What is evergreen content?

Like any industry, content marketing is full of insider terms. One such term is ?evergreen content.? It is a term used a lot in search and marketing and yet few clients know what it is. If you?re one of them this post if for you!

Evergreen content

As the name implies, evergreen content is content that doesn?t wither and die. It doesn?t age as quickly as other content and can still be producing results several years down the road. It is foundational content that fulfils a need of your audience. In other words, it?s some of the most important web content you can produce.

Core concepts make great evergreen content. Things like ?How blogging helps your small business grow? or ?What you need to know about search engine optimisation? are both good examples of evergreen. They cover core subjects that will still be relevant in a few years? time and fulfils a need of your audience.

What does not make good evergreen content is anything that dates quickly. So news, statistics, press releases, trending topics, anything to do with celebrity, sports news, fashion, trends and other time-specific copy. All those things will be quickly superseded, which makes them quickly irrelevant to your audience.

Caution ahead

You do have to be careful when writing evergreen content though. Many of the main subjects are already taken and there are quite a few evergreen websites already. Sites such as About.com, Wikipedia.com, EHow, IMDB or answers.com are good examples of evergreen websites.

As you will likely know, some of those have less than favourable reputations because of the low quality of their content. This is not a trap we want you to fall into!

Good quality evergreen content is invaluable to even the smallest content marketing strategy. Done right, it is the content that keeps on giving. It also lends itself well to repurposing, which is another content tactic that can pay long term dividends.

Mixed in with other content forms, evergreen content is a solid foundation from which to build a content marketing strategy. Make it relevant to your audience, make it interesting, entertaining and informative and it will repay you in kind. Here at Coastal Content, we use it all the time to great effect and will continue doing so while it works.