Merriam-Webster defines ‘Evergreen’ as “retaining freshness or interest”. This is often something that is used when describing trees but it also applies to the digital world. This article will be focused on evergreen content and what it means for websites. This will include some specific examples, the difference between time-sensitive content, and more.
This is content that is able to stay fresh and relevant for many years. These articles are usually designed to cover a topic in-depth and provide as much information to the reader as possible. This type of content does not focus on trends, news and things that constantly change.
Instead, it focuses on topics that (generally) stay the same. Some small things might change over the years but the bulk of the article will remain relevant for the reader. It doesn’t matter if someone reads it in 2015 or 2022, the content should still apply (for the most part).
Let’s take a look at some examples of content that would be considered to be evergreen:
An article titled ‘How To Make A Pizza From Scratch’ would be considered evergreen content. This article would include the various steps needed to create your own pizza at home. It would include the ingredients needed, cooking time, prep time etc. The goal is to provide the reader with as many details as possible to help them to create pizza from their own house. Some things might change over the years in terms of the different ingredients used, tools used etc. For the most part though, the general idea of cooking a pizza has stayed the same for many years and likely won’t require many updates.
Another example of evergreen content would be an article titled ‘10 Tips For New Mothers‘. It would focus on sharing various tips for new Moms after they give birth to their first child. This will include things that worked for the author and different ideas that their friends have shared with them. There might be new ideas and techniques that come out over the next few years but you can always edit them in later. The general idea of the article and majority of the content should stay the same for years to come.
Time-sensitive content is produced with a limited time frame in mind. It could be a news story that is only relevant for a short period of time. It could also be an opinion piece based on a current event.
This is content that is only relevant for a short period of time before it becomes outdated. That news story is probably not going to be still relevant in six months months time. If it is, it will need a lot of updates. An opinion piece based on a current event is relevant when you write it but will lose relevance over time.
An example of time-sensitive content would be an article about an NBA player that gets traded to a new team. This article might generate readers for a few weeks when the story is fresh. After a few weeks have passed though, it would lose traffic and relevancy as fans have moved on to the next trade and piece of news.
Another example of this type of content would be an article that focuses on the amount of deaths related to COVID-19. In order for your article to stay relevant, it would require daily/ weekly/ monthly updates to the numbers. If you stopped updating it for a few months, it would become outdated. As a result, it could hurt the Google ranking of the article and lose traffic for your site.
Essentially, if the article requires constant updates or if it is only relevant for a short period of time, it isn’t considered to be evergreen.
The main advantage is that this type of content will require limited updating. So you would write a great piece of content and then your job is basically done. The hope is that it will start to rank in Google and then people will share it and link to it organically. If it ends up getting ranked highly in Google, you could be bringing in hundreds of views from a single article per month, without needing to do anything extra. There is nothing that you will need to update (other than some minor things) in the months to come. This allows you to spend your time creating more content to generate more views for your site.
Another advantage is that you don’t have to constantly create content. If you run a news site or one that focuses on the latest trends, you would need to write a bunch of new articles per week to keep your readers informed and to keep your pageviews up. With an evergreen content site, you can focus on the bigger topics that you want to cover. There is also less pressure to write new content on a weekly/ daily basis. I am not saying that you shouldn’t be creating lots of fresh content with an evergreen site but there is definitely less pressure as compared to a news site.
A disadvantage of evergreen content is that there are a limited amount of topics that you can write about in each niche. There aren’t an unlimited number of topics that have large amounts of search volume that will never run out. This becomes really tricky for niches that are really specific. If you have a site that is focused on blue jays, you are eventually going to run out of material to write about in the topic. That is going to put a cap on how many visitors your site can get and its overall growth.
Another disadvantage is that it is generally harder to rank on Google for evergreen content than it is for time-sensitive content. Since Time-Sensitive content is only relevant for a short period of time, site owners tend to invest more into content that is going to give them a long-term return. The more competition you have, the harder it will be to rank for a specific topic.
At Motion Invest, we focus on buying and selling websites that use Evergreen content.
If you have a site that you want to sell, please feel free to reach out to ryan@motioninvest.com with a link to your site. Or, you can fill out or valuation tool on our website and we will follow up with you.
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