How to Create Evergreen Content That Lasts

Creating evergreen content is one of the most important parts of building and sustaining a long-term content marketing strategy. 

Some content has a short shelf life—even if it’s engaging and well-written. A highly topical blog post might drive traffic for a month or two, but it stops performing when the topic and search intent becomes irrelevant. 

But the best content is evergreen and built to stand the test of time. It continues providing value for readers and drives traffic to your website long after it’s been published. 

Below, I’ll teach you how to create evergreen content and implement an evergreen content strategy that lasts for decades. You’ll see some examples of evergreen content, learn why it’s important, and discover my favorite strategies for creating evergreen content. 

What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content is optimized to stay fresh and relevant indefinitely—and continues to perform well in the search results over time. Evergreen topics aren’t tied to a specific event or date, and they continue to serve a purpose while providing value to audiences at any point in time. 

While a particular news story or headline might see a spike in traffic in the week following a specific event, evergreen content will get steady traffic or rise in traffic over time.

The best evergreen content doesn’t have an expiration date, and it’s always relevant. 

Examples of Evergreen Content

Evergreen content can come in all shapes and sizes. Popular formats include how-to guides, listicles, glossaries, FAQs, buying guides, tutorials, case studies, and reviews.

Here are some specific examples of evergreen content:

• How to Tie a Tie
• 10 Ways to Cook Chicken
• How to Prepare For a Job Interview
• Best Weight-Loss Exercises
• Ways to Invest $10,000
• How Much Water Should You Drink
• The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing
• How to Train a New Dog

Regardless of the month, season, or year, people will always be searching for content related to these types of topics. When we search for “how to tie a tie” on Google, the top-ranking video is more than a decade old.

Unless people stop wearing ties altogether, this video tutorial will always be relevant. 

What Is NOT Evergreen Content

To better understand what evergreen content is, it’s helpful to understand what it’s not. 

News articles, statistical reports, current events, pop culture news, and seasonal trends are not evergreen. For example, none of the following titles qualify as evergreen content:

• Preview of the 2024 NFL Season
• Best Christmas Gift Ideas
• COVID-19 Updates For Restaurants
• New York Braces For Dangerous Heat Wave
• Fall Fashion Trends

While these types of content can drive traffic for weeks or months, they quickly expire and become irrelevant. 

Why Having an Evergreen Content Strategy is So Important

Evergreen content is so important because it builds and sets the foundation for a strong content marketing strategy. If you can create content that continues to rank high in the search results over time, you’ll get more website traffic and more domain authority.

This is hard to do if you’re only getting clicks on a page for a week or a month. 

But SEO is exponential. As one, two, or three of your posts drive strong traffic to your site over time, it signals to Google that you’re providing valuable content to readers. This increases the chances of other content ranking higher in the results, which continues to build on itself to scale your traffic. 

Here’s the type of trend line you can expect when you compare evergreen content against timely content. 

The timely content might spike early, but the evergreen content performs better over the course of time. 

Evergreen content also gets you a higher return on your investment. 

For example, let’s say it costs you $500 to produce a blog post. If the blog is tied to a news story, maybe you’ll get 1,000 clicks over the next two weeks—but then zero after the story becomes irrelevant. If the blog is evergreen, you could get 10,000 clicks per year for the next five years. Both pieces of content cost the same amount to produce, but one generated 50x more organic clicks. 

6 Tips For Creating Evergreen Content That Lasts

Understanding what evergreen content is and why it’s important is just the first step. But how do you actually create evergreen content? 

Just follow the simple tips below, and you’ll always have evergreen content to produce.

1. Pick the Right Topics

It all starts with researching and brainstorming the right topics. The exact topics will vary based on your brand and the type of content you’re producing. 

To get the ball rolling, focus on the long-term needs of your target audience. What’s something that they’ll always need to know? What will they always be searching for?

For example, let’s say you’re running an ecommerce furniture store. You may be tempted to write reviews for every piece you’re selling. While this may be useful, those posts immediately become irrelevant the second you stop offering those items. Instead, a relevant piece of evergreen content that would still appeal to your audience could be “How to Remove Stains From a Couch.”

Here are some of my favorite best practices to consider when finding evergreen topics:

• Use SEO and keyword research tools to identify popular content in your niche
• Go through your competition’s website, social, and video content
• Identify how high-performing content is being presented (blog, video, infographic, etc.)
• Look for gaps in what’s already been covered on a subject

For your content to perform well, it must be thorough and well-researched if it’s going to outrank other content on the same subject. So it’s worth taking extra time to pick the right topic to ensure you’re not wasting time producing something that might not perform, even if the topic is evergreen. 

2. Avoid Dates and Events

It’s ok to use stories and examples in your content. But try to avoid mentioning specific dates or events. 

Not only does this make the topic irrelevant to readers, but it could potentially be a signal to search engine crawlers that the content is outdated. 

Adding a year to your titles could make the topic more relevant. But you need to remember to update it for the following year (more on this later). For example, you could turn “The Ultimate Podcast Marketing Guide For 2024” into “The Ultimate Podcast Marketing Guide For 2025,” and so on. 

3. Prioritize Value and Search Intent

Don’t get too caught up in producing content for Google, bots, and search engines. That will happen naturally if you focus on offering value to your audience that aligns with their specific search intent. 

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you publish a blog, “How to Add Anchor Links in WordPress.” 

Having sections of this post for “What is WordPress?” or “Is WordPress Better Than Joomla?” do not align with the reader’s search intent. If someone’s searching for how to add anchor links in WordPress, it’s safe to assume that they already have WordPress and they know what it is. They’re also not actively shopping for a new CMS platform. 

While technically, those topics are evergreen, they’re not adding value to the reader, and ultimately the post won’t perform as well over time. 

4. Use Appropriate Visuals and Examples

Visuals and examples can really enhance content. I use both in almost everything I produce (including what you’re reading right now).

But be smart about the types of visuals and examples you’re using, as they can quickly add an expiration date to your content. 

For example, you shouldn’t be referring to typewriters, VHS players, or paper ledgers in your content. These are obsolete. 

You should also be careful with visuals. Let’s say you want to showcase a point by adding an infographic to your content. But if that image contains a year, it’s not evergreen. 

The same applies to software tutorials. If you’re adding screenshots or telling readers exactly what button to click, your content becomes irrelevant when the software updates with a new interface, design, and dashboard. 

5. Update Your Top-Performing Content

This might be the best yet under-utilized trick to ensure your content stays fresh forever. It requires a little bit of extra work, but it’s well worth it for the results. 

Use Google Search Console or Google Analytics to identify your best content based on organic clicks. Then go through the top results and update it to ensure it’s still relevant. 

• Change date or years (example: Best of 2023 to Best of 2024)
• Update statistics
• Replace outdated images
• Delete irrelevant stories or examples
• Add any new relevant information

If you’re writing a software review, you could replace the screenshot to align with the software’s new branding. You could also update the pricing information and discuss any new features of the software, like recently released AI-features that weren’t available when you initially wrote the review two years ago. 

6. Repurpose Your Content

In addition to updating your best content, you can also repurpose it to keep it fresh. This also makes it easier to produce new content, as you won’t have to come up with a completely new idea or concept.

Here are some simple ways to approach this:

• Turn a blog post into a YouTube video
• Turn a YouTube video into a written tutorial
• Turn a “Best Ways” post into a visual that can be shared on social media
• Turn an ultimate guide into a podcast episode
• Turn a podcast episode into an ebook

The list goes on and on. A single piece of evergreen content can eventually be distributed across six different channels, each in a different format. 

Final Thoughts

If you want to enhance your content marketing strategy and get more organic traffic, start by creating more evergreen content.

Do the research, prioritize value, and make sure everything you’re producing aligns with your audience’s search intent. Update your best-performing evergreen content every once in a while to ensure it doesn’t go stale. If you follow the tips and strategies that I’ve outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to create timeless content that’s always relevant.