Evergreen content, aka ever-useful content, is a great way to continually attract users and earn SEO points without having to eternally create new posts. Despite its title though, evergreen content doesn’t always last FOREVER because new information becomes available and trending keywords change.
Despite not lasting forever, evergreen content can still be a valuable tool for you though. All you need to do is refresh your evergreen content once a year-ish to keep it current and up-to-date. Regular updates to evergreen content will ensure that you keep up with your competition in terms of news visitors, leads and eventually, conversions.
As always our goal is to make your life easier, so we’ve put together a few handy-dandy tricks to easily update your evergreen content:
Re-green your Most-Popular Content
Use your analytics tool to determine what content is most-viewed, and most-popular, by your users. Take the top 5 or 10 most-popular pieces and freshen them up a bit. ‘Freshening ‘em up’ can include:
- Adding newly-discovered information
- Writing a new, more current, introduction to the older article
- Add in additional tidbits and factoids
If you have mixed feelings about updating content and calling it new, then when you add new information you can also add a note letting people know this is an updated, previously-published post. Understand something about evergreen content though: first, not everyone who would find it interesting has seen it already—and they deserve the right to stumble upon it, and secondly, evegreen content often warrants a re-read.
Add Links to New Content/Posts
Your evergreen content may be perfectly fine the way it is. If you don’t think anything needs changing (or simply don’t have any new info to add), then freshen it up by adding links to posts/content that you have created since the evergreen content’s publishing. Use related links, obviously. This can include internal and external links to your own website.
Freshen your Call to Actions
You may have changed your call to action strategy to something more more effective. You likely didn’t update your call-to-action on your older posts though. Use this as a content-refreshing opportunity. If you haven’t refreshed your call-to-action strategy in a while, consider these killer call to action strategies.
Change the Type of Media
When you started creating evergreen content you were likely only using one type or media format. And it was likely a blog. Consider taking your most-popular content and experimenting with different content formats. Try out podcasts, videos, ebooks, whitepapers, audio books, etc. After all, not all your readers digest information in the same way.
(Re)Market the Hell Out of It
If your evergreen content is your most-popular, take time (that you likely didn’t take at the time of publishing) to create a marketing push around it. This can include: (re)posting to your social networking accounts, submitting links to related forums, adding a content teaser to your landing page, etc. If you have long-term followers and clients then you likely will want to add a blurb that this content is “back by popular request”.
Optimize and Test
If you haven’t tested and optimized your evergreen content in the past, try it now. It can give you a better idea of what is successful and how your quasi-popular content can become your rockstar content. By testing out the efficacy of your keywords, auditing page titles, header tags, image alt text, etc you can give your evergreen content a quick boost.
For more content tips, click here.
Freshening up your content is a great way bring super-popular content back in the limelight, while at the same time attracting new users and customers. Updating old content is easy to do and should only take a couple of minutes, but the lead opportunities generated should at least double.
Robin Wilding is a professionally trained Canadian journalist striving to bring journalistic-era intergity to online media. She has a second degree in Political Science--with a focus on International Relations and the developing world. Currently Robin is a contributor to several technology publications, including Brajeshwar.com, SocialTechnologyReview.com, HostingIndustryWatch.com, AnimationCareerReview.com and CompareBusinessProducts.com. She also works for several web developers; and does ghost writing for several high level executives within the technology sector. Robin's work is showcased in her portfolio: http://shownd.com/robinwilding
