Carmilia C.
If you are currently doing content marketing strategy, you’ve must frequently heard about evergreen content. But what does evergreen content actually means?
What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is a type of content that never fades into irrelevance regardless of changing culture and time era.
In other words, it can be described as the content that always stay relevant and significant for the readers for a long term.
Evergreen Content Vs Seasonal Content
Evergreen content is the opposite of trending content that only has the short term lifespan.
An example of evergreen content is “How to Fix Impulsive Shopping Habit“. Think of this way: will people be searching of to fix their impulsive shopping habit for the next 50, 100, or even 200 years? Most probably yes, because shopping will always be there regardless the time frame and different era.
Now, think of the topic: “IPhone 12 Review“. This seasonal content might bring you tons of traffic temporary, but it will be faded soon in the next few years as the new model of IPhone is coming out.
Let’s see the performance of both seasonal content vs evergreen content.
This is the performance of seasonal content that received a spike when it first time get published:
As you can see, as the seasonal content lost it tempo and hype, less and lesser people will be searching for that search term.
On the other hand, here’s the evergreen content’s performance:
It still drive constant traffic even after 6 years after the content first published.
Benefits of Evergreen Content in SEO
Creating an evergreen content is crucial in your content marketing strategy, while it will stay relevant for a long period of time.
This means, it is a rewarding investment in your SEO for a long term.
1. Resource Efficient
Creating a great content that can rank well in the SERP requires persistent, extraordinary effort and time. You don’t want to waste all those efforts and time to create something that only last for a season, don’t you?
The longer it’s published and remain relevant for internet users, the higher ROI your content will be. And of course, it save your time, resources, and sanity.
As your content continue to gain constant traffic, the more money you can get from Ads or any other monetization that you implemented on your site.
2. Attracts More Backlinks
The longer your contents stay relevant to the internet users and stand in SERP, the more possibility you’ll get new backlinks from the authors that find your content is useful.
Timeless publication indeed makes your page as the great resources and increase the likelihood of being linked from other sites, blog articles, and social media.
3. It Build Your Authority and Trustworthiness
By having evergreen contents on your site, it can establish your site as an authoritative resources of that specific topic.
It is basically improve your E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) in which are the three factors that the search engine loves.
Evergreen Content Examples
Some excellent forms of evergreen include:
1. How to Guide
Tutorials and guides are the most popular of form of evergreen content. It solves a common issue and problem by breaking down step-by-step “how to” and problem solving explanations.
Still, you’ll need to think if the main topic tutorials are going to be useful for people for years to come.
An example of evergreen “How to” is “How to Increase Stamina”. Stamina is the endurance ability that always attached to Human. Therefore, it will stay relevant forever.
However, if you make a content about How to Fix IPhone 12, this content will be irrelevant once the IPhone 12 is outdated.
2. Glossaries
The internet users will still search for glossaries and definitions regardless of time and era changing.
This page that you’re currently reading is an example of evergreen glossaries.
3. Checklist
Content that contain lists that addressing a topic is another type of content that will last long.
Example:
- 10 Sports That Make You Taller
- 15 Most Favorite Movies For All Time
- 10 Foods That Are Forbidden For Dogs
If you want to make your checklist content is evergreen, avoid creating content that only target specific year on it. For example, 10 Most Favorite Movies in 2022 is an example of seasonal content that will only last until end of 2022.
4. Historical Content
Contents about history are going to last for a long time since people are continuously search and curious about it regardless the time and era.
An example of historical content could be “History of Pyramid“. No matter what years it is (whether it is 2030, 2050, or even 2200), this content will still be relevant in the future.
Historical content can also include the statistical data that happened in the past. For example, “Historical consumer statistic in 1990” will still be relevant in 2030 when people are using the data for data science or comparison analysis.
Final Thought
Evergreen content is great to create a long term awareness, while seasonal content is great to create immediate buzz.
Depending on marketing strategy and your business goals, both evergreen and seasonal content have their pros and cons.