There is a very good chance anyone reading this is already familiar with the concept of evergreen content; or content that is perpetually relevant. Most of us have experienced at least one piece of content that holds timeless in the usefulness of its information.
Creating content that is just as useful five years down the road as it was the day it was published is not easy, but it’s possible.
Think of content that is more or less the opposite of news, from a pure informational standpoint this content offers value that will not diminish... at least, not much.
What Makes Content Evergreen?
It needs to provide information that is not likely to change in the near future, a reference point if you will. When thinking of examples, immediately I think of some ‘How To’ posts:
Certainly these may be very different in 50 years (perhaps even 10 years?), but they offer long term value in terms of information.
These opportunities do not exist within every niche; however, evergreen content doesn’t need to be timeless to be evergreen, at least not in my opinion; it simply needs to stand the tests of time.
I believe if a piece of content is created that is still useful 1+ years later, even if not completely accurate anymore, it can be deemed evergreen – especially if it's related to technology.
Part of building evergreen content is updating it so it stays current and relevant for as long as possible.
Think of:
- SEOmoz: Algorithm Change History, Search Ranking Factors, Beginner's Guide to SEO
- What is Celiac Disease | National Foundation for Celiac Awareness
- Illuminati | Wikipedia
Now think of a pine tree with no sun or water -- the needles turn brown, become brittle, and eventually fall off and the tree dies. Sustainable content is no different; it requires maintenance to stay alive, to remain useful.
Each of the posts above are updated as soon as new relevant information becomes available to allow the content to better serve its purpose.
When the information starts to grow old (or weak) spend the time, put in the research, and update what is outdated... this is not always possible, but in many cases you can repurpose your content to still serve a valid need.
In this post I hope to provide you with a close look at the true impact of creating evergreen content. We will explore an evergreen library from someone who has put creating evergreen content into practice.
Putting Content to Work For You
Jason Acidre continually leverages his library of evergreen content to consistently acquire new traffic to his website. He has been able to continually send new traffic to his posts years after their initial publication through a combination of inbound marketing channels. The information is researched, accurate, and relevant to his target audience.
This is also a two-way street.
In return for providing value to his audience, Jason gets to reap the benefits of continuous traffic and brand authority growth.
Similar to the above examples, here are some of my favorite pieces of evergreen content:
- Discover The 90 / 10 Principle | Steven Covey
- Marathon Training for Beginners | Marathon Rookie
- How I Did 200 Push-Ups | 30GO30
- Migraine Symptom Map | Migraine.com
If you look at Jason’s posts you will notice a plethora of comments, high social share counts, and a natural profile of inbound links. This is due to the specific set of benefits factors offered from his content:
- Life-cycle: Pre-established content so all new visitors after initial publication are greeted with existing authority signals: comments, social shares, and high search engine rankings.
- Links build on themselves; evergreen content is a source for continued reference and will continually be linked to.
- Larger citation potential from press channels if content is in under-served or under-saturated industry
- Reference point for future citation on additional articles on same topic or closely related context
- Brand establishment and awareness
To consistently drive traffic to evergreen content depends on:
- The amount and quality of referring links (particularly linking pages that are also ranking for keywords that have substantial monthly search volume).
- If the content/page is ranking for keywords that are generally searched by your target audience.
- The page’s ability to attract new traffic through social shares (which mostly involves the title and the body of the content – if it’s compelling, relevant and up to date – as well as the visibility of the social sharing buttons).
Here's an example of one of Jason's posts from last year about eCommerce SEO strategies (first published on March 15, 2011) which has generated 4,556 unique pageviews in the first year:
The content is still continuously attracting natural links to it even after a year… in large part due to
- the visibility from readers who have shared the content via social networks and
- blogs that have linked to it (even a recent link from SEOmoz).
- Google has continually sent search traffic to it as its PA has grown over time.
The traffic to this post nearly doubled in the first 18 months (from March 15, 2011 to August 15, 2012) reaching 8,527 unique pageviews; primarily due to the three factors mentioned above...
Whether your traffic is search or referral driven, true evergreen content will continue to organically attract links as it continues to provide value to new readers.
New Traffic to Old Content from Social Shares
Depending on the authority and influence of the people sharing your content, a simple social media share can send large spikes in traffic.
Look at the traffic to this post published a year ago (August 30, 2011) that came six months later when someone shared the link on Pinterest:
In the above case the largest acquisition of traffic came six months after the post was first published, showing that evergreen content can continue to drive massive amounts of new traffic months or years after they are published.
For instance, another one of Jason's older posts, which also ranked well earlier in 2012 for the search phrase "link prospecting," hit the wire with some momentum; generating 1,796 unique pageviews in its first 30 days.
In the following 60 days the post continued to generate impressions at about a 50% reduction, but maintained some momentum, creating another 1,259 unique pageviews:
Continued Ranking Improvements Mean More Traffic
Sometimes when a piece of content adds enough value it will snowball, so as the word spreads, it gains links and popularity and in return increases in search rankings, and traffic continues to build...
In the case below unique pageviews to the post increased by 41.74% in the period from three to six months after publication over the first three months:
Link Momentum & Scrapers
Link velocity depends greatly on exposure, as Jason puts it:
"The initial wave of links usually depends on the impact on different social media networks. I have posts that receive 20+ natural, earned links within their first week of publication, like this, this, and this.
I believe the amplification of natural links depends on the exposure received through different traffic channels like social networks, communities and forums, blog/newsletter mentions, and organic rankings."
Here is a chart (extracted with the help of Ahrefs) that shows the link graph for the eCommerce post mentioned earlier:
One important item to note on this chart is that the link spike in May 2012 was due to content farms scraping a post from SEOmoz that linked to Jason's post from March 2011.
He believes that "the key" to evergreen content "is to make sure you can continue to satisfy visitor's expectations."
What About Comment Velocity
Comments are often used as a measure of audience engagement, so how do evergreen posts fair in continuing to generate comments?
In Jason's case, they do pretty well.
The majority of comments are received within the first 30 days, but his posts tend to continue to attract comments for the life of the post. Here is an example where the ratio of comments from the first 30 days compared to the next six months is 43:22. Still pretty good...
Social Share Velocity
Share velocity depends greatly on the type of post and the channels it is distributed across.
Using the two posts mentioned before as examples, the 'SEO for eCommerce' post out-performed the 'Link Prospecting' post receiving over 200 retweets in the first two months, since this post was able to gain links that sent traffic from a large number of sources (including SEOmoz).
The link prospecting post still did well, receiving over 100 tweets in the first month, but only around 60 in the second month.
*Rough estimates based on data from Topsy
Evergreen Content for Conversion
Evergreen content has not only helped Jason build his traffic and his brand, it has had a direct impact on his SEO consulting business.
For instance, the eCommerce SEO post assisted with the generation of approximately 14 new service leads, converting readers into prospects at a rate of 1.35%
In Conclusion
Evergreen content is powerful for building a brand, building an audience, and building a business.
Looking at the big picture, evergreen content can be used as a foundation for an overall content strategy to create sustainable traffic, brand growth, and increase the authority of your website.
A big thank you to Jason Acidre for being my study subject and sharing so much of his time and data with me.
Thank you for reading and please share your thoughts in the comments.
Guys, this is what I love about asset based strategies in general vs link bait style campaigns. Linkbait rarely adds long term value, rants rarely add long term value. Hopefully assets solve problems / address deeper issues that are going to be a problem for some time.
I think it depends what type of industry you're in as to the balance you need. Some industries, where information isn't as free-flowing and fresh, perfectly suit Evergreen content, but don't suit link bait. Others, where information is is fast-flowing and frequently changing, are more suited to link bait, but can also work with Evergreen.
Wil - Thanks for reading man.
I'm extremely fortunate that Jason contributed his time and his data to make this happen, he's one of the few content strategists that continues to produce stand-alone assets worth writing about.
I completely agree that an 'asset' will solve a problem or address a deeper issue; serving a purpose should be the first step in writing ANYTHING.
Thanks again.
This is a great post, a tough topic to tackle to say the least!! And, you didn't even mention "content is king!" one time. Kudos. Kudos, indeed!
Fresh content is the emperor ;)
Evergreen content works good. Thanks Nick
Nice, dude. I wanted to get more eyes on this and thought enticing people to write down some thoughts about some evergreen ideas would be a good idea..
I've thought of this before:
Write a post that is good, but due to time, obviously tails off a bit in circulation. (for instance, Gianluca's 'Wake Up SEOs' post)
Gianluca could reach out to a vet (Danny Sullivan) or an intriguing personality, and ask them if the thoughts still are watertight in present day situation and explain why not, asking him to comment..the new comment could definitely spark a whole new conversation, adding to the life and timeliness of the post through the comments rather than the original prose..
First of all, it makes the process of sharing a bit more academic and reintroduces the topic. If Gianluca did that, I know I'd be interested in what Danny had to say..I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one..
As always - thanks for your thoughts and I value your input... I like the idea, also seems remiscent of the concept that you, me and AJ Kohn were getting into on our last content strategy post, where AJ realized that often times while commenting on a post comes inspiration to write a new post.
Thanks for the post and being so open about your stats Jason. Your content is awesome. There are a couple of parts on this that I am not totally clear on. The 4 examples of Evergreen content given
How are these being classed as Evergreen? Is it because you know how much traffic they are pulling in on a monthly basis or links etc. Are they targeting specific keywords and ranking really well? When I viewed them, I didn't see many links or social shares. I think I may have misunderstood that part.
In contrast the examples from Jason are excellent. I love the way he creates big guide type pieces, updates then with fresh content and also tweet's these out again.
What would of been cool if you could of expanded on this
"Jason Acidre continually leverages his library of evergreen content to consistently acquire new traffic to his website."
How does Jason continue to leverage it, outside of people naturally finding it, referencing it in other posts etc. Is there specific tactics he uses to drive more links and traffic to it e.g specific outreach programs.
Also, how does Jason plan his "evergreen" content e.g. does he have a keyword map against evergreen pieces v just normal posts he writes about subjects. To me Jason writes quite large informational pieces - how does he distinguish evergreen posts from others. Is there specific criteria he is looking at e.g. search volume etc.
Ok, that's way more than I planned to write.
Hey Kieran - Thanks for the thought-provoking comment!
In the four examples that you cite above, I am classifying those as evergreen content because they provide information that is just as relevant today as it was when they were published, and will be just as relevant (and useful) 3 years from now.
RE: How does Jason continually leverage his content to create traffic?
Jason is one of the few people that is able to tweet, over and over again links to the same posts because the content he provides, as you cite above guides for example, remain useful - they continue to serve a purpose. Also, as I get into in the post - this creates a viral effect in-spite of itself... people are arriving at these posts for the first time, often not realizing that they may be months or even years old because the content isn't stale, and they are greeted with legitimacy signals like hundreds of tweets or 40, 50 or 60+ comments.
RE: How does Jason Plan His Evergreen Content?
Man that is a great question. Unfortunately, not one that I can answer; you're talking about the inter-workings of one of tier-one SEO and link-builder. Perhaps if we're lucky Jason will hop in here and provide some visibility into that himself.
Thanks again for great comment and questions.
One strategy we've used is to find what competitors have done badly (how to guides, Product reviews, list posts) and then just done a better job than them. You can even tell if there's an appetite for the content from shares that the original post got.
That's a great (and very smart) strategy... find what sort of worked but missed the mark, do it better, reap all the benefits.
May I can help with the question on "How are these being classed as Evergreen?"
I Believe I've written about how to write evergreen articles primer on this.
With the question: Is there specific tactics he uses to drive more links and traffic to it e.g specific outreach programs.
As I observe Jason in the office in Xight, he's a natural networker and loves to build relationship in the web. He loves to promote other people's content too as long as he sees them really good. Combined with the awesomeness of his content, links come naturally to his stuffs.
With this question: how does Jason plan his "evergreen" content e.g. does he have a keyword map against evergreen pieces v just normal posts he writes about subjects.
Jason is a prolific listener online. I see him browsing the web to see what people are talking about and take notes of those what are the possible "gaps" on what is already being written on the web and bridge that gap by writing another piece that may help his audience.
I can't really answer for Jason and I hope he's here address your questions but I hope my 2 cents helps.
"How are these being classed as Evergreen?"
The way he is classifying them as Evergreen is because the content in those articles won’t have to change for years to come. So with little or no maintenance, they have the ability to gain exposure for years.
Cheers Kyle!
Guess you were already on top of that question. :)
Thanks Nick & Kyle.
I don't think my initial comments were well phrased. But thanks for the answer. I know the term "evergreen" is for content that's timeless, but it also has a purpose e.g. to keep a steady flow of links, shares, conversation, rank for specific keywords etc. Those 4 examples given didn't seem to have those aspects (in relation to Jason's posts). If it was just the subject matter you were referring to then I completely get that. I just thought, when you said they were 4 of your favorite examples, they had performed really well in some respect. Apologies, I didn't really get that across in my original comment.
No worries, makes sense. I think more so what you're getting at are the common benefits of creating evergreen content, and not so much the essence of evergreen content itself.
Thanks for the awesome comment Kieran :)
RE: How does Jason continually leverage his content to create traffic?
Nick was spot on with his answers on this question. Also, alongside the social shares and natural links that the post are able to continuously generate, getting the evergreen content to rank for informational terms creates more opportunity for the site to acquire more links/shares/traffic. That creates a never-ending sharing/linking/traffic generating cycle for the content (makes the process almost automated).
RE: How does Jason Plan His Evergreen Content?
Right, I look at search volume (and especially the terms' search trend). In creating the actual content, I mostly do SERP research, before doing the outline of the content, and see what my possible competitors are lacking at (information, delivery, etc...). That allows me to create a far more comprehensive content and can easily assess if the projected content will be evergreen basing on the information contained as well as dates when other similar content were published.
"Part of building evergreen content is updating it so it stays current and relevant for as long as possible."
I think that's a great point, as many people view "evergreen" content as something you create and never touch again. The other option is to build structured content that you plan to update, and that's definitely what we had in mind when we built the Algo History - it even has its own CMS. Is that a fair amount of work? Absolutely. The updates take much less time than the original research and build-out, though, and they keep it an ongoing asset.
In the spirit of TAGFEE, I can tell you that, even though the Algo History launched last year, it still got almost 35K unique pageviews in the past 30 days.
Dr. Pete -
Thanks for your comment. I completely agree, and to your point, it makes a lot of sense to plan for structured updates in cases where you know you will be making edits and additions to the content going in.
Thanks for sharing those numbers, that's beyond my expectation and another wonderful testament as to the power of creating perpetually useful information. Cheers!
Anyone want to take a £10 that this makes the main blog? Thanks Nick (& Jason).
I've got my fingers crossed! Side note you guys make some seriously attractive websites...
Great post, Nick. I only have one issue with it: it hasn't made it to the main blog (at the time I'm writing this, anyway). What gives? More people should be exposed to this kind of material if we're going to build a more educated community that sees SEO as more than just links.
Chris - Thanks man! You're preaching to the choir... I've got my fingers crossed.
Hi Chris and Nick,
This post is definitely on our radar for the main blog, and right now it's just a question of timing for promoting it. We also need to work with all of the posts we have regularly scheduled and find a good time to slip this in.
Hey Keri - That's great to hear, thanks for the update. Cheers!
Rock on Keri! :)
Nice post, we all know that content is king and it is major factors for increasing traffic and ranking also. Social medai and contnet marketing is corelate with each other because it is best way to promote our content through social media mediums. Your technical points for creating powerful content is really briiant so now we can increase our conversions through our content.
Depending on your industry it might be harder to write evergreen content (think about how cell phones have evolved in the last five years and what information is no longer relevant) but that doesn't mean it's impossible. I think updating old content to include new information is a great way to keep your content relevant and as evergreen as possible.
Very true. And to mephista's point above, it can be tough to identify and serve needs within verticals that change as rapidly as cell phones.. but to your point updating content frequently allows it to stay relevant and continue to serve a purpose.
Thanks Nick.
Very true. I know you mentioned that earlier in reference to SEOMoz's algorithm update page - it just slipped my mind. So, sorry for that.
Phenomenal Nick and Jason!
I mean lot of people here in the community know what evergreen is and what are the benefits of building it but literally the data talk way more louder than words! And attract organic traffic and links that helps business grow.
Jason is indeed a smarty guy at building evergreen content.
Great research Nick! Awesome post!
Thanks so much Moosa!
I really can't thank Jason enough for taking time out of his busy schedule to grab all this data and answer SO many of my questions.. this post wouldn't be here without him. Cheers!
Thanks Moosa! Nick is seriously a content genius (for having this idea, for having it executed, and for sharing it to the community).
Nick,
Another great post. Evergreen content is a great way for sites to gain consistent traffic. I know personally, I'll be creating more Evergreen Content on my websites as a compliment to my time sensitive content and blog posts.
First of all thanks to Jason for sharing some real data!
Nick this a very good post & hopefully it's promoted to the main blog so more people get the chance to see it.
Do you feel that evergreen content is a good strategy for new websites with small audiences to launch with or is it better to build up your audience writing posts that have a greater propensity for going viral e.g. Emotive pieces?
Thanks a lot man, and yeah - the big thanks really goes out to Jason for being my guinea pig and being so open with his analytics data.
I think evergreen content can be instrumental in launching a new website. I have made a strong effort to only publish more 'evergreen style' content on my new SEO blog since the migration from my old site and the traffic is already 500% more than it ever was to old site which focused much more on timely and emotive type content.
Thanks Chris!
I'd say a mixture of both types of content will be a great strategy. The good thing about having both on post-launch is that it allows the brand to efficiently funnel its audience, given that they'll have more reasons to come back to the site.
"Evergreen" or constantly relevant content is important, however, from personal experience I've found that it's just as important to write about topical matters - even if it's time dependent.
The way I use it in many instances is by citing relevant content that is already on the website - i.e. if I've written about the ten best uses of a credit card then I might reference this article with a link in a piece of time dependent news about credit card debt... for example.
So I agree with you about evergreen content but without structure no one will ever find it - which is why I'm inclined to use a combination of the above.
Good point, and to be clear, I'm not saying anyone should focus solely on evergreen content, timely content is still hugely powerful, think of all of the massive news site's within just the SEO industry... site like SEL, SEJ, SEW, WPN, just for starters... but I think an overall content strategy needs to explore and plan for evergreen content opportunities where they exist.
Thanks for your thoughts.
well done sir!
that shoelace website - the whole thing is evergreen lol
It’s true that a nice and informative content can draw visitors and help a site get desired result, but we must be sure that the content should be really informative and useful. Content is always in demand and has wisely been entitled as “Evergreen”. The post is very good and has already proved the huge demand and evergreen..
The subject is very interesting, I do not have much information about this but the article has been very helpful to start with.
Great post Nick! I really appreciate the way you explained about the importance of content and how it is evergreen and important to get organic search.
Informative content grab the attention of people and people come to your blog or website to read about something new.
Again thanks for this post Nick :)
This is a great, in-depth post with solid strategy on how to capitalize on the evergreen content. However, my search led me here trying to identify evergreen content in heaps of data for high traffic sites. Any ideas on how to find those trends? Ideally with an advanced segment :)
That is an incredible (and extremely savvy) methodology... discover what kind of worked yet missed the imprint, improve it, procure all the profits.
There is no substitute for good content to achieve consistent high rankings and high traffic.
Thanks for your great ideas Nick!
The point about updating the content to keep it relevant is important. There are so many breakthroughs in technology and science, that a piece of content can become outdated very quickly.
There is no doubt that content is the most important thing.Quality content will not just attract a reader but will also force him to keep coming back for more on your website.
This may be the hardest part:
"Part of building evergreen content is updating it so it stays current and relevant for as long as possible."
It's one thing to write great content, it's another to be vigilant enough to revisit and update it as required when you may be more interested in moving onto the next thing.
Completely agree David.
But if you really think about it, and look at the data above, it's worth investing the time and research into maintaining relevancy as evergreen content seems to build upon itself exponentially.
Great post Nick. I will be implementing this on several of my websites.
Excellent post, the most popular post on our blog is one written in 2007 regarding getting over hangovers (a case of evergreen content), although newer posts generate higher weekly/monthly hits the hangover post continues to assemble a good amount of traffic per week.
That's a wonderful (and humorous) example.. but you're exactly right; evergreen content can exist in any vertical, it just has to serve a purpose and fulfill a need.
@Devin & Zach - Thanks a lot guys, even bigger thank you to Jason!
@Olivier - Absolutely, in terms of building mindshare through branding for expertise and legitimacy I feel evergreen content is the best route.
@ Mr. Rangen - Ha yes made a strong effort to avoid that :) Thanks for the compliments.
Well Done Mr. Eubanks
Nick, very done. I will add that in addition to staying relevant over time, evergreen content usually attracts the most qualified visitors, which in return generate leads (as you mention) but also generate return visitors that often times become active members of your community. Thanks again
Great article! What % of content do you tend to aim for/achieve for evergreen versus trending content?
For me personally I try not to create trending or time sensitive content, simply because it's too competitive... it's the business model for so many other publications in this industry, think of of any of the large search engine sites; watch, land, journal, etc...
My personal goal with SEO Nick is write content that remains useful or provides a perspective that will not get stale.
Thanks for the comment Ryan!
Well done Nick. Always insightful...
Great Post Nick! It's true about what you say about Evergreen content - when you've got it, you know it! I also reference these two SEOmoz pages every now and then for a good refresher:
Algorithm Change History, Search Ranking Factors
Great Stuff : )
Evergreen Content is really best... but creating evergreen content for larger audience is hard. Some time your content is to normal that lots of people are speak or shared about it.
Finding Evergreen content is hard, but topics that always stay fresh are: weight loss, war, debt, scandal, new people and new places but same story.
Phew a breathtaking post. But seriously, coming up an ever green topic is the hardest nut to crack. What appears to me (and irritates me as well) is that all the good topics have already been covered by other writers. J Ok let me come to the point.
My question – Can I write on things that have already been covered by other writers? Just because someone else has written some great posts (or some craps), it does not mean that I cannot write on the same thing and add some value. What you think?
Hey Debdulal -
Thanks for the comment. To answer your question, in my opinion, YES! Absolutely. I actually enjoy reading about topics that have already been covered as long as the writer is adding new information or a new perspective. I think as long as the content adds to the value of the topic it's always worth creating more information about it.
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Thanls all!