Evergreen Content: 8 Tactics to Ensure Your Posts Remain Relevant

Intro

Evergreen content is well-optimized content that will always be relevant to readers. No matter the season or what’s going on in the world, people still want to know more about it.

The main challenge with evergreen content is keeping it relevant and ensuring that it keeps performing well. Even if you have secured a top spot in search, if you’ve not done your due diligence, another post may overtake yours.

Here are six tactics to ensure your content is not only SEO-friendly but that it also stays relevant and keeps ranking well.

Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

Your first order of business is choosing the right keyword for your evergreen content.

You are looking for a keyword that has a steady trend and a decent search volume. You can use an SEO tool like SEMRush or Ahrefs, but make sure to also check out Google Trends to double-check current and past interest in the topic.

What a decent search volume means will differ from brand to brand. If your niche is small and there are only a couple of hundred thousand people interested in your product at most, you can’t expect to see millions of people reading an article in it.

You also want to make sure the topic is relevant to your brand. This Ahrefs video has made Hubspot’s guide to creating an animated GIF famous as a bad example of keyword choice. This post used to be their top-ranking page a few years ago. And while it certainly saw some enviable monthly traffic, very little of it was relevant and convertible.

Source: Hubspot.com

Once you have a keyword list, make sure to check out the following:

• What is already ranking for it
• Whether there is a more lucrative long-tail variant available
• How difficult it will be for you to rank for it (with and without backlinks)

Answer a Question Your Audience Is Always Asking

You can approach the keyword question from another angle, too: do some research into the questions your audience tends to ask.

An SEO tool can come in handy once again. Ranktracker has a good Keyword Finder you can try. It offers insights on how difficult certain keywords are to rank for, helps you discover SERP feature opportunities, and more.

Google’s People Also Ask section is also a great way to find topics, and so is their autocomplete. The top suggestions are the most popular ones, so you can start there.

Check the trend for any interesting keywords. They might be popular now, but you can’t know if they may be seeing a current surge in interest without checking. (The Keyword Finder offers a keyword history feature to help you with that).

For example, the post below from Victoria Plum answers a question that a lot of their target audience is likely typing into Google: are toilet seats universal? The question is the first one that Google auto suggests when you start typing “are toilet,” so it’s seeing a lot of monthly searches (800, according to Ahrefs).

It is also highly relevant for the brand, and they can easily link to their product pages as well as other posts on their blog.

Source: Victoriaplum.com

Don’t Hold Back on Detail

In order for it to remain relevant for a long time and continue ranking well, evergreen content needs to be in-depth and detailed. Writing a short post that barely scratches the surface of a topic won’t be informative enough if you are writing about a complex topic.

More importantly, according to Google’s latest helpful content guidelines, content needs to have a certain breadth and depth to rank well. This is especially crucial when you are writing about a topic that is likely to be covered by thousands of other websites. If your post is more detailed and more informative, it will have a real chance to be seen by more people.

Check out the post below from Lanteria on how personal coaching can transform HR managers. It provides answers to some basic questions, like what an HR manager does and what core tasks they will need to tackle.

It then dives into detail about personal coaching and its impact on HR managers, how to measure its success, and even lists some of the most common challenges. The FAQ section at the end of the post adds even more depth to the article, as it provides bite-sized answers to questions likely to arise about the topic.

Source: Lanteria.com

Update Your Content Frequently

The key to keeping your evergreen content relevant is regularly updating it. This will ensure it stays the best possible resource on the topic and deserves to rank well years down the line.

Here’s what to bear in mind when updating your evergreen content:

• Add any new and relevant information to the post that didn’t exist when you last updated it.
• Rework the post if needed to better match what users expect from it now.
• Update links where needed to include better resources or the latest research.
• Make sure to change any dates mentioned in the post.
• Republish the article with a new date. This will give your content a significant boost.
• If you are changing the URL (i.e., from 2023 to 2024), don’t forget to redirect the old URL to the new one and swap out any internal links pointing to the old page.

Check out the great example below from Love the Night Sky about the planets visible in the sky tonight. This post is updated on a monthly basis. In fact, it is essentially rewritten every month in order to reflect the position of the planets in the sky.

This constant improvement will ensure that the post keeps performing well. Also, it is a much better choice to have one page on the website that covers this topic, as opposed to writing a new post every month on a separate page, as there is a risk of keyword cannibalization. Plus, the new pages aren’t likely to get indexed and ranked quickly enough.

Source: Lovethenightsky.com

Publish Original Research and Surveys

There is also a way to merge evergreen content with recent news: creating research-based content and conducting surveys.

If you cover an evergreen topic, like video marketing, but keep refreshing the data every year, you can tackle two birds with one stone.

This kind of content also happens to be an amazing link magnet. People writing about your topic will naturally link to your article, as it has the best and most relevant research and statistics available.

Take a look at Wyzowl’s video marketing statistics report. It gets updated every year (and they also keep their old research available), and the page has seen a steady influx of backlinks over time, even though their traffic keeps fluctuating.

Source: Wyzowl.com

Supplement Your Evergreen Content with Other Media

Adding another media format to your evergreen content can make it more valuable and more relevant over time. If the topic is already consistently popular and searched for, sometimes adding this extra point of interest can generate more shares.

For example, the post below from Sokisahtel features a couple of size charts that are very useful to the reader. They explain how to choose the right size of sock or stocking and how these sizes vary based on country.

Source: Sokisahtel.net

Offer Downloadable Resources

You can also augment your evergreen content with downloadable resources. An ebook, a checklist, or a spreadsheet, for example, can all be fantastic additions.

This kind of branded material that can be downloaded and used as either a reference or an aid will generate more traffic and more leads. Not to mention, it will also help you stand out in a sea of similar articles that have not gone the extra mile and provided additional value.

For example, Ultimate Meal Plans has a great post on free meal plan templates. They provide four different ways to plan your meals and offer a free downloadable template.

Most websites will give you one downloadable option, usually a printable sheet that may or may not suit your meal-planning needs. They have taken it a step further, making their page more valuable.

Source: Ultimatemealplans.com

Choose a Content Format That Lends Itself to Evergreen Status

Not all content formats are well suited to evergreen topics. Given the nature of these topics, you need to choose a longer format that will let you go to town with the details.

The formats that work well for evergreen topics include:

• Ultimate guides These are posts that are meant to be a one-stop shop for every relevant piece of information about a topic. For example, check out the Key One Realty Group post below to see a great example of what an ultimate guide should actually look like.

• How-to guides Similar to ultimate guides, they provide a step-by-step guide on doing something. Here’s one that recently helped solve an annoying little Windows problem.

• Reference tables This page on converting inches to feet is a good example of what a reference table can look like. Notice that they also provide an interactive calculator option alongside the table. Also, notice how the page is short: the topic simply does not demand lots of content.

Source: Keyonerealtygroup.com

When you select your evergreen topic, consider what format would work best. Don’t forget to also consider various content types you can use too. For example, videos go great with how-to guides.

Wrapping Up

Before you embark on the process of content creation, consider these tips to keep it relevant and ranking well long after you have hit publish. Note that not all of them will apply to every topic, so consider what might work best for your audience and your topic.