Evergreen Content: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

Written by Kristy Pruitt

evergreen

There was a time when those who wanted the latest news had to wait until 6:00 pm and turn on the TV. Then came cable news networks, which featured top headlines 24 hours a day. Now, if you want to know what’s going on right now, all you have to do is go online.

There’s no doubt that some of the most popular sites online are those that feature the latest news, gossip, technology and such. But if you’re focusing your content exclusively on what’s hot right now, you could be doing yourself a disservice, especially if you are looking for long-term search engine traffic. Including some evergreen content will help you keep the traffic coming in.

Content that’s evergreen will stand the test of time. It’s about subjects that are relevant today, but that will also be relevant years from now. Whereas that smoking hot news story that everybody wants to know about right now might be long since forgotten a month from now, evergreen content is always useful and interesting.

That’s not to say that evergreen content can’t be seasonal. While articles about Christmas aren’t particularly relevant in June, they are highly sought after later in the year. They make good content for sites that feature information about various seasons, or for stand-alone Christmas sites belonging to webmasters who have other sites that do well the rest of the year.

Need some ideas for evergreen topics? Try these on for size:

How-to articles – People are always looking for articles that explain how to do one thing or another. Most sites can work how-tos into their content very nicely.
Historical articles and accounts – History was once news, but the history that we still find interesting today will likely still be interesting years from now. Articles that offer a fresh take on something that happened a long time ago can bring in traffic quickly, and they can also keep it coming well into the future. Encyclopedic articles are useful for many years as well.
Hobby-related content – While new technology might change the way we participate in certain hobbies, the hobbies themselves will probably be popular for generations to come. Take sewing, for example. It was once done by hand, and now we have programmable sewing machines. But the subject of sewing is still relevant.
Articles about money – Money is one topic that people are always interested in. They want to know how to make more of it, how to save it, and how to put what they have to use more wisely. And that’s not going to change any time soon.

Every site should have at least some evergreen content. It helps bring readers in from the search engines, and those readers tend to be very interested in your site’s niche. There’s nothing wrong with sharing the latest news, but if you’ll add in some evergreen content too, you won’t have to worry about losing traffic when news is slow.

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