We all know the importance of publishing fresh, high-quality content to your website on a regular basis. It gives visitors a reason to return while encouraging higher search rankings in the process. Google even says that publishing content is the “single most important thing you can do.” While there are dozens of different types of web content, among the most beneficial is evergreen content.
The Basics of Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is essentially any article, blog post or other piece of content that’s always relevant. Much like evergreen trees retain their leaves throughout the year, evergreen topics remain relevant regardless of the date and time. This is in stark contrast to time-sensitive articles like news headlines and current event-style posts.
Examples of evergreen content may include topics such as the following:
- How to articles
- Top 10 (or any #) lists
- Tutorials
- Frequently asked questions
- Industry definitions
- Mistakes/pitfalls
Evergreen Content Pros:
The greatest benefit of publishing evergreen content is the simple fact that users will always be interested in it.
Sure, a news article may receive an initial jolt of traffic, only to gradually die off in the days and weeks to follow.
But with an evergreen topic, you can rest assured knowing that users will always be interested in it because it provides some kind of value or benefit to them — it answers questions, helps them avoid mistakes or find the top options in a subject.
This means more traffic and ultimately more sales/conversions for your website, as users will constantly be interested in accessing and reading your site’s evergreen content.
Evergreen topics are also relatively easy to brainstorm. Thanks to tools like Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner, you can usually find dozens of evergreen topics in virtually no time at all. Just plug in a keyword that’s associated with your website’s niche, and it will reveal relevant phrases.
Advice Goldmine Topics
Some “advice” topics tend to always generate interest:
- Money
- Love and Relationships
- Career
- Self-improvement (weight loss, exercise, positive thinking, etc.)
Evergreen Content Cons:
However, there are some possible cons to publishing evergreen content, starting with its limitation of topics.
Depending on your website’s niche, you may find yourself struggling to come up with new topic ideas. If you’ve exhausted all of the evergreen topics, you may be forced to use time-sensitive topics, which are not considered evergreen.
Assuming you run a blog, you want to monitor your use of evergreen content. This is because blogs are inherently designed to focus on time-sensitive content, which is the exact opposite of evergreen. Yet, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should avoid publishing all forms of evergreen content on your blog, but rather you should diversify your efforts with a combination of both time-sensitive and evergreen topics.
Hopefully, this will give you a better idea of evergreen content and how it’s used on websites.
Do you think evergreen content is beneficial for websites and blogs? Let us know in the comments section below!
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