How to create useful evergreen content that drives traffic to your site (with examples)

Evergreen content is SEO content that always stays relevant on the internet. Unlike event-specific articles or visual content based on a current trend, evergreen content has no ‘expiration date’ and continues to draw traffic well past its date of publication. Due to its longevity, evergreen content is an unavoidable way for marketers to generate traffic on their site in the long run. Here are a few types of evergreen content that you can incorporate on your site:

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Research, case studies, and statistics

Writing an in-depth research article focused on a specific niche is tedious but rewarding. Original research on a topic which isn't well-covered establishes you as an exclusive and credible source of information. Detailed case studies or compilations of industry-relevant statistics also function as evergreen content. Even though statistics are subject to frequent change, older data is often used to draw comparisons to the current scenario which means that people will always be searching for it.

Instructional how-to guides

Often the first thing people do while working on something new is search Google for how they should do it. Social media marketers, for example, will trawl the internet for things like ‘YouTube SEO guide to get better ranking on videos’ or ‘How to generate leads on Facebook’. While the exact steps for accomplishing these aims will undoubtedly vary, courtesy of social media's ever-changing nature, the crux of the practice will largely remain the same. Also, writing articles tailored for beginners, such as ‘A beginners guide to using Twitter for business’, will always receive traffic even years after they're published.

Stories

People are always looking for inspiration, motivation, or just plain insight. This makes articles about rags-to-riches stories or failure/success of startup founders timeless. Stories that detail the struggles and obstacles that some of the most prominent personalities have had to face on their road to success are always readable regardless of their age. Think about it, how many times have you been inspired by stories of people like Jack Ma, Bill Gates, and Narayana Murthy? Also, people seem to have developed a fondness for quotes in recent years. You can leverage this by compiling inspirational quotes from people who are widely-recognised.

Best practices and common mistakes

While starting something new, people will always want to know what they should, and shouldn't, do. Detailing the practices of industry leaders, or highlighting common mistakes in a specific niche and how they can be avoided are easy ways to create evergreen content. Such content never becomes irrelevant because it focuses on the fundamentals which generally remain constant virtually forever.

List of online tools and applications

Compilations of useful tools, software, or practices make for great evergreen content. Articles such as ‘Five free tools to create visuals for social media’ are guaranteed to get a fair amount of organic traffic over the long period. While these lists are unavoidably subject to change, they can be easily updated to maintain their relevance over time. These lists can also be expanded to include things like books or movies that would benefit people of a particular niche.

There are plenty of types of evergreen content that you can use to drive traffic to your site. Also remember to do a Google search on the topic you're planning to focus on to gauge the level of competition it has. If your topic has been covered by multiple highly-credible sources, there are chances it'll be lost in the deluge of information that is the internet today. Finding a specific topic and presenting it in a unique manner is key to creating good evergreen content.