Evergreen Content: Growing Your Content Strategy

When most organizations decide to get online and create a website, they usually follow a certain pattern and go through phases like this:

• Small start, sometimes to have a presence online, contact information, and a position for brand queries in search engines
• Grow the site to showcase their product or services and serve as a lead generation point
• Mature into a resource for educating potential visitors and becoming a resource for users and employees alike

Once an organization and its website reach that last point, it becomes important to seize upon the value of evergreen content.

What Is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content gets its symbolism from the evergreen tree – meaning that the content doesn’t shed it’s value after a season, but retains its value for years to come.

It is knowledge that can be virtually the same the day that it’s launched, and also years from now. It is content that is consistently relevant to the topic and to the user. This is content that has timeless value and may require little to no ongoing maintenance. What knowledge exists in your industry and organization that rarely changes? Is it a certain technique or process? Is it a maintenance procedure? Is it something that could be a manual for a new person? This is evergreen content.

Evergreen Content Has Tremendous SEO Value

Because evergreen content has long-term potential, it also has tremendous search engine optimization value. Since the content is timeless, it can be useful for visitors and can have a high chance of ranking since it can answer questions or provide knowledge months and years from its creation.

It should come as no surprise that evergreen content has some good SEO ranking factors built right in:

• long form
• in-depth answers
• popular with visitors
• garnering links over time

Strategies And Topics For Evergreen Content

• What do your customers want?  This is a great way to approach content that can be used online – if your customers want this information, it’s likely that a competitor’s customers will as well.
• Interview sales and support staff.  Spend some time with them to discover what questions they get often, and how content can be crafted to help them. It may be videos, infographics, how-to’s, or a simple blog post. Have them create notes where there is a gap of knowledge with clients, and work with them to bridge the gap with resources on your site.
• Review your own Analytics. Take a look at what content is already popular – can the content go deeper?  If so, create those pages and be sure to link them up on the popular pages. If there is content that is out of date, update it or link to an updated copy of the information.
• Curated list of resources.  Yes, you don’t have to write everything – sometimes an in-depth list of resources can be useful for visitors.
• How-To and Tutorials. This compliments the “101” mindset – give your users a walkthrough and be thorough on the topic. Be the expert.
• FAQ’s.  These can be challenging to rank, because many times organizations have a single FAQ section, but topical FAQ’s can be very popular.

Final Tips For Evergreen Content

Know Your Audience

If your content is geared towards a “101” or “Intro”, then of course you’ll want to write very simply. Avoid jargon (or at least explain terms). If, however, your topic is geared for experts and experienced visitors in the industry, you can address them as well.

Make It Interesting

Content on the web can be boring- be sure to break it up:

• visuals such as free stock photography
• use section titles to summarize sections
• bullet lists for itemized bits of information

Here is a list of 7 tips for how to write for the web to make it more interesting.

Round Up Related Content

Be sure to link to relevant articles or pages where needed. This works for any audience – it can help the expert visitors who may be a bit rusty on an idea, as well as help visitors who may be a bit more advanced that “101” and looking for something meatier.