to update it with new facts and statistics. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend updating it at least once a year, more if necessary.

Why Does Evergreen Content Matter?

Let’s face it: creating valuable content consistently is hard work!

With evergreen content, you are providing valuable content that will continue to be relevant long after it’s posted.

If you do it right, it will help to keep you at the top of the SERP for topics and keywords you want to rank for.

9 Types of Evergreen Content for Your SEO Strategy

Need some ideas on how to get started? Let’s take a look at some real-life evergreen content examples.

1. Product and Services Pages

For most companies, your core product and service pages are going to contain evergreen content. Unless you work in ecommerce or sell something seasonal, your products and services are not going to change. Other core pages, such as your About, Why Us, and Location pages are also good evergreen content examples; the content will be up to date since they won’t require regular updates.

2. How-To Articles

One of the best parts of the internet is that you can figure out how to do just about anything with a little research. Make sure to publish in-depth how-to articles on topics relevant to your brand, product, or service to capture some of this search intent.

How-to articles that provide users with quality content are often shared with others. Sharing these pieces across social media platforms, forums, etc. can boost your SEO value by attracting new visitors and enhancing your brand authority.

3. Complete Guides

In most cases, hundreds or even thousands of people will write a blog on the same topic. Take the time to publish the complete guide on that topic. It will be more authoritative and result in significantly more traffic over time.

These valuable educational resources can be used as part of your long-term lead-generation strategy as well. Use compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) to encourage readers to leave their email addresses in exchange for a desirable piece of content they’ll be able to use for a long time. 

4. Timelines

Whether it is a timeline for your company or an industry trend, keeping an updated timeline can really help drive traffic, links, and shares. As news and trends happen over time, it’s essential to add any new, relevant content by giving your timeline a refresh, giving you a chance to boost rankings. 

For example, check out our timeline of SEO updates. The entire history of important SEO updates is right here in one place. Our readers don’t need to go from site to site to get the history they need to understand this topic. It’s all right here for them.

5. Data

When writing evergreen content on data and studies, select data that will stay relevant for years to come. Rather than writing articles using data for timely events, such as a presidential election or a popular TV show’s season, use data that stays relevant for a while, such as marketing or medical studies.

If you can pull out statistical trends, they’ll be more valuable over time than a single fact. Take the time to look into historical data analysis and pay attention to patterns that exist over time.

6. Historical Articles

Sometimes large events happen that people will want to refer to for a long time. You can write historical articles about important topics or subjects that also serves as evergreen content.. Write an authoritative post on the topic and keep it updated as more news comes out of the subject.

If you’re interested in crafting historical articles that can be seen as evergreen, try some of these topics:

• Historical events
• Biographies and profiles
• Historical perspectives & lessons

7. Lists and Awards

Giving mini-awards or publishing long lists can result in evergreen content. For example, an article named The Top 100 Most Valuable Brands or 25 Methodologies for Travel Marketing Agencies to Try will remain evergreen year round.

When you show that you’re putting in the work to bring a bunch of important information together in one place, it will encourage people to come back to your site again and again.

8. Whitepapers and Resource Sections

The name of the game is creating things of value. When you take the time to create a resource guide or provide free whitepapers, your industry will notice. People are constantly looking for solutions to their problems, so why not use your website as a way to show them that you have those solutions?

9. FAQ Pages

Every company runs into questions that are asked over and over and over again. Save yourself (and your customer!) time by compiling these into one long list of FAQs.

Selecting the Right Evergreen Content for Your Needs

While evergreen content is great for any brand in any industry, it’s important to take time to see which type will perform best for you. To determine the type of content you should start with, ask yourself the following questions:

• What keywords do I want to focus on?
• What type of content feels most natural for my brand?
• How can I improve the evergreen content that already exists in my industry?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can start developing an evergreen content strategy that makes sense for your brand and adds value to the search landscape. There’s no point in making content people aren’t looking for, so doing some solid keyword research is the perfect place to start.

Next, move on to the types of content that are relevant to your brand. For example, a hairstylist might want to produce a list of reasons why you shouldn’t dye your hair at home, rather than a how-to guide on how to do an in-home perm.

If you’re stuck on ideas, you can always look at what your competitors are doing. If your biggest competitor produced a list of the top 10 Twitter accounts to follow for SEO tips, maybe put your spin on it and produce a list of the top 10 Threads accounts to follow for marketing tips.

The point is to create content that will stay relevant for a while, connect with your brand, and provide value to your audience.

Pro Tips for Evergreen Content Creation

As you start creating evergreen content that your audience will (hopefully!) love, keep these things in mind:

• Track your content’s performance. If it isn’t getting you the SEO results and organic traffic you desire, think of ways to improve it so that it does.
• Set a date to update your content. As I mentioned earlier, I usually say to update your content at least once a year. Some content should be updated every three to six months, depending on your industry and the topic. If something groundbreaking comes out about your specific topic, use it as an opportunity to update your content.
• Remember that you’re writing for people who don’t have the knowledge you do on this topic. Write your article with them in mind and avoid overly complicated or industry-specific language.
• Always backlink your content. If you’re writing an article on How To Do a Cartwheel and you already have an article on the best cartwheel mats on the market, link them together. Not only is this great for your SEO strategy, but it also helps your readers get more information about the topic they’re researching.

Of all these tips, the most important thing to remember is that evergreen content is not set it and forget it. It will need to be revisited from time to time. While the core message will usually stay the same, it’s important to freshen up the details around it.

Let Us Help You Launch Your Evergreen Content Strategy

Are you ready to get more organic traffic with the help of a great evergreen content strategy? Ignite Visibility can help.

Hundreds of businesses across the country work with us to:

• Launch a successful content marketing strategy
• Improve their SEO strategy
• Write blog posts that resonate with their audiences
• Rewrite website content to align with search intent

Sound good? Let’s get to work! Request a consultation today and see why so many brands are improving their digital marketing with Ignite Visibility!