Make Evergreen Content a Part of Your Arsenal

Caid Christiansen• June, 24 2015

Evergreen trees are robust. Unlike their deciduous counterparts, evergreen trees stay green throughout the year. They’re resistant to snow and all-around tough. Evergreen trees stay consistent; deciduous trees come and go in waves.

The same is true for content. Some content is evergreen–it stands the test of time and always seems to be relevant. Other content is deciduous; beautiful when it first comes out but less relevant months, or even weeks later.

Just as there’s a healthy mix of these two types of trees all over the world, and just as these trees are appreciated for different reasons throughout different types of the year, so too is a mix of content great for your business. Many businesses like writing about news and other time-sensitive information all the time. That may work for a while, but it’s essential that you write a good amount of evergreen content as well.

Just earlier this month, for example, Hubspot’s Pamela Vaughan found that 76% of their monthly blog views came from posts that were a month or more old, and that an astonishing 46% of their monthly blog leads came from just 30 individual posts. Some views do come from fresh new posts, but in general, the life cycle of Hubspot’s blogs seems to be a slow build that gathers more traffic over time.

That’s the beauty of content marketing, and it’s something that we’ve seen is true for many of our clients’ websites, as well: content written the right way has value for your business today, tomorrow, and a year from now.

People probably won’t be reading about a social media customer service survey from 2015 two years from now. They could still find value from a post about developing a robust strategy, however. News gets people in the door and does have some up-front value, but it’s important to write your posts such that they’ll still have value when they pop up in a Google search six months from now. If they aren’t written that way? Don’t worry–you can always go back and update old content, too.

Ultimately, a good content strategy will consider not only immediate wants and interests of clients, but future interests, as well. Like an evergreen tree, a piece of evergreen content stays consistent over time and can add lots of value for your business long after you plant it on your site.