Creating evergreen content is the holy grail for content marketers. And thanks to new research from Buzzumo and Backlinko we now have the evidence for what works best. With key data on different verticals, from health to fashion.

What is evergreen content?

In simple terms, evergreen content stays relevant long past its publication date. Its search optimised and useful for readers over time, and as such search traffic continues to build. So, the benefits for your business can be significant. Evergreen content can drive traffic to your site, improve search engine rankings, and importantly turn visitors into customers.

Some examples of evergreen content might be:

How to train a new puppy
The best train journeys in Europe
How to make the perfect roast

What is proven to work?

Buzzsumo’s view is that evergreen content should make up 75% of your overall strategy. So what are the key ingredients for the most effective content, and what are the tricks and tips?

Buzzsumo teamed up with Backlinko to look at over 3 billion articles to understand more about evergreen content. Specifically looking at content formats and promotional channels. The key findings are as follows:

  • Lists and how-tos are the two most effective content formats
  • Podcasts are much less likely to be evergreen compared to a list post
  • Content shared on reddit increases evergreen factor considerably
  • Posts with 2020 and 2021 in their title are more evergreen
  • Content types with the highest proportion of evergreen content include ‘best of’ lists, guides, data-driven research and industry reports
  • Digital marketing, health and technology sectors publish evergreen content the most regularly
    SEO, business and fashion have comparatively low numbers of evergreen articles.

How to put it into practice

Of course, the tricky part of evergreen content is that a lot of popular topics have already been taken. So, you will need to add a fresh take or search for long tail keywords that attract a good volume of traffic, with not as much competition. This will make your content more valuable and more likely to move up the search engine results. The other thing to remember is that you still need to update your evergreen content, to make sure it maintains its relevance. This could be new findings or new articles to hyperlink to for example.

4 key things to bear in mind are:

  1. Write simply and clearly
    It is important that you write for beginners. Content that is relevant over time must appeal to a broad audience. Avoid jargon and technical language.
  2. Choose the right keywords
    There is no point writing a blog on a topic no-one is searching for. Do your keyword research before you start, using tools such as SEMrush
  3. Optimise for search
    Make sure you follow SEO best practice on your website pages. Getting the content right is not a case of job done. Add alt text to images, and put the keyword in the title, URL and throughout the body of the content. Also make sure you compress image to increase your site speed.
  4. Reframe your content
    Use your content in different ways to increase its impact. This could be via an infographic , training guide, webinar or white paper

Read the full research