What’s Evergreen Content?

There are some things in life we consider timeless or classic. In Western cultures, there are novels like Jane Eyre or Moby Dick, Shakespeare’s plays, Audrey Hepburn’s fashion on and off screen, marble kitchen countertops, or blue and white porcelain housewares (which actually date back to 14th-century China before they became big in the Netherlands). These days, the spread of information is a vast and ever changing landscape of new content vying for your attention, so describing your average company content as “classic” might be a stretch. That said, a lot of creativity goes into enterprise content, geared towards consumer questions such as “To buy, or not to buy? That is the question…”

That’s not to say your enterprise content can’t be evergreen. What do you associate with that word? Is it that one song you always hear at weddings? Or the plants in your garden that stay green all year-round? If you’re unfamiliar with the word, it’s one typically used in the realms of content marketing and digital marketing. And, it happens to be an incredibly useful part of every successful content strategy.

Evergreen content definition

Evergreen content is defined as content that stays relevant and useful to readers, long after it’s been published. And in doing so, it continues to deliver value to your business with minimal maintenance. 

Evergreen content helps your business:

• Draw prospects into your sales funnel
• Continue to drive organic traffic to your website
• Improve search engine performance
• Connect with your target audience
• Consolidate your brand as a reliable authority
• Take the strain off new content creation by building “hub and spoke” content off original evergreen pieces (can be repurposed). 

Seasonal versus evergreen content

Seasonal content is content that has an expiration date, because the information is no longer relevant shortly after it’s published (think news stories) or because it’s tied to certain times of the year, celebrations, or annual events. Statistics are another example of content that isn’t evergreen, because they need to be updated to the current time period to be relevant. 

Evergreen content isn’t just any old content that sits on your blog forever. It’s content (though most likely a blog post or article) that continues to have a high number of page views, shares, or likes on social media. And, it continues to grow organic traffic to your website because it covers topics that people consider important somewhat universally. Seasonal content has its own value, and both can’t and shouldn’t be held to the same performance expectations as evergreen content.  

Compatible evergreen content types

Blog posts, social media posts, and long form content can all reach evergreen content status. That’s because, generally speaking, it’s easier to implement a more robust keyword strategy, because you have more words to play with. However, other content types work too. You might want to try videos, infographics, diagrams, or images. Content types you might like to try when planning evergreen content into your content strategy include:

• Tips & Tricks Guides
• Infographics
• Tutorials* or How to Guides
• Glossaries, like this Content Marketing Glossary by Copyblogger.
• Lists 
• Product Reviews
• Blog posts or articles introducing common industry concepts
• Thought leadership posts on social media

*Depends on the content, as technical documentation tends not to be evergreen with every new update, bug fix, or software version. 

Acrolinx evergreen content examples

Rather than pull some random topics off Google as examples of evergreen content, we thought we’d share some of our own! Here are five examples of topics that work well as evergreen content because they continue to be the kind of content our audience searches for, year after year. They are:

1. Style Guides or Grammar Guides? Are They Different?
2. How to Successfully Scale Your Content Guidelines
3. Plain Language Writing: 10 Tips to Improve Content Readability
4. What’s a Content Style Guide and Why Your Company Needs One
5. What Is Tone of Voice and Why Does It Matter?

Keep in mind that evergreen articles are usually targeted towards an audience that’s just beginning to learn about a particular topic, so when doing keyword research, make sure you’re also researching the questions your target audience is asking. You might be tempted to think that the right keyword or two is all you need to make content evergreen, but understanding search intent is an important part of the content ideation phase.

While writing, remember that your content might be the first thing people land on, so make sure your information is accurate, clear, consistent, and inclusive of a broad audience. 

Maintaining evergreen content

When it comes to updating content so it stays fresh and relevant, Acrolinx was inspired by a few tips from the MSPC Agency. In general you should:

• Choose content that previously performed well, that’s starting to lag in performance.
• Conduct keyword research to update it with relevant keywords.
• Make sure maintaining evergreen content is part of your content strategy.
• Update your visuals if color schemes are outdated, or they’re not representative of a diverse audience. 
• Refresh your content to meet your current brand guidelines.
• Don’t make the topic too vague.
• Know when to update content versus when to write new content.
• Protect SEO that’s built around the content.
• Review your strategy around backlinks.

Green Acrolinx Score = Evergreen potential 

Acrolinx is an AI-powered content governance platform that improves the quality, fitness, and impact of enterprise content. It serves the creation of evergreen content by keeping your content clear, readable, consistent, findable, inclusive, and on-brand throughout the entire content lifecycle. 

Acrolinx scores your content for how well it aligns with your content goals and your business goals. It’s never been easier: Acrolinx gives a green score to content that’s performance-ready. Your only task is to use Acrolinx to monitor its performance and the platform will guide you to keep content evergreen, if it ever drops below your optimum performance level. 

Food = The ultimate evergreen topic! 

Okay, so that heading is debatable, but while we have your attention you should check out our new mini guide called “Recipes for Amazing Content: Delicious Tips to Create Evergreen Content.” It’s a cookbook for content marketing creators, managers, and strategists alike! You’ll discover parallels between evergreen content and cooking you never thought possible. Create and maximize the impact of your content with food-inspired tips on keeping content fresh, reheating content leftovers, and repurposing yesterday’s content for tomorrow’s success. Fun!