What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content, as the name suggests is content that retains its significance for a long period of time. Just like evergreen trees that do not shed their leaves throughout the year such content stays relevant for the long term. It is usually about topics that are always going to interest people regardless of the trends and seasons.
Evergreen content is written on topics that people show a consistent interest in and have a high search volume.
Here are some examples of Evergreen topics:
- “Digital marketing tips for beginners”— Digital marketing tips are something that every business is interested in understanding which ensures that the topic lives on for a long time.
- “How to make Roti”—Roti is a staple food for the majority of the Indian population and is thus going to remain relevant for a long time.
- “Cricket scores”—Cricket matches are played all the time and fans will always be interested in the latest scores.
Why is Evergreen Content important?
When Mr. Narendra Modi won the election this May for his second term as the Prime Minister, every website reporting this news had a massive spike in its traffic. For that matter, when Avengers Endgame was released earlier this year, all websites sharing bloopers, reviews, tidbits, etc received enormous attention.
In both cases, this spike lasted for only a few weeks to a couple of months. As the interest and concern for the topic died down the amount of traffic the websites generated using these topics also reduced.
Every time such an event takes place the people who publish content related to it enjoy a burst of traffic or a ‘spike of hope’, as the interest wanes this attention reduces and becomes a ‘flatline of nope’.
This puts you in the cycle of content creation and you have to keep publishing so that your traffic does not drop. Thus, one must concentrate their efforts on publishing evergreen content.
Evergreen Content helps you:
- Put minimum efforts – You do not have to update the content regularly and keep up with the trends.
- Get consistent organic traffic. Google’s job is to answer the audience’s questions. As a result, outdated content will not rank on Google. Evergreen content, on the other hand, will give you traffic and leads as it will stay relevant and significant for a long time.
How to Create Evergreen Content?
Step 1: Select an enduring Topic.
Evergreen content is all about focusing on consistency and quality over trends and fads. For that, you need to research keywords and pay special attention to the following points.
- Search volume: Think about a few enduring ideas and topics that you would like to target and search for their keywords. Analyze the different keyword reports and understand whether the topics you are interested in have a search potential and are getting high search volumes. You can also visit some top-ranking websites to see if the keywords you are targeting are performing well or not.
- Positive consistent trend: It is possible for a keyword to generate high search volumes, but we must make sure that such results are consistently making the topic evergreen. Keywords that are on a declining trend or those of seasonal importance should not be targeted.
- Search intent: The search objective is an important part of keyword research. If the search intent for a keyword is volatile, it may affect your rankings. In such a situation even if you have created high-quality content, Google will think it is not what the audience is looking for and thus affect your rankings. A volatile SERP means that the search intent is fluctuating for the particular keywords and it would be advisable to select some other alternative.
Step 2: Create Evergreen Content
The key takeaway in the process of content creation is to give the audience something that can stand the test of time. You must put a sincere effort so that you can maintain the evergreen status on Google. To achieve such results a few points that you must consider are:
- Content Quality: For every search query Google will be delivering the best and most relevant results. Our objective is to be the ‘best and most relevant’. To do that you need to publish content that can stand out and is way better than what anybody else has ever posted or will post in the future. This will set the bar high for your competitors and ensure that you can maintain your rankings for a longer period of time.
- Language: Being careful about the language and the tone of the blogs that you write also adds to the other factors. If possible, it would be preferred that you avoid words and phrases like “Earlier this year”, “Last month”, “Yesterday”, “201X” etc. Such phrases bring along a sense of time and restrict your content to that time period.
How to maintain your content’s Evergreen status?
Following the above guidelines will surely allow you to create and publish evergreen content. But in some cases, it might not be such a straight forward task. Let’s take the example of Cricket score.
Everyone can agree that this topic is evergreen. Cricket scores are something that many people search for and will continue searching for. But when it comes to the content, can we keep it evergreen? No!
The content for this topic will change after every match and tournament. To keep this blog evergreen and relevant we must update and refresh content from time to time and stay up to date.
How to ensure that your evergreen topics are complemented with evergreen content?
1) Track your rankings
In the world of Google, rankings are equivalent to relevance. Thus, the direct and most effective way to find out whether your content is receiving attention or not is by tracking your rankings.
If Google drops your rankings, then it tells that the content is no longer evergreen. Although the topic may still be extremely significant the content requires an upgrade in order to make an impact on Google.
2) Refresh your content
In many instances it will so happen that due to some external factors, change in technologies, change in stats, software updates, etc. your content will lose its relevance and become outdated. In such cases, you must figure out why people are losing interest in the content and update it according to their preferences. You must always ask yourself what your content lacks that others with better SERPs have.
3) Building Links
Building links is an important part of maintaining your Google rankings. It is very easy for other pages to outrank you if you have very few backlinks. This will cause your incoming traffic to fluctuate as your web page will be jumping around in the rankings. Although the content that you have created is of very high quality and has potential to rank on Google, you won’t be able to achieve that goal defeating the purpose of creating the blog in the first place.
Conclusion
Evergreen content is like a long-term investment, it will earn you shares backlinks, traffic, and traction for years to come. While all your blogs and posts cannot be based on evergreen topics as you have to pay equal attention to the trending events; it is always advisable to think of few evergreen ideas to increase your websites exposure and presence. In fact, just one evergreen piece done well could drastically change the prospects of your business website for a long time.
Contact us now to understand more about content marketing and enjoy the benefits of evergreen contents and blogs. visit http://www.theimpulsedigital.com.You can also connect with us through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
