What is an Evergreen Article? (And Why Should you be Writing Them?)

Sometimes we all get behind on blog writing, and we get the all too common ‘blog guilt’ – causing us to churn out a quick post that probably isn’t our best work. You know what I mean, the occasional post with very little substance. Variety on your blog is important, and you obviously need a mix of longer and shorter posts, as well as current affairs related posts, something trending, and posts that capture the moment or mood you’re in.

However, the content that actually will be the most beneficial to your blog are those articles or posts that will remain relevant for a long time – the evergreen content.

A blog built on a solid backbone of posts that are ‘timeless’ and of good quality will bring visitors to your blog for months to come. Of course, we still need fresh content to keep our blogs up to date and constantly renewed so that we fair well with search engines and on social media. Yet the evergreen article is one that still seems fresh and relevant months or even years after it’s been written. Also if you’re short of time to constantly blog, focusing on writing evergreen articles will really help to keep visitors coming to your site.

Then as well as promoting the new posts you write, you also need to put some work into pointing people in the direction of your evergreen posts. Suggest these posts in your relevant articles at the bottom of your posts, and also build a social media strategy around promoting these posts by sharing them to relevant communities and sites. In other words, become an expert on this topic and use these evergreen posts to build up your authority in this area.

Writing blog posts that draw readers in

Evergreen content is the type of post that provides something useful to the reader, and will continue to do so even once the current social buzz or media stories that may have inspired the post have calmed down. Anything that is centred on a topic that is likely to go out of date is not considered evergreen.

Lists, how to guides, infographics, product reviews, instructional information and opinion pieces are considered unlikely to go out of date, unless they contain a lot of very specific and timely details and statistics.

If you base your evergreen articles around the keywords that you would like your blog to rank for, well-written or attractive posts will catch the attention of readers looking for information on a particular subject. Your post will hopefully begin to make it’s way up the rankings for your particular keywords once it has seen some social sharing. Done correctly, you should see your evergreen articles as the gateway to your blog for many of your new readers.

This article provides some great information about writing content that will last and last if you’d like some further reading.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve used this as a tactic on your blog! We’d love to hear about your experiences.