The ultimate guide to evergreen content

What if we told you there was a way to make your website a place that will always be relevant, no matter the season or the year? Two words—evergreen content. What does evergreen mean in marketing, and how do you make evergreen content? Let’s dive into it.

Written by Lucie Simonova

evergreen content ideas

Battling the sea of content going live every day is not easy. Writing a clever headline will help you get the initial clicks, and structuring your post properly will make the visitors stay. But what can you do to have people return to your site time and again?

Writing content with no expiration date.

Dive into today’s blog post a little deeper to find out the definition of evergreen content, explore some evergreen content ideas, and ultimately learn how to create evergreen content that will help your website stand the test of time.

What is evergreen content?

Evergreen content is content that will always stay relevant. Because it explores timeless topics, the visitors can always come back to it for valuable information or advice, no matter the season, year, or trend going around. It works in the background, building authority and attracting traffic long after being published.

Characteristics of evergreen content

What really defines evergreen content is how it’s created and maintained. The most effective evergreen pieces are built with depth, clarity, and flexibility in mind, so they stay useful for readers and easy to update for creators. They answer questions that people continue to ask, use formats that age well, and are optimized to keep earning attention in search results year after year.

Key characteristics include:

  • Longevity by design – written or produced to avoid short-lived trends
  • Ever-present audience need – solves a problem or answers a question that remains relevant over time
  • Scalable value – continues to attract new audiences without needing constant promotion
  • Format stability – works well in formats that don’t quickly feel outdated (guides, how-tos, FAQs, glossaries)
  • Refresh-friendly – can be updated easily when small details change without having to redo the whole piece

In the world of digital marketing, evergreen content is a popular buzzword. Everyone is talking about it, and everyone is telling you to implement it in your content marketing strategy to achieve successful results.

The truth is, there is a reason why people discuss it so often. But if you’re just starting to dabble in online marketing, chances are you’re not sure about what evergreen content can actually do for you.

Let’s unpack that.

Why you need evergreen content

Evergreen content is crucial to building your brand’s authority. The higher your authority, the higher the level of trust and respect your brand has in your industry. Evergreen content is also important to boost your organic traffic, which is the free traffic you get when people find your site through unpaid search results.

Let’s take a look at why evergreen content is important in more detail.

1. Your website’s authority

Creating content with no expiration date is crucial for your website’s authority. What does that mean? Websites with authority are trusted sites that offer their readers expertise and valuable content. 

Readers like to return to such websites for whatever queries they may have regarding a specific niche over time. Since evergreen content doesn’t conform to current trends but should offer truly timeless and high-quality information, your readers will soon look at you as the expert in the field.

2. Organic traffic

Just like the readers, search engines too value content that is informative and helpful to the visitors.

Timeless, detailed content written with expertise for the right audience equals quality content that search engines reward with higher ranking and organic traffic boost.

Helpful evergreen content will likely get a lot of reshares on social media and references in other blog posts and articles. That means that such content will also lead to more backlinks, which according to Semrush, are still in the top 3 SEO success factors.

Still not convinced you need evergreen articles on your website? Take a look at how today’s blog giant, Ahrefs, increased their organic traffic to over 200,000 visitors a month thanks to the power of evergreen blog posts.

why you need evergreen content
Source: Ahrefs.com

Importance of evergreen content

Evergreen content helps your business maintain a steady foundation of relevant information that can be referenced, repurposed, and built upon. This stability makes it easier to plan future campaigns, support sales teams with reliable resources, and keep your brand visible even when you’re not actively publishing new posts.

It is basically the long-term engine of your content strategy. While trend-based pieces create short spikes in attention, evergreen articles keep working quietly in the background bringing in consistent traffic, strengthening brand presence, and delivering ongoing value to your audience without constant rework. 

How to create evergreen content?

The main process involves four key stages: finding evergreen blog topics, checking trends for your keywords, creating your piece of content, and optimizing the content for SEO. Creating evergreen content might seem difficult when you don’t know where to start, but if you keep these four stages in mind, every new evergreen content idea will get easier to produce.

Let’s take a look at these 4 basic steps of the process in more detail.

1. Find evergreen blog topics

The first step in creating evergreen content is to find evergreen topics by doing keyword research. 

Use an SEO research tool of your choice to look up keywords you’ve brainstormed. Here, according to Forbes, you should pay attention to “Search Volume”. 

For evergreen topics, this metric should generate at least 1,000 searches monthly. If they consistently bring that amount of searches and more, it means there’s a lasting interest in them.

2. Check trends for your keywords

The next step is to check your selected keywords for a positive trend over time. To do that, you can use many tools, such as Google Trends or Ahrefs’ keywords explorer

If you see a keyword having a declining trend, i.e., it’s losing popularity over time, then it’s likely not your best option. Similarly, if you see interest spiking only during certain periods of the year, chances are the topic is more trendy than timeless.

evergreen content content marketing
Check your selected keywords to see if they have a positive trend over time.

3. Get to writing

After finding your evergreen topics and checking them for trends, you can finally get to writing. To create truly evergreen blog posts, make sure to avoid adding specific years or other time markers to your headlines. 

To support your content, also be sure to include only updated stats, links, or screenshots. After publishing, it is also good to refresh your content once in a while and check that it doesn’t involve any outdated information.

4. Optimize for SEO

While crafting your article, make sure users will actually be able to find it. Here are some steps you shouldn’t miss when optimizing your evergreen blog posts for SEO:

  • Use easy-to-read format
  • Try to stick to a conversational tone – this is helpful, especially for voice search, which is becoming more and more prominent
  • Structure the post properly – use headings and subheadings with relevant keywords, bullet points, numbered lists, visual aids, and other important points of reference to guide your audience
  • Reference high-authority websites via outbound links
  • Go in depth  longer content is usually distinguished as more high-quality and ranked better by search engines. Plus, readers also like to find all the information regarding the topic they’re researching in one place.

Be careful though—longer doesn’t always mean better. If your topic is complex, don’t hesitate to dive deep. However, you should always think about the value to your readers. Are you writing for them or just for the word count?

How to find and create evergreen content that brings traffic

Not all evergreen content performs equally well. The find and create pieces that consistently pull in traffic, focus on those that align with real audience needs, target the right search intent, and remain visible in competitive search results. Using tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to find what people actually search for is a great start, but competitive research also plays a key role.

Look at what topics your competitors rank for long-term, and ask yourself how you could create something more comprehensive, more engaging, or better optimized for user intent. Sometimes, the biggest wins come from spotting content gaps in content that already exists, and recreating it better. 

It’s also important to periodically update your content with fresh examples, improve different SEO aspects, and keep an eye on how competitors evolve their own evergreen pieces. With consistent refinement and smart promotion, such as linking from newer blog posts or sharing again on social channels, organizations can keep a steady stream of visitors flowing for years after the original publishing.

Evergreen content – examples

Now that you know how to create evergreen content, let’s explore some high-performing evergreen content examples. Evergreen content comes in many forms, but the most successful types share a few key traits: they provide clear, actionable information, address common questions or problems, and offer lasting value. Among the most common ones, you can find how-to guides, case studies, detailed “ultimate” guides, glossaries, and tutorials. 

1. How-to guides

How-to guides centered around a timeless topic are an excellent example of evergreen content. They give your readers valuable information that they can use now and re-use at any point in the future. 

Think about an audience of content writers. What are some examples of evergreen topics that will always be relevant to them? Take a look at the list below to see some examples of content that will stand the test of time:

Content writers will always want to know how to structure a blog post, create a show-stopping landing page, or craft a killer headline to achieve the best results and wow the readers as well as the search engines.

How-to guides about a timeless topic are an excellent example of evergreen content
How-to guides centered around a timeless topic are an excellent example of evergreen content.

2. Case studies

What’s the best way to show your audience that you’re an expert in the field? A case study! They are truly a win for everyone. 

You can use them to show the amazing results your product or service can achieve in practice while giving a shoutout to your customers, boosting your website’s authority, and giving your readers a chance to connect with a story. 

Case studies make for great evergreen content examples as they can provide interesting insights into your brand for years to come.

3. Comprehensive “ultimate” guides

Detailed, comprehensive guides that answer a series of questions centered around a certain topic are another great example of evergreen content. 

These guides break everything down into step-by-step explanations, making everything more digestible to the readers.

For example, content writers will always ask questions related to content creation, from forming ideas all the way to publishing. 

By having all these questions related to timeless topics answered in one place, they can keep coming back to it over time.

4. Glossaries

If you are in an industry that uses specific terminology, you might want to consider creating a glossary. While you may not think of it as the most thrilling piece of content, it belongs among the best evergreen content ideas since definitions rarely change.

There may be beginners in your niche who want to understand your area a bit better. If you have a glossary on your page, you can help them learn your industry-specific terms with ease, and, they can always return to it later to brush up on their knowledge.

What’s also great about glossaries is that they often get referenced in other blog posts and articles, which can get you plenty of valuable backlinks! Last but not least, glossaries are also a great way to enhance your website’s authority.

evergreen content meaning
If you are in an industry that uses specific terminology, you might want to consider creating a glossary.

5. Tutorials

Just like comprehensive step-by-step guides and glossaries, tutorials also demonstrate expertise and can improve your website’s authority. 

Users will search for them to find answers related to your brand, and an informative tutorial can get them excited to start using your product.

For even better results, try to cover different complexity levels to bring benefits to all, from beginners to the advanced. To make them a little more engaging, consider spicing up the tutorials with videos of your product in action.

Need inspiration? Check out some Kontent.ai tutorials.

What about non-evergreen content?

Now you may be wondering—if evergreen posts are such a big deal, should you just abandon the rest completely? Absolutely not. Non-evergreen content is just as important. 

It’s in our nature to get hooked on trends and get “googling”. By including trendy topics, you can attract a lot of readers at a specific point of the month, year, or another season.

Trends are doing especially well on social media, so if you manage to promote your trendy content well, you can expect a lot of curious visitors coming to your site. Not to mention the possibility of trends helping you go viral!

The best you can do for your content marketing strategy is to mix them both. With timely content, people will come right at this moment, while with evergreen content, people will keep returning to your site over time.

Non-evergreen content
Non-evergreen content is just as important.

Want to turn a piece of trendy content into an evergreen article? Remove any time markers from the headline and the meta title. Also, make sure to update the in-body text to get rid of any outdated information.

TL;DR? Watch this short video explaining why you need both evergreen and trendy topics!

How do you make evergreen content?

In this article, you learnt what evergreen content is, we gave you some basic evergreen content examples to start with and you explored the first steps to creating evergreen content that will boost your organic traffic and brand’s authority.

And now it’s time we heard from you! Let us know if you have seen a shift in your organic traffic after implementing writing about evergreen topics in your content marketing strategy, if there are some evergreen content ideas that worked for you, or if you like to write evergreen articles or prefer trendy topics.

You can find us on XLinkedInFacebook, or Instagram and join the discussion there!

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FAQ

Evergreen topics are timeless topics dealing with universal issues that people are always interested in. Examples of evergreen topics can include technology, self-improvement, or a healthy lifestyle.