There is a lot of focus on trend-fuelled marketing at the moment. The rise of TikTok has shown the importance of keeping on top of trends. Have images of different people and objects in the style of the Barbie movie poster peppered anybody else’s social media feeds recently?
But if you do any kind of marketing for your business, you’ve probably also heard of trend marketing’s opponent – evergreen content.
So, what is evergreen content, is it as good as trend-based marketing, and why is it important? Milk and Tweed break down everything you need to know about evergreen marketing and how to create evergreen content.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is search engine optimised content that revolves around topics that are always relevant to readers, regardless of the time of year or current trends.
The name comes from evergreen plants that retain their green leaves year round.
Evergreen topics vs evergreen content
Evergreen topics may seem like the same thing as evergreen content, but there is a slight difference.
Evergreen topics are topics that have a consistent interest and search demand: keywords that are searched for year round. These include things such as ‘how to lose weight’, ‘how to tie a shoelace’ and ‘football scores’.
Evergreen content is SEO content about an evergreen topic. This content will continue to be relevant way past its publication date, and therefore can still have a high ranking, even if the content is old. For example, a blog post about ‘top tips on how to lose weight’ or ‘how to tie a shoelace’ will contain content that is continually relevant to its readers.
However, a post about football scores that was published in 2013 will not be relevant to someone searching for today’s football scores. This is where the difference between evergreen topics and evergreen content comes in. Not all evergreen topics will have evergreen content.
OK, so what isn’t evergreen content?
Now that we know what evergreen content is, we better cover what it isn’t. Examples of the opposite of evergreen content include:
- News articles
- Current trends (Barbie movie poster included)
- Statistics and reports that will quickly go out of date
So, if you’ve just published a blog about the release of the new Marvel film that’s just been announced, and it includes a ‘rumoured cast list’, this content wouldn’t be considered evergreen as there will become a point where the cast is actually announced. Similarly, a news article about Rishi Sunak’s plan to stop new young drivers from travelling with young passengers also isn’t evergreen, as there will come a point where this is no longer ‘newsworthy’.
Why is evergreen content important?
Though it is important to keep on top of current trends to ensure your business stays relevant and fresh, making sure that you balance this with evergreen content is a crucial part of your marketing strategy.
Evergreen content helps to continually drive traffic to your site, as it allows you to attract organic traffic to old posts all the time.
This continuing rise of traffic means that your search engine rankings will be improved, and will therefore position your brand as an industry leader.
This isn’t to say that trend-driven content isn’t just as important. Trends do well on social media, have high clickability and could potentially have high search volumes (even if only for a short period of time).
How to write evergreen content
So we’ve taught you what evergreen content is and why it is an important element of your marketing strategy, but how do you actually go about writing evergreen content?
The first step is coming up with evergreen topics that are relevant for your brand. This will probably be the most difficult part of the entire process, so here is a list of common formats that might be able to help you come up with some topic ideas:
- Lists
- Top tips
- ‘How to’ guides
- Product reviews
- Videos
- Frequently Asked Questions
Once you have your topics, the rest of the content marketing process is fairly similar to normal.
Make sure you do your keyword research and choose the right keywords that will work for your topic. Once you have your keywords, optimise your page for SEO. Make sure to include your keywords throughout your content – but don’t keyword stuff. You should also remember to hyperlink to related evergreen articles – this will help to improve your SEO rankings.
When you’re writing your content, tailor it towards beginners. You want to create content for a large and recurring audience, so writing for beginners will ensure that your content is relevant for a large group of people. ‘How to’ guides and top tips are often tailored towards beginners anyway, so if you choose these formats, you’ll be well on your way.
Although the content is evergreen, some of the points or statistics may go out of date, so make sure to update your content every so often to ensure that your article will continue to be useful for years to come.
How Milk & Tweed can help
It can be difficult to stay on top of creating content, especially when there’s so many different types and you are busy running a business! The Digital Marketing team here at Milk & Tweed are experienced in all types of content marketing and will work with you to create a strategy that includes different types of content, tailored to your business needs.
