The Timeless Benefits of Evergreen Content

When it comes to content marketing, no one wants to feel like old news. Marketers spend a good chunk of their time pumping out content that aligns with the latest buzz-worthy trends. These topical, snackable, and timely content pieces do the trick, but their shelf life is brief. Sometimes just a day. As trends fade to black, transient content fades right along with it. Their produced, consumed and retired. Unsurprisingly, chasing trends and churning out single-use content as a full-time content strategy isn’t sustainable. Luckily there’s a type of content that stands the test of time, retaining value, and remaining relevant long after it’s published. That’s where evergreen content comes in. 

What is Evergreen Content?

At its core, evergreen content is timeless. Earning its name from the evergreen tree, this sustainable content stays fresh year after year with little to no upkeep. Evergreen content can take the form of videos, how-to guides, knowledgebase articles, and FAQ boards. Unlike its time-sensitive counterparts, evergreen content remains valuable long after it’s released. With no fleeting relevance, evergreen content accumulates organic traffic over time. The longer it’s published, the more site traction it pulls, and, you guessed it, the higher ROI. Saving your team time, resources, and sanity.

Why Do You Need It?

While both evergreen and topical content play a crucial role in your marketing strategy, evergreen content stays relevant for the long haul. Its long-lasting value makes it a rewarding marketing investment and strategic addition to your SEO efforts. 

Evergreen content is worth its weight in backlinks. Producing an in-depth, educational, and timeless publication makes a great resource for other authors to reference and link back to. This distinction increases your likelihood of being linked to other sites, blog articles, and social posts. Niche and beginner-focused concepts have an even higher chance of being tagged and circulated because these topics are so few and far between. 

Not only is creating evergreen content great for organic traffic, publishing robust resources for your target audience, no strings attached, is a great way to build trust, authority and position your brand as an industry thought leader.

What It Looks Like. 

Whether you realize it or not, you’re likely already producing your fair share of evergreen content. An evergreen piece can be a blog post, interactive content or anything else that you might deem as “timeless content.” What distinguishes evergreen content from a single-use piece is longevity. Statistics, opinions and news articles are not evergreen resources as they’ll lose their appeal and might even be rendered obsolete with the passing of time. For example, an article on “The Beginner’s Guide to Hashtags” will likely outlast a piece on “Instagram Algorithm Best Practices from 2018 to 2019.” The latter guide will lose value as time goes on, search engines evolve and SEO strategies change. A timeless guide to hashtags will retain its value (until major changes are made), especially for newbies. However, arguably one of the most successful forms of evergreen content is the evergreen SEO landing page. Having your content creator write informative and helpful landing page content is a great idea if you are trying to revamp your content marketing strategy.

Evergreen SEO Landing Pages 

Evergreen SEO landing pages are the gold standard of forever-fresh content. The encyclopedia-style page provides relevant and educational content for your target audience, that never gets old. As a hybrid of informational and promotional pages, these bad boys supply readers with a timeless resource to turn to for answers. Evergreen landing pages that serve as timeless content for a company have proven useful for all industries, including B2B, B2C, eComm, and CPG. Not only does this Wikipedia style resource position your brand as a trusted thought leader, but evergreen landing pages sprinkled with curated keywords are the perfect tool to ripen your SEO blogging and website success.

How It’s Done 

Creating evergreen landing pages requires a tag team of web development, SEO, and content creation. Start by choosing your keywords for the evergreen topic you want to rank for. You’ll want to research high volume, low competition keywords to determine phrases with the greatest potential to drive traffic to your page from a search engine. In SEO, niche topics work to your advantage, with less published content to compete with, your evergreen post will be even more valuable.

Once your keywords are identified, you’re ready to craft your content. Audit your current website and published resources to pinpoint content gaps and opportunities for evergreen goodness. Not sure where to start? Harvest ideas from your sales and customer success teams. Learn the most common questions coming from prospects and existing customers and ask yourself: 

• What do I wish I had when learning about this industry, product, or service? 
• What resources, information, or strategies have remained the same over the last three years? 
• Does this resource already exist?

When it comes to your evergreen copy, it’s important to write for the beginner. You’ve worked hard to lead your readers to this page, don’t alienate them with complex industry jargon. Remember to keep your content engaging, don’t let the “encyclopedia” scare you into writing a dictionary entry, the last thing you want to do is inundate your reader with information and boredom. You won’t get far if your readers nod off too quickly. As a copywriter, it’s important to avoid keyword stuffing. Optimizing your page means integrating your keywords carefully and ensuring your page navigation, context, and flow is understandable to search engines and readers, alike. Lastly, don’t forget to a spark of emotion in your content. Whether that’s through inspiration, new-found knowledge, or humor, people are more likely to share and value content when it strikes a chord within them. 

Where to Plant the Evergreen Seed

Evergreen content is only as successful as it is accessible, for the best traffic place your SEO landing page in the navigation of your website rather than tucked within your blog. Even if your blog is timeless, a blog post on the 3rd or 4th page can feel dated to a reader simply based on its location. Instead of burying your evergreen content among your blog posts or archived content, create a new section that’s easily accessible to visitors. Make it easy for visitors to find your evergreen content by promoting it through your social channels and linking it to other site pages. 

Let’s look at the Canna Pet Health Issues page, for example. This resource provides genuine value to pet owners, no strings attached. With little maintenance (aside from the appropriate disease or ailment update) this page establishes Canna Pet as a trusted animal brand. Each individual health feature has the potential to be a separate blog article but displayed together as a landing page, makes for a much more powerful resource.  

Frankly, some subjects never get old. When it comes to choosing your SEO landing page topic, think about what your readers want to learn, know, or have as an on-hand resource. The more relevant your subject is, the more traffic your landing page will accumulate over time. Be sure to optimize your title, metadata, and URL with your carefully curated keywords. Once your keyword strategy, copy, and site navigation are ironed out, you’ll need to enlist help from your development team to implement your new evergreen pages. 

Symbiotic Content and Beyond

Timely and evergreen content work together, serving one another like a cohabitating species in the marketing wild. Once your evergreen is planted, you can continue to syndicate your content in email campaigns, blog posts, and social posts for years to come.  

As trends will come and go, evergreen landing pages will retain their value and relevance, making them an important cornerstone of successful content marketing. To rank higher, drive more site traffic and provide readers with a valuable go-to resource, you need to go green. For swift evergreen content execution, enlist the help of whip-smart, passionate, and marketing-green-thumb teams like Power Digital Marketing.