Updated on August 15th: Just a day after we published this article, Google announced they will use a new algorithm with regard to search results prioritizing. This update is going to improve the systems’ understanding of what information remains useful over time and what becomes out-of-date more quickly. If the answer to a user's question doesn’t change over time, Google will continue showing pages that have the best explanation, regardless of how old the page is.
This update proves right our approach to content creation: mixing timely and trending content like "SEO News July 2019" with the evergreen topics like "How to remove a cloned website" for better online visibility. If you need any assistance from the company that gets ahead of Google updates, just contact us.
To help you understand better what evergreen content is and how it works, we will explain it using a specific live example from this very blog.
Evergreen Content Example
In November 2017, we wrote an article on how to remove a cloned website based on our own experience. Back then our website was cloned, so we had to find a way to remove the clone and prove our uniqueness and legitimacy to Google. Duplicate content is among the things Google likes the least, so to prevent rankings drop we had to act immediately.
What happened next is in the article, but eventually thanks to the prompt reaction of our teams, the cloned website was successfully removed and our online reputation was preserved.
When the battle was won, we decided to share our story with the online community to help people who happened to have the same misfortune.
It turned out that every cloud indeed has a silver lining because by writing the tutorial on how to deal with a cloned website, we unknowingly created a piece of evergreen content.
As seen from our Google Analytics, that article is one of the most popular pages on our website by date. Regardless of the amount of time passed since we published it, the article still drives traffic to our blog and has been driving it all along.
So What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content remains relevant to users’ queries long after its publication date and is still sought-after by users over a period of time.
Evergreen Topics List
Depending on the market niche that you are in, there are specific sets of evergreen topics. To properly define them, you have to understand which issues your target audience encounters on a regular basis and what solutions your prospects are searching for online the most.
The only common thing that evergreen content has to possess for all of the niches is to refer to a problem that people will never stop having.
For example, if you’re promoting a vegan food delivery, the article named “10 Vegan Foods That Will Keep You Full” can generate traffic to your blog and become evergreen as newbie vegans will continue looking for meat substitutes till the cows come home.
If you are offering relationship coach services, the evergreen topic for your blog can be “What Questions To Ask On a First Date” because people will have those moments of awkward silence as long as dating is legal.
The article on website cloning worked for us because copyright theft is an ongoing problem that occurs today as it occurred back then.
Below we have collected 7 evergreen content ideas that you can use on your website:
- How-To Guides
- The History of...
- Interviews
- Definitions
- Success stories
- Recovery from failure stories
- Beginner’s Guides / Advanced Guides
The format that worked for us will definitely work for any other website provided that an issue in question still makes people look for answers online.
Not only you have plenty of info of the past events within your industry, but they are unlikely to change over time.
People will always be interested in what other people are saying, especially if it’s not regular people but some thought-leaders that you managed to interview.
Every industry has its own set of terms, acronyms, and abbreviations that many people find confusing and are looking for an explanation online.
“We are just a startup, we don’t have any success stories to share yet”, well you can try the idea number six then. Just kidding, the thing is, for many launching a website or creating a very first logo is considered success (and in a certain way it is), so even a startup business has plenty of success stories to share already.
Every business has its ups and downs and instead of concealing that something went wrong, you can lay cards on a table and tell your recovery story. Being partly a how-to guide and an interview at the same time, it can eventually become your piece of evergreen content.
For example, one of the famous SEO blogs recently stopped posting without any previous warning. After a noticeable period of silence, they approached their audience with an explanation of what happened and why they haven’t posted for so long.
While for Google it didn’t matter and the website still lost their positions in SERPs for not updating their content, the live audience felt valued and continued following the blog.
It can be hard sometimes to determine what language to use on your website. Instead of being in two minds about whom to target: beginners or pros, target both with separate articles.
Analyze and Conquer
A very important part of content production is checking your blog posts performance using website analytics tools. This will help you to spot articles that people are keep coming for and then promote them for even more traffic and engagement.
If you need any help determining the best evergreen topics for your website, creating evergreen content, or if you have any other SEO content marketing-related questions, don’t hesitate to contact our team.
Last updated on November 28th, 2019
