When you think of an “evergreen”, you think of pine trees. They are called evergreen because they are green all year long. They don’t lose their leaves in the fall. I grew up in Upstate New York and my mom loved them.
What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is blog articles or videos that are timeless. No matter what month, year or season, the topic is relevant, makes sense and is interesting to the reader or viewer. It has a long “shelf-life”.
For instance, my articles on what’s going to be trending in January and Now’s the Time to Start Planning for Holiday Sales are not evergreen content and would not be relevant in March. Thus, I wouldn’t want my plugin, Revive Old Posts, to keep posting those to Twitter and Facebook after they’re no longer viable. (That’s a cool plugin that automatically and randomly shares blog posts to Twitter and Facebook — for free — and to the other networks in the upgrade.)
The last thing I want is to see a post on how social media helped Hurricane Harvey survivors shared now. I don’t want to delete the article — which I could — because it’s a good story and it may very well help in the next natural disaster. Most importantly, you don’t want to look stupid — and I’ve seen it on other people’s social networks.
When to Delete Obsolete Content or Edit it
Now, there are times when you want to delete obsolete or outdated content. For example, I’ve deleted all blog posts on Google Plus, because it’s gone. Sometimes an article may just need to be edited or updated. I do that with many of my older blog posts (Including this one!). Moreover, on WordPress and most blogging platforms, you can change the published date to a more recent date so it looks like it’s brand new. The trick is to revert it to draft status by clicking “Switch to draft” on WordPress in the upper right. Then, change the date and republish it. Your RSS feed will think it’s a new post and share it to your social networks.
Why You Want Evergreen Content
Evergreen Content is like that little black dress — timeless. Wear it to work or out for cocktails. To a casual date or a fancy party.
Furthermore, Evergreen Content can be shared anywhere and at anytime.
- Evergreen content can help boost your SEO ranking, helping drive traffic to your website.
- You can recycle it in emails, if pertinent.
- Send it to a customer who needs it as an answer to a question.
- Share it on Quora.
- Use a plugin like Revive Old Posts to get the content out there to draw new visitors to your website and help with your SEO. Note: don’t use Revive Old Posts until you have at least 20 blog articles published. You don’t want to share the same thing over and over again. Start with sharing every 6 hours, then as you write more content, you can share more often.
- Schedule them out with a tool like Sendible (affiliate link).
- Use them as promos.
- Use them to reply to people in groups.
Time-Saver Tip: I have a notepad (text file) with links to my evergreen posts, which makes it easy to copy and paste.
What Types of Content Work as Evergreen?
Evergreen content is a continual, valuable resource for your audience and potential customers. Here are some types of blog posts that can be evergreen:
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Lists
- Glossaries — like mine!
- Guides
- Reviews
- Interviews
- Customer testimonials, user-generated-content (UGC – when a happy customer take a picture or video of themselves using your product or service.), and success stories
- Case studies
- How-tos
However, update them as needed. An evergreen article ceases to be evergreen the moment something in it changes or is obsolete. Be careful when sharing data — make sure it’s current!
Don’t put the date or year in your URL or title. That will immediately date it. Especially in the URL. If you have to edit the URL for the post, that will create a new link and the old link will not work anymore and lead anyone who clicks on the old link to your “404 Not Found” page. That’s not good and hurts your SEO. I use a tool called Broken Link Checker on my WordPress site which will let me know when a link on any of my blogs or pages is bad.
So, what are you waiting for?!
The more you blog, the more visitors you will attract to your site and the more impressed Google will be with your E-E-A-T on the topics.
