HOW TO CREATE EVERGREEN CONTENT & WHY IT WILL DRIVE YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC

Creating Content That Doesn’t Stop Giving …

Do you ever find you write a post, and 6 months later it’s still driving a really high percentage of your page views? That piece of content is evergreen.

Evergreen content is the sort of content that is timeless, always of use, it doesn’t date like the news and usually it’s timelessly resourceful (e.g. ‘how to curl your hair, a photography tutorial, 6 ways to style a boyfriend shirt, the ultimate guide to writing a CV, wedding guest style inspiration etc), and that’s why it continues to drive traffic after two weeks, 6 weeks, 4 months, 12 months, 2 years and so on. Basically it doesn’t go out of date, out of fashion or out of season.

These types of informative, timeless and valuable pieces of content are some of my favourite to write, and fortunately they’re actually my most popular and my most ‘evergreen’ too. Tips and advice posts I wrote In 2014 are still viewed today, because they’re ‘timeless’ and always relevant for someone seeking that type of content (I hope, haha). Whilst I personally didn’t start writing  career, wellness, blog and photography tips on my blog for strategic reasons (and there are good ones, evergreen content is a proven journalistic approach), they were actually just topics I was exceptionally passionate and interested in and seemingly you guys were too (which is great), what I’ve realised after 2 years is that this content is the kind of content that really keeps my blog growing. Through my own passion for writing this type of content I’ve seen how it can really drive and sustain your blog.

HOW TO CREATE EVERGREEN CONTENT AND GROW YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC

Incorporate ‘timeless’ content into your schedule

I fundamentally believe in blogging about things your passionate and interested in, it’s what gives a blog integrity, value and personality. Every piece of content I write is because it’s something I personally enjoy, find useless, am interested in or feel passionate about, so it’s no surprise to hear that when it comes to blog schedules I believe you should do what YOU want to do, not what others want you to, or what popular culture makes you feel you should blog about. But no matter what your passion, interest, hobbies or subject of choice, there’s always an opportunity to create the piece of content into ‘evergreen’ content. For example you may adore make-up and want to share your tips for applying make-up, evergreen, you may love fashion and share an outfit all about styling the boyfriend shirt, evergreen, you might be a huge foodie and share your favourite pad Thai recipe, evergreen, you might love travelling & share a photo diary and guide from your favourite city, evergreen. You get where I’m going right? Even the most niche or personal subjects can have evergreen value. So don’t force it, but use your passions and your knowledge or experiences to your advantage.

Ensure your content is well set up in SEO

The key to making evergreen content successful and genuinely helping it to be evergreen is by making sure your SEO is optimised. Everything from alt tags on your images, defining your keyword and optimising it’s density, adding meta descriptions, and having a related slug (URL). SEO is what will ensure your content is discoverable and shared when people are searching for the topic you’ve written about, whether that’s how to apply liquid eye-liner or a tutorial on SEO. The better you optimise your content, the more likely it is to be shown on a high Google ranking. I’ve shared a detailed SEO tutorial here if you need more tips and advice.

‘Revive Old Posts’ & back link to keep it seen

I shared the best plugins for boosting your blog traffic on my blog and one of the plugins which I recommended was ‘Revive old posts’, a plugin that helps increase the life of your content by sharing old features automatically across your social channels. Basically it ensures old content lives on and helps new readers discover features you might have shared before they found you. Great right? You can be specific about what content you share, but a great idea would be to focus on sharing and maximising your evergreen content … because it won’t have gone out of date, fashion or season … And more than that, don’t forget to link back to your evergreen content in new features you’re writing for further information or additional reading.

Be niche, and remember quality over quantity

Evergreen content is most definitely not just about catering to the masses. Back to point one, it really should be a case of maximising the content your passionate and interested in, and in fact the more focussed and specific you can be, the more likely it is to gain traction within your community and be discovered by people who are genuinely interested and engaged in the topic. So really there’s no excuse for not always staying true to yourself. And when it comes to evergreen content … quality is most definitely required over quantity. You want to be the destination and the answer, not a vague welcome to the topic.

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Evergreen content isn’t about forcing content onto your blog for the sake of driving traffic, no no no, for me it’s simply something to keep in mind when developing your content schedule. It’s thinking about framing some of your posts in a timeless manner, rather than a ‘hot off the press’ manner. But most of all it’s about staying true to yourself, your passions and your interests, focussing on depth of quality rather than quantity, and in reality just mixing things up.

There’s huge value in trend and news based content, and personal or emotive content, just as much as there is evergreen content. Finding the right balance for you is what’s important.

Did you find today’s post helpful? How do you plan your content strategy, do you write evergreen content?