When it comes to maintaining a business website and blog there are a few things that can help ensure your efforts are worthwhile. Evergreen content refers to topics and resources that will remain current and useful for your readers, for months, or even years into the future. Much like the leaves of evergreen trees, this type of content doesn’t die off with the changing seasons. How can you use evergreen content online as a useful resource for your web-visitors?
Evergreen content versus topical news
Benefits of topical news content
Writing blogs and creating social posts about topical news, as it arises, is certainly of value to your target audience.
It shows that your business keeps up-to-date with latest events and research, and gives your readers confidence that they can use your website as a useful reference point.
Topical news is particularly effective in the instantaneous and social world we operate in these days. They allow you to be seen to be leading the way in your sector and use trending hashtags to expand your connections.
What is evergreen content?
As part of your overall content strategy, it is also highly effective to build-in evergreen content. Evergreen content can include anything that won’t date, either as webpages or as blog articles.
News-related content is typically valid for a few days, sometimes weeks, depending on variables.
Evergreen content will be valid for months, years…even on occasions, forever!
Benefits of evergreen content
(1) It can help you gain web visitors
Evergreen content is necessary as part of your content strategy as it can help attract visitors to your website.
If you can hold a valuable ranking on Google, and other search engines, then your content can become a lucrative way to connect with new potential customers.
The algorithms that feature within search engines are highly tuned and know whether content relates to a specific year or event, or if they are more general.
For example, if you blog article mentions the “salary for a UK GP in 2016” then the search engine will know that this content is relevant to a certain year. However, if your blog mentions the “average salary for a UK GP”, with no time period stated, then it may be relevant for more general searches.
Evergreen content has a long life so use keywords that may be searched for time and time again.
(2) It is time efficient
Evergreen content is highly time efficient. Although revisions may be necessary to update the language with your brand values as they evolve, or as your internal systems and processes change, it is unlikely you will need to make significant changes through the content’s life span. Write it once and just sit back and let it add value to your business.
Examples of evergreen content
Here are some examples of evergreen content that you can build into your website and blog:
- Definitions – defining key terms helps your customers understand other content pieces. It is highly useful to link between blogs and pages in your site too.
- Digital guides – online guides are a great way to present evergreen content. It gives your readers something tangible to download, and if it is useful then it is likely they may share the resource amongst their own network.
- FAQ’s – answering commonly asked questions is an example of evergreen content that will benefit both current and future customers. If you can refer some of your customer queries to an FAQ section, or download, on your website, you will invariably save time for you and your team.
- Case studies – a case study won’t date, because it is an event that occurred at a particular time and place. Infiltrate case studies into your digital marketing as another form of evergreen content.
- Checklists – create checklists for your customers to use, relating to your processes, sign-up or “how-to”.
- Any article that is generic enough to not date
Examples of what evergreen content is not
To fully understand evergreen content, it helps to know what doesn’t classify too. Here are some examples:
- Articles containing numerical reports and statistics that may change.
- Fashions and styles date quickly so will only have a certain shelf life.
- Seasonal articles are not wholly evergreen as they are only relevant at certain times of the year.
- News reports create a record in history, but there is likely to only be of interest to a volume of people whilst they are topical.