What is evergreen content? Plus, how to create the most lucrative content of all!

Evergreen content is something business owners are told they need; but something most business owners don’t understand. “What is evergreen content?” is a question we’re asked quite often, so we thought we’d write about it to clarify a few things.

What is evergreen content?

Evergreen content is content that works over a longer period of time. It attracts traffic, leads, social shares and sales for months or years after it’s published.

To do so, it must be relevant over a longer period of time.

So for example, an article covering the launch of the new iPhone will attract traffic for a few days or perhaps a few weeks, but a review of the new iPhone will attract traffic indefinitely, or for as long as there is demand for the product.

If that sounds simple, that’s because it is. However, creating evergreen content that works is not. An evergreen article needs to tick a few boxes to excel beyond what we would call a “trend article”, or one that doesn’t stay relevant for very long.

How to write a successful evergreen article

Addressing a need

First of all, your article needs to address a need. This article, for example, answers a question. And so, this article is an evergreen one.

However, you don’t have to answer a question. You could write a list-type article, a how-to guide, a top tips article, a facts and figures article or a review. So long as the article has the purpose of adding value to your audience’s lives, it can be evergreen.

Presentation and readability

Articles should be easy to read with the most important points clearly headlined and available towards the top of the article. Images and videos should be used throughout the article if they add value to your points or can break up the content so it’s better presented.

We also recommend you break up paragraphs as much as possible. Paragraph density can give the appearance of simplicity or complexity.

A six-line paragraph is too much in most cases. In this article, for example, we use three-line paragraphs max and as we’re sure you will agree, it’s easy to read and to get value from.

Headlines and sub-headings

The headline of an article is the first thing a visitor will read. To get yours right, an emphasis on structure, keywords and length is needed.

According to Outbrain, the sweet spot for headline length is 60-100 characters. We agree with this research. The headline of this article, for example, is 81 characters.

You will also notice that we have included our main keyword phrase in it, “What is evergreen content?”, as well as a teaser, “Plus, how to create the most lucrative content of all!” and these work together to describe what visitors can expect from our article.

And so, Keyword + description within 60-100 characters is what you should be aiming for.

SEO

Evergreen content only works if it can be found, and unless you’re going to promote your article over social media constantly, then Google is the medium to concentrate on. Google is not easy to crack though; especially if you have a new (low-authority) website.

You may have noticed by now that we have mentioned the keyword “What is evergreen content?” five times in this article. Hopefully, you won’t have been keeping count because our aim was to fit the keyword in as naturally as possible; and that’s what you should do.

In a 500-1000 word article, mentioning your keyword five times will boost your chances of showing up in Google’s first two pages of results considerably. But you need to get keyword density right for it to work. This is how it will go down, according to density:

• Mention keywords too infrequently, and you’re irrelevant;
• Mention keywords within a certain range, and you’re at the sweet spot;
• Mention keywords too much, and you’re spam.

When you have finished writing your article, copy and paste it into http://textalyser.net/ to check your keyword density. The density for our keyword is 0.7%, which is perfect.

That tool is also useful for getting a readability score according to the Gunning-Fog Index (which measures the readability of English writing). On a scale of 6-20, with 20 being hard, the readability score for this article is 6.6% – a very, very good score.

Overall

Taking the effort to plan and create this type of content really pays off. However, evergreen content must serve a need and be presented in such a way that it’s readable for all levels, and you must SEO your article without sacrificing readability or quality.

If you don’t have the time to go through this process, then we can help. We work with SMEs and larger businesses to develop long-term valuable content.

Contact us today to find out more.