Developing evergreen content for your website is an important element in your overall strategy. Evergreen content is information – pages or blog content – that remain relevant and don’t get old. It’s a practical approach to making your investment in content pay off long-term.
The best evergreen content is directly related to the core information on your website. It complements more timely news and information and can help boost search rankings over time as well. But you can’t just post and forget about it; even evergreen content will need the occasional update to ensure that it remains relevant over time.
Here are eight ways to create evergreen website content (with examples of websites that are doing it well).
1. Provide Case Studies
Case studies and testimonials from people who use your product or service never go out of style. These stories show users the value of what you have to offer and provide backup for investing their time or energy with you.
The nice thing about these content types is that they come in plenty of different forms. You can write a case study or whitepaper and publish it on your website and share it on social media channels periodically.
You can also create a video or audio version of a case study or testimonial from a loyal user or customer.
The key element to an engaging case study or testimonial is the story. Why did the product or service benefit the user? How can that information be relevant to other people? Explaining exactly how it works and why it is important is where you should start.
Neil Patel has a solid guide on how to write a case study if you aren’t sure where to start.
2. Create Lists
Users love lists. They don’t have to really think when engaging with this type of content that ranks something from best to worst.
Create lists that relate to your product, service or industry to drive website traffic and lead users to your website.
While you might not have enough content variety of focus on lists that relate solely to what you do, it’s easy to create lists for information related to what you do.
Consider creating lists that highlight the best books related to your website, or best podcasts or best tools that can be used with your product or service. Don’t feel marries to a top 10 list. Top 5 lists can be equally engaging. Let the nature of the content dictate how short (or long) the list will be.
3. Showcase Team & Company Stories
Tell the story of your small business, company or team. Users love to know the background of how something came to be or read an inspiring tale of success. They also like to see the faces and people behind online entities.
Create evergreen content pages that tell your story. This can be in the form of a company history, question and answer post with the founder or person in charge of the website or a short video.
Then consider adding more robust About Us pages and highlight employees in an interesting way. Include images or fun facts that website visitors can relate to as they get to know the team.
4. Develop How-To’s & Tutorials
Show users how to use your information, products or resources with how-to articles or videos and tutorials. This type of content can be valuable for users that need information and can increase the amount of time user spend on your website as they try to learn something new.
There is a pretty fine art to how-to and tutorial content. It must be clearly understandable and easy for users to interact with to be most successful.
This type of content should focus on step-by-step instructions aimed at users who have no idea how to start with the topic at hand. Keep each individual piece of content, or lesson, fairly short with a distinct focus and build content in blocks that can continue the learning process for users.
5. Invest in Data and Research
Primary research can be powerful content because it is exclusive and informative. It can, though, be the most expensive and labor-intensive type of content to create.
There are plenty of ways to highlight research related to your website identity. Showcase trends in the field, survey users to gather information and even work with a consultant or university to collect data in a specific field. Then provide an in-depth analysis of this information as it relates to your area of expertise.
If you don’t have the resources to conduct an actual study, provide available stats and information as they relate to your overall website content and brand. A fun stat collection or infographic can also help establish your authority in a certain field. (Just make sure you are linking to authoritative information.)
6. Create a Glossary or Guidebook
Just like research and statistics, a glossary of guidebook can establish your website as a top source on a certain topic. Create a glossary that explains jargon or language used in your industry in a way that anyone can understand or create a guide to how your “thing” works.
You’ll be amazed at how popular simple informative content can be. The trick to creating it successfully is to write or film this content in a most basic way. It should be easy to understand and digest for a user who has never heard of what you do. (When you first start creating this style of content, it might seem very basic but that’s because you are likely an expert in your field.)
7. Use FAQs Wisely
Frequently Asked Questions pages can be some of the most-visited links within a website. Take advantage of this popular page type by providing common FAQs. (It’s an easy and effective form of evergreen content.)
Almost every website has some type of question that visitors want to know the answer to. Start small with only a handful of questions, and continue to grow FAQs based on feedback from users.
Make the format easy to understand if the number of questions is long, and consider grouping questions by category or allow users to search questions and answers.
8. Update Posts and Content
“Evergreen content” isn’t never updated content.
Even the best evergreen information needs a refresh every once in a while. Plan to check on these pages and posts annually and update as needed. Note the updates in the copy, so that users know the information is still fresh and relevant.
Conclusion
Including evergreen content in your website design is important for a number of reasons. It is content that helps your website show its importance and credibility and because it is not time-sensitive is always usable for readers. It can help grow search traffic over time. And creating evergreen content is an easy way to keep users engaged.
Having a plan to include some of the evergreen content types above is a valuable part of your overall website design and content strategy.