When it came time to rebrand, our company chose the name Evergreen Media, along with the tagline, Fresh. Enduring. Relevant. Not only does this motto reflect our mission; it also describes what evergreen content is.
Evergreen content remains fresh and relevant long after it has been published. The term was chosen because evergreens never lose their leaves. While other fauna appears barren and lifeless during the cold winter months, evergreens remain bright and alive.
Because of its ongoing relevancy, search engines reward evergreen content with high rankings. This drives organic traffic to a company’s website and is crucial in generating leads and building backlinks. In fact, because of its enduring value, search engine traffic grows over time instead of diminishing. Companies that make an effort to produce evergreen content reap long-lasting rewards.
Evergreen Content Beats Trends
Certain content formats are more likely to retain long-term relevancy than others. Trending topics (e.g., presidential elections, sporting events, awards ceremonies) have short news cycles and quickly become obsolete. It’s unlikely many people are looking for information on the 2016 Summer Olympics, for instance. This type of content might give you a short-term boost but readership will drop significantly over a short period of time. Evergreen content, by contrast, never becomes outdated. A great example is our flagship publication, Black Hills Visitor. Destinations like Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Crazy Horse Memorial stand the test of time, and so do our features on them!
When you’re starting your evergreen content, it may seem overwhelming at first. A great place to start are pieces of content readers will refer to for information. Common formats include:
- Lists
- Tips
- Product Reviews
- Tutorials
Writing in these formats doesn’t guarantee your content will remain evergreen, but it gives you a good starting point on which to focus. And it’s certainly worth investing the time and energy into producing evergreen content; doing so will drive consistent traffic to your website, improve your search engine rankings, position you as a topic expert, and—with less new content to develop—save you time and energy.
Creating evergreen content isn’t difficult. It requires some keyword research in order to find popular, sustainable topics, but there are a number of free or inexpensive online keyword tools to assist in this. When you’re writing new content, narrow your topic, resist the urge to write overly technical pieces, and optimize your piece for SEO. Make sure what you’re writing matches the audience you’re trying to reach. A content calendar can help you streamline the process and keep everything organized.
Next Steps for your Content
Once you’ve got a library of content, you’re golden! Just be sure to repurpose your content from time to time to help maintain its relevancy. This might involve refreshing it with new information, focusing on a specific angle and spinning that into a new article, or reusing it in a new format. You could use a blog post as the basis for a video, for example.
If you’d like help creating evergreen content, contact us today. Our experts can help you develop content that is fresh, enduring, and relevant. After all, that’s our motto!
