Do you feel like your blog content isn’t bringing in consistent traffic? Or does it seem like your content’s shelf life is way too short? I’m happy to present a solution for you today.
Evergreen content.
Evergreen content is content that stays “fresh” and doesn’t expire. The direct opposite of trending topics, it’s content written about a topic that will always pique people’s interest. Writing evergreen articles is one of the best ways to increase blog traffic and make a longer-lasting impact with your blog posts.
In this article, I’m going to:
- Thoroughly define evergreen content
- Give you the benefits of writing evergreen content
- Show you how to write evergreen content
- Guide you on how to promote evergreen content through evergreen marketing
- Teach you how to measure the effectiveness of your evergreen content
If you want to be a full-time blogger and do more than have writing as a side job, writing SEO evergreen content will bring you closer to that goal.
Does this sound good? Let’s get to it.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is SEO content that remains relevant long after its publication date. Whether it’s read minutes after it’s published or readers stumble upon it several years later, the information in an evergreen article stays fresh and useful.
Like the tree where it gets its name, evergreen content is long-lasting and sustainable. It’s centered around a topic that people are always interested in.
Because it’s everlasting and requires minimal updating, creating evergreen content is one of the best ways to increase blog traffic. Search engines favor evergreen content and will continue to present them to users who enter relevant search queries.
The benefits of writing evergreen content
The purpose of creating evergreen content and executing an evergreen campaign is to consistently attract evergreen traffic!
Let’s look at some of the ways evergreen content helps bring more visitors to your blog over time.
Your content stays relevant for longer
You’ve written a great article about a trending topic. You immediately see a surge in blog traffic. But after a couple weeks (or sooner), organic traffic from that article only trickles in until it stops altogether.
What happened?
The interest in that current topic waned and people have moved on.
That brings us to the advantage of evergreen content. When you write about topics that will always interest people, your articles maintain relevance.
For instance, the topic of “how to be a better writer” will always interest aspiring authors, bloggers, poets, etc. Whether they need tips on how to make a living as a blogger or how to write a new style of poetry. People will continue to search for writing tips.
An ultimate how-to guide on best writing practices or a post with writing prompts for bloggers are both pieces of content that will stand the test of time.
Bonus point: evergreen articles don’t need constant updating!
Because SEO evergreen content contains fundamental information, just add new findings as they arise. No need to change the content frequently to keep up with trends.
Evergreen content helps improve SEO
From keyword research to choosing the best title, SEO is an essential factor in driving traffic to your blog.
So how does evergreen content boost your SEO efforts?
Search engines are more likely to pull up evergreen content in response to a general query. In response to a search query, search engines crawl millions of websites for specific keywords and then index the web pages accordingly. Pages with expired or outdated content that haven’t gotten a lot of recent traffic won’t show up high in the search results for specific search queries.
Because evergreen articles stay relevant and don’t expire, search engines continuously find and favor them on the search engine results page.
How to write evergreen content
Now that you know the benefits of writing content you’re likely ready to learn how to write evergreen content. Any undertaking is easier if you create a system or consistent process for it.
Let’s break down the key steps in writing effective evergreen content.
Start with keyword research
Doing keyword research puts you in the best position for creating well-performing, sustainable content that readers will refer back to repeatedly. Using Semrush for keyword research is a good way to find long-tail keywords for your evergreen content. This tool will help you learn the terms commonly used in your target audience’s search queries. Start your writing process by identifying which keywords to target. This will give you guidance on the best evergreen topics for your niche.
Want an in-depth breakdown of the best ways to do keyword research? Check out our Semrush keyword research tutorial to get the exact steps for how to do keyword research for SEO.
Use the 3×3 writing process
You’ve completed keyword research and know which topic to explore for your evergreen article.
Now it’s time to write! But where do you begin?
Writing a blog article (especially one meant to stay relevant for years) intimidates the best of writers at times. Here at InspireFirst, we have a proven method, the 3×3 writing process, that takes you through writing amazing blog posts with ease.
The initial step, prewriting, includes the first group of tasks in the 3×3 writing process:
- Analyze: Determine your purpose for writing the article. What do you want your reader to receive from this piece? What specific action do you want your reader to take? Think about how you want to format this post. For evergreen articles, consider “How-To” or tutorial style of blog posts. “How-To” articles perform well and are great for SEO.
- Anticipate: Here’s where you put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Create audience personas by thinking about various characteristics of your reader. What’s their age, occupation, hobbies? How do you want readers to feel after reading your article? In what ways might they respond to your post?
- Adapt: Brainstorm a list of words that you’d like to use in your article. Keep in mind the response you hope to elicit from your readers. Once you have your list of words, now’s the time to decide what writing style you wish to use.
Writing is the next step in the 3×3 process:
- Research: Spend time conducting quality research for your evergreen article. You want to ensure that you include accurate information that people can reference. Research the top blog articles you’ll compete against. Study what they do well, but take care not to plagiarize!
- Organize: Create a blog post outline of your research and all the main points for your article. Going into the writing phase with a plan helps the process flow easier.
- Compose: Now comes the fun part – writing! Sit back, relax, and just let the words flow. This is your zero draft. You’ll get the chance to make changes later. Right now, focus on getting the words out. Trust that all the steps you took before this will lead you to a great piece of evergreen content.
The last step of the 3×3 writing process is revise:
- Revise: Look over what you’ve written and find ways to improve your article’s readability. Do you have a lot of run-on sentences? Have you used adverbs excessively?
- Proofread: Proofreading and editing are crucial for evergreen content. You expect your content to be relevant and consumed by readers for a long time. You’ll get the best results from your work when your content’s copy is clean, tight, and flows well. Use an automated proofreading tool like Grammarly to check for correct grammar use and readability. Grammarly is affordable, user-friendly, and provides you with comprehensive writing feedback.
- Evaluate: You’ve made it to the last task of the 3×3 writing process! Go back through the previous eight steps to ensure you thoroughly completed the process. If everything looks great, hit “publish” and watch your evergreen article provide value for years to come!
Evergreen marketing: How to promote evergreen content
Next, let’s discuss how to promote your blog with a simple process.
You need a content marketing process that will help you execute an evergreen campaign. Professional blogging is not a ‘write, publish, and forget it’ type of activity. Blogging, or any kind of writing, is a discipline that requires some marketing and selling if you want to earn a living. This is why I think it’s crucial that I help you develop a simple content promotion process.
The simple process for promoting your blog is:
- Get to know your audience: I discussed creating audience personas in the Analyze section of the 3×3 writing process earlier, but here’s where you need to dig a little deeper. Understanding your audience puts you at a great advantage. When you know where your readers go online for news or the social media platforms where they’re most active, you’ll have a better sense of where to distribute your content.
In this great evergreen article about content distribution, digital marketing strategist Ross Simmonds discusses why understanding your audience is an important part of a content distribution strategy. Not only must you get to know your readers, but it’s essential to get to know the language of the platforms they use.
- Share your post on social media and other platforms. Posting on your own site is just step one. Cross-posting your article on platforms like Medium, Facebook, or LinkedIn alerts your network about your new post. With the appropriate use of hashtags, your post will gain exposure from readers who weren’t previously aware of your blog.
- Reach out to influencers and fellow bloggers in your industry. Connect with blogger peers and do natural link building and blog syndication strategies with each other. By promoting each other’s content, your evergreen content will reach more readers in your target audiences.
- Connect with your audience via email. Your readers subscribed to your email newsletter because they want to hear from you! They’re excited to read more from you and want to share your work with their network. Send out an email and inform your readers about your latest post.
You’ve done the work of creating valuable evergreen content. Make sure that it gets in front of a large audience. Get deeper guidance on promoting your blog content by reading our ultimate blog promotion checklist article.
How to measure the effectiveness of your evergreen content
Keeping track of how well your content performs helps guide you as you continue developing your evergreen content strategy.
You will know if your writing, content distribution, and syndication efforts are successful by diligently tracking evergreen traffic metrics in Google Analytics. A few valuable metrics Google Analytics helps you measure include:
- Website traffic – compare traffic results with non-evergreen articles on your blog to see the impact evergreen content has the amount of your organic traffic
- Search rankings – track your organic search rankings within the Search Console in Google Analytics
- Average Time on Page – find out if readers engage with your evergreen articles more than your other posts
- Clickthrough rate (CTR) – Google Analytics provides you with the CTR for all search queries leading to your evergreen article
If you need to learn more about Google Analytics, don’t miss our guide. Outside of Google Analytics, you can measure the success of your efforts in other ways.
Have you seen an increase in subscriber or follow count across your social media platforms? Perhaps on-site engagement increased and you received plenty of positive feedback via comments. Maybe you noticed that other bloggers or publications link back to your article often. Perhaps your post went viral after others shared it across multiple platforms!
Keeping track of a number of key performance indicators will help to paint a holistic picture of your evergreen content’s success.
In conclusion
I hope that I’ve convinced you that creating evergreen content is one of the greatest ways to increase blog traffic.
Not only does evergreen content create an opportunity for readers to discover your site, it gives you the space to indefinitely provide profound value to a large audience. Bookmark this page and revisit this article as you develop and curate your own evergreen content strategy!
If you’re looking for more tips on how to grow your blog traffic check out our article that gives 50 successful blogging tips!
This post was proofread by Grammarly.
