What is evergreen content? The ultimate guide to lasting SEO success

For content creators, marketers and SEOs, the dreamland is creating content that continues to provide value, engages audiences and drives conversions long after you hit publish.

There’s nothing worse than spending all that time researching, writing, editing, and optimising a piece of content for a fleeting traffic spike, only for it to falls off the face of a cliff a month later.

That’s where evergreen content comes in.

But what is evergreen content? And, how can it help build brand authority, awareness and trust within your industry?

Well, this is your ultimate guide to evergreen content where you’ll learn:

• The benefits of evergreen content.
• Why it’s essential for any marketing mix.
• Evergreen examples to help inspire your next campaign.
• How to create evergreen content for lasting SEO success.

Plus, we’ve thrown in a step-by-step framework towards the end to help you get started today!

What is evergreen content?

The burning question on everyone’s keyboards: ‘what is evergreen content’?

To shed some light, here’s Hive19’s evergreen content definition:

The term derives from evergreen trees that retain their leaves throughout the year, regardless of seasonal changes.

A fitting metaphor for content that stays relevant and continues to attract audiences long after it’s published, regardless of external changes.

The benefits of creating evergreen content

Evergreen content goes far beyond creating a stellar piece of content for your website.

By investing in evergreen marketing, you can:

• Engage with target audiences in a meaningful way.
• Attract consistent traffic to your website.
• Build topical brand authority.
• Encourage passive lead generation.
• Earn sustainable, natural backlinks that compound over time.
• Improve SEO rankings long term.

And the best part? Evergreen content doesn’t need constant refreshes or reactive strategy shifts.

Once optimised and live on your website, evergreen content works hard in the background, driving recurring return-on-investment (ROI), while you focus on other areas of your digital marketing.

So, let’s take a look at the benefits of evergreen content in more detail and how it contributes to long term SEO success online.

Brand authority and trust within your niche

Building trust takes time. However, one of the evergreen content benefits is that it helps position your brand as a trusted, go-to resource of information for customers searching online.

If your website is consistently appearing in the search engine results pages (SERPs), providing real, actionable solutions to audience’s biggest pain points and queries, you aren’t just capturing visitors to your website – you’re building trust and credibility in your industry.

Remember, relevance is key for building topical brand authority in organic search.

So, from an SEO perspective, creating content around relevant keywords helps Google better understand your niche and where you’re providing value to its users.

Over time, evergreen content helps strengthen your market position, boost brand recognition and continues to reinforce your experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) for both audiences and search engines.

Passive lead generation

Evergreen content is one of the most cost-effective and sustainable ways to generate leads passively.

Time-sensitive (non-evergreen) content requires an ‘always on’ mentality – often requiring a dedicated team of digital PR professionals to execute.

To ensure you capture those sudden sparks of interest for a specific topic, you have to be hot on spotting emerging trends and be able to turnaround content quickly before, or at the time, your audience starts searching for it.

Evergreen content, on the other hand, is less reactive. It continues to work its magic in the background, without the need for constant attention or refreshes to remain relevant due to its timeless nature.

Inherently serving top and middle-of-funnel (informational searches), evergreen content helps you make a lasting impact on the buyer’s journey. Converting interested searches into loyal customers.

Going back to our earlier benefit of building trust and brand recognition within your industry, evergreen content ensures that once your customer is ready to convert, you’re front of their mind.

Over time audiences become familiar with your service, expertise and position in the market and feel confident choosing you over competitors, given the value you provided earlier in their buyer’s journey.

Improved search rankings

Evergreen content isn’t only about increasing your website traffic short-term – it’s about sustaining it.

By optimising evergreen content with high-intent, high-traffic evergreen keywords, brands can minimise reliance on other avenues such as paid advertising (PPC) and ephemeral trends to secure traffic and SEO rankings.

Trend or time-sensitive keywords can deliver high returns, they can be often be fleeting – until the next trend takes momentum and steals your audience’s attention away.

Instead focus on evergreen content that’s SEO optimised for long-tail searches to ensure visibility in organic search.

Backlink building opportunities

Link building is one of the most challenging and resource-intense parts of SEO.

However, fear not, evergreen content can help boost your link building and outreach strategies by attracting evergreen links that compound over time.

Unlike time-sensitive content, evergreen resources retain their relevance long after publication, making them ideal assets for long term link building campaigns and domain authority growth.

The benefits of evergreen links

With over a decade of experience in building topical backlinks for clients, we’ve seen firsthand that publishers prefer linking to third-party resources that won’t become outdated in 6 months time.

But, why is this?

Publishers constantly audit their content, looking for opportunities to update or savagely cull low-performing articles to improve their SEO.

Therefore, non-evergreen resources run the risk of websites dropping your link during periodic internal reviews and will typically remove any outbound links that no longer provide value to their audience.

Publishers also want lasting value for their audience. They understand that Google rewards fresh data.

So, if a visitor clicks a link on their website and lands on an outdated resource, with redundant statistics or irrelevant information, it could create a negative user experience, or impact their own credibility and trust.

Editors and content managers are incredibly busy and don’t want to spend time updating outbound links. Referencing evergreen content provides timeless value, and reduces the need for updates or revisions at their end.

If you want to earn long term, sustainable evergreen links, focus on creating resources that publishers can’t avoid referencing within their own content. They should trust that your resource will provide value when diverting traffic away from their website.

As an example, let’s say you’re a SaaS brand specialising in marketing automation and want to increase the number of referring domains to a new resource for your website titled, ‘Email marketing benchmarks 202X: Open rates, CTRs, and conversion rates’.

Through a targeted outreach campaign, you could generate a bunch of quality backlinks, but those referring domains will only see value for their audiences during the months of the year you’re creating it for (in this example).

One option would be to update your resource every year, so it’s semi-evergreen, and does provide opportunity to include up to date stats and tips.

However, with over 17,700 results for ‘Email marketing benchmarks’ in Google, it’s going to be highly competitive.

With the likes of Mailchimp, MailerLite and GetResponse dominating top of SERPs for this keyword, your resource will need to be competitive to attract any organic traffic to your website from organic searches.

Another option would be to provide a more specific topic, targeting a certain demographic or niche.

For instance, ‘Email marketing benchmarks for B2B’ could be a better option:

• Target keyword: ’email marketing for b2b’.
• 600 global search volume.
• Keyword difficulty score of 11.

Although this has a lower search volume than ’email marketing benchmarks’ (vol. 1,000 with keyword difficulty: 88), it offers a less competitive landscapes to provide value and could in fact earn more traffic and quality backlinks as a result.

When evergreen content meets The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Method, developed by Brian Dean, consists of 3 key steps as a way to build relevant backlinks:

1. Identify content within your niche that has already earned a high volume of authoritative backlinks.

2. Provide 10x the value, insights and E-E-A-T currently provided and publish it on your website.

3. Contact all the websites that have provided a backlink to your competitor’s post and ask them to link to yours instead.

When identifying evergreen content ideas for the Skyscraper Method, it’s important to keep in mind whether the topic you’ve identified is timeless or not.

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of evergreen content and how it translates to off-page backlink building opportunities, next up is how it can strengthen your internal link strategy.

Evergreen links aren’t exclusive to off-page SEO efforts

A strong evergreen campaign supports both on and off-page SEO, so it’s important to consider how to internally link to your evergreen articles – ensuring you squeeze every last drop of SEO value across your website.

Internal links can benefit your domain tremendously when creating evergreen content.

A considered and targeted internal linking strategy can:

• Keep visitors engaged on your website for longer.
• Increase topical authority by connecting relevant pillar pages.
• Distributes SEO equity to improve rankings for priority pages.
• Increase the value being shared during a single session.
• Improve site navigation and user experience.

14 evergreen content examples

Evergreen content comes in many different formats and is widely adopted in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing.

To achieve the most value when creating evergreen content that lasts, focus on:

• Timeless relevance.
• Industry challenges.
• Common customer customer pain points.

Whether you’re producing step-by-step guides, resource lists, or industry glossaries, the goal is to provide ongoing value while maintaining search relevance over time.

Below we break down the most common evergreen content examples, followed by real-world examples of evergreen content in action.

B2B evergreen content types

Here are the most common B2B evergreen content examples used to engage businesses or service providers and can be applied to a range of industries.

Step-by-step guides

Instructional resources that explain complex industry processes, software uses or strategies.

Step-by-step guides remain helpful over time as business leaders always search for actionable strategies and insights to improve internal processes and workflows.

Step-by-step example: “Best outreach marketing strategy examples” from MailChimp receives an average of 607 monthly visits from organic search.

Digital PR specialists will always look for guidance and inspiration when creating their first campaign. This ensure that MailChimp’s article remains evergreen, with minimal updates only required if breakthrough or notable strategies are shared in the industry.

Resource lists

Curated lists of tools, software or industry resources where audiences can improve efficiencies, productivity and decision-making.

Resource lists stay relevant as long as the core tools remain widely used and available.

Resource list example: “The 11 best SEO tools in 2025” from Zapier gets updated yearly. A list of essential tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Search Console (GSC), optimised for high-intent evergreen searches.

eBooks

In-depth, often downloadable, resources that educate and inform audiences by addressing common industry questions in detail.

eBooks are powerful lead magnets, allowing you to capture interest via an email address to download the eBook when requested. The key to an evergreen eBook is tackling fundamental industry questions.

eBook example: Hive19 eBooks.

Glossaries

A collection of specific terms or jargon commonly used in your industry explained. Glossaries remain evergreen as terminology rarely changes over time.

Glossary example: Hive19’s Link building glossary. Our evergreen glossary hub, provides everything you could possibly need to know about link building, building brand authority and SEO.

From authority metrics to understanding the difference between transactional keywords and informational keywords, a comprehensive glossary resource requires minimal refreshes and serves as a core website pillar whilst providing consistent value to target audiences.

White papers

Typically focused on industry trends, white papers are in-depth documents that solve problems and provide data-driven insights to experts. This type of evergreen content is widely adopted in industries such as finance, healthcare and tech.

Along with eBooks, white papers are powerful lead generation tools for B2Bs. They remain evergreen due to their nature of addressing fundamental industry challenges, rather than fleeting news articles or opinion pieces.

Third party websites often reference white papers, either by citations or backlinks, making them an evergreen asset for brands looking to position themselves as thought leaders and authorities within their own niche.

White papers example: “Enhancing threat detection and response with machine learning”.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A collection of answers to commonly asked industry questions.

FAQs are gold dust for SEO because they align with search intent, serving up answers in an easily digestible format and providing opportunities to capture featured snippets in SERPs.

FAQ example: “What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow?”. SEOs frequently search this question to understand the distinction, making it prime evergreen content for agencies or digital marketers.

Tools and calculators

Interactive resources hosted on your website help users solve problems quickly. Tools and calculators will often requires users to input data to receive automatic results for a specific need.

In one study, Ahrefs found that calculators can drive an insane levels of consistent traffic across various industries.

Tools and calculators example: Authority Checker by Hive19. A free tool that allows marketing and SEO managers to understand holistically the strength and authority of a client’s domain.

Best practices, templates and frameworks

Reusable templates serve as powerful evergreen content example.

Businesses can create resources that remain useful for years, driving continuous audience engagement, organic traffic and authority in their industry.

Established methodologies that help audiences solve industry challenges such as workflow, bottlenecks and how to implement strategies to improve their processes with lasting relevance.

Framework example: “The AIDA Model” by HubSpot. The Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) model has been a timeless framework for creating high-converting marketing content.

By investing in B2B evergreen content, establish thought leadership, demand brand awareness and drive consistent organic traffic to your website without the need for constant updates and refreshes.

B2B evergreen content example: SumUp Marketing Hub

Created in collaboration with Hive19, as part of our pillar content service, an example of B2B evergreen pillar content in action is SumUp’s Marketing Hub.

Evergreen content pillars are a juggernaut of ranking material. The SumUp Marketing Hub was designed to outrank competitors for high-intent, evergreen keywords.

The key features of SumUp’s Marketing Hub

Comprehensive guides: In-depth articles, typically between 3,000 and 8,000 words, covering topics such as “How to advertise your business”. This remains relevant regardless of changing marketing trends.

Practical resources: From step-by-step guides, checklists and best practice resources, every piece of evergreen content serves SumUp’s target audience as they look to scale their businesses and provide actionable solutions to real-world challenges.

Sustained search traffic: Built on a library of topical authority, the hub project is structured around strategically selected high-intent, evergreen keywords. Ensuring ongoing organic visibility in search, without the need for constant updates.

The results: By focusing on evergreen pillar content, SumUp has built an ecosystem that provides long term SEO benefits, educates its target market of UK merchants and establishes authority in the small business marketing space.

Through pillar content, SumUp ranks organically for over 300 highly-topical evergreen keywords that are relevant to their niche:

This is a prime example of how evergreen content fuels organic growth, brand authority, and sustained engagement long after the content is published.

Now, if you’re in the B2C game, don’t worry we haven’t forgotten about you! Next up, we’ll look at some of the most impactful B2C evergreen content types to help inspire your next project.

B2C evergreen content types

B2C brands can supercharge brand awareness and growth online by creating evergreen content assets to engage customers long term.

Whether it’s lifestyle tips, product comparisons or travel guides, evergreen content helps brands stay front and centre of consumers’ minds without having to rely solely on fleeting trends.

Here we take a look at the most common types of evergreen content (with examples) for B2C brands looking to improve brand awareness and achieve higher SEO rankings through evergreen content.

How-to guides, case studies and tutorials

Tutorials, case studies and how-to guides provide practical solutions helping customers complete tasks, use products as they were intended, improve skills and solve common problems.

Audiences are constantly searching for practical advice through these types of evergreen content, making them highly valuable long term due to the persistent demand in organic search.

These evergreen formats are commonly shared, perform well in Google and provide timeless value for customers – without the need to constantly update.

How-to guide example: “How to decorate your living room on a budget”. Home decor brands and lifestyle blogs can create guides that help homeowners commonly search for to address design challenges – while positioning themselves as the go-to source for inspiration and practical advice.

Listicles

Fun, digestible, and often highly sharable, evergreen listicles provide quick insights, recommendations and tips for customers.

Their evergreen natures make listicles a powerful format for generating consistent traffic and engagement for your website.

Listicles lend themselves for redistribution on social channels as part of a holistic content marketing strategy, improving your chances of exposure, consistent traffic and brand exposure.

Listicles example: “7 skincare routines for glowing skin”. A beauty brand can create evergreen listicles to highlight timeless skincare routines, rather than relying on short-lived, fleeting beauty trends.

Product reviews and comparisons

In-depth comparisons of products or services can provide evergreen value, by helping consumers make informed purchase decisions.

With 93% of consumers reading online reviews before making a purchase, well-optimised comparison pages can rank well and attract organic traffic for years.

Product reviews and comparisons tend to sit within the middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) stages of the buyer’s journey. However, their placement depends on the intent and depth of the content.

Product reviews and comparisons example: “iPhone vs. Android which is better for capturing videos?”. Tech blogs can use comparison guides to attract long term organic traffic, positioning themselves as a trusted source in the industry.

Seasonal and year-round recipes

Timeless cooking and baking recipes are constantly in demand, driving traffic year after year. Unlike fleeting food and beverage trends, staple recipes retain their relevance indefinitely.

Recipe content ranks exceptionally well on Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube due to the visual nature of the platforms – providing multiple streams of consistent organic traffic back to your website.

Seasonal recipes example: “How to make the best roast potatoes”. Unlike trend-driven products such as Kombucha or Matcha, which have seen big spikes of interest online in recent years.

Staple dishes will always be in demand, making them perfect evergreen content ideas for kitchenware brands or interior designers, while subtly showcasing their products in action.

Lifestyle tips

Practical, motivational, and self-improvement content resonates with broad audiences searching for ways to improve their routines, mindset and wellbeing. Evergreen lifestyle tips offer lasting appeal, making it a powerful engagement driver for your brand and website.

Evergreen lifestyle content inspires, educates, and remains timeless, ensuring steady organic traffic for B2C brands.

Lifestyle example: “How to build a morning routine that works for you”. Productivity, wellness and lifestyle brands can attract consistent engagement by offering actionable, habit-forming tips that remain relevant and timeless, regardless of emerging trends.

Gift ideas for seasonal and year-round occasions

Gift ideas for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and key milestones are consistently in demand.

Consumers search for thoughtful gift inspiration throughout the year, providing opportunities for consistent organic traffic, and conversions, through evergreen gift guides – making them a valuable evergreen content idea for eCommerce brands and retailers.

Ideas round-up example: “Personalised gifts for Mother’s Day”. While seasonal, this type of evergreen content gains traction every year around Mother’s Day, making it a recurring traffic driver.

Travel guides

Travel planning is inherently evergreen, with consumers searching for inspiration and information every year.

Whether you’re focusing on creating timeless destination guides to places that offer historical, cultural or iconic attractions – think capital cities; New York, London, Paris, that attract tourism regardless of trends.

Or, universal travel advice such as finding the best flight deals, travel safety tips and how to avoid jet lag. Travel guides can capture consistent searches and drive long term traffic to your website.

Travel guide examples: “Packing checklist for solo travel”. Packing guides never lose relevance, making them perfect for evergreen content that attracts long term search traffic.

To showcase a real-world example of how to execute evergreen content for B2Cs, we’ve taken a look at BetterHelp.

BetterHelp is an online therapy service that provides remote counselling and therapy and has successfully adopted evergreen content to continuously drive high-intent traffic to their website from a single piece of content.

B2C evergreen content example: BetterHelp

BetterHelp is one brand online that has created a highly authoritative, evergreen resource through its online therapy hub.

A standout example, which we’ll take a closer look at, is their overview guide on ‘Free online therapy’.

This resource provides relevant, timeless information helping to educate their audience on the availability and limitations of free therapy options.

By identifying common pain points, concerns and search queries from its customer base, BetterHelp has created an evergreen asset that continues to attract and engage its target audience.

This example of comprehensive evergreen content targets information, transactional and commercial intent whilst establishing trust, transparency and value through their content.

The resource is a perfect mix of intent but at its core provides value in answering common concerns and questions from their key demographic.

The results of BetterHelp’s evergreen resource

Brand credibility: By offering in-depth, expert value BetterHelp has strengthened its position as a trusted source for customers looking for information surrounding online therapy.

Organic visibility: BetterHelp ranks in the top 3 positions in SERPs for the keyword ‘free therapy’ – which has a monthly global search volume of 23K.

Their resource also ranks for 770+ related keywords, which consistently captures and attracts new audiences whilst building better brand awareness.

Sustainable traffic: With 10,040 monthly visits from organic search, this single piece of evergreen content provides an avenue of constant online traffic and engagement from their core audience.

Supports commercial intent: While the focus of this piece is educational, BetterHelps’ services align with the audience’s needs at the perfect stage of the buyer’s journey and through subtle guidance, encourage potential customers to convert.

Evergreen content isn’t just for big brands – it’s an effective core marketing strategy for B2C companies around the world, looking to grow brand awareness, authority and sustainable SEO rankings in organic search.

By focusing your marketing strategy on timeless evergreen topics and targeting stable keywords, brands can attract consistent organic traffic while providing relevant value to customers over time.

What is non-evergreen content?

By now, we’ve hopefully answered the questions of ‘what is evergreen content?‘.

But, to fully understand exactly what evergreen content is, it’s helpful to define what the opposite of evergreen content is.

This section will help provide tangible characteristics, formats and examples of what makes a piece of content not evergreen.

To keep it as simply as possible, the opposite of evergreen content is time-sensitive content.

Time-sensitive content can come in many formats, so let’s take a closer look at a few examples.

Industry news and updates

Industry news stories or company announcements are perfect for brands and industry leaders to share their unique take, expertise and insight on a subject. This is more reactive marketing and is a result of either push marketing or providing commentary on industry trends and announcements.

One example is Google’s launch of the AI Overview in SERPs.

Search Engine Lands (SEL) covered this industry news here: Google rolls out new AI-organized search results.

When originally published, SEL received a big spike of traffic followed by a sharp decline:

It makes sense for SEL, one of the leading digital publications for SEO news, to provide content on this update.

However, the post quickly becomes outdated as soon as Google releases more updates or tools, which let’s be honest, they naturally will.

Seasonal or trend-focused

Content linked to a specific seasonal period or event is not evergreen.

For example, Black Friday or Christmas marketing strategies are limited to peak shopping seasons.

Listicles with a year attached to them such as “The best project management software in 202X” will become outdated after a year of publishing.

These roundup-style blogs can, however, be semi-evergreen. They can be easily updated, providing fresher screenshots following any software updates, new features and price changes.

Event coverage

Posts that cover highlights or key takeaways from events, conferences or workshops are only useful for a short time.

For example, ‘Key takeaways from BrightonSEO 202X’ will lose value and relevance among audiences once the event passes.

Statistical reports

Data-driven articles that rely on current data will require frequent updates to ensure an accurate reflection of a given topic, industry or subject matter.

For example, Forbes published The future of eCommerce: Trends to watch in 2023. This post received a huge spike of traffic when it was originally published, up until a slow decline following the end of the year.

As soon as the new year comes around, audiences will have been looking for the most up-to-date trends to watch out for.

Annual reports and evolving industry trends mean their relevance declines if not updated regularly once fresher data becomes available – qualifying this type of content as a non-evergreen.

Non-evergreen, time-sensitive content can drive huge spikes in traffic but is typically short-lived due to changes in audience demand and needs for the most up-to-date and current information.

Evergreen content vs. time-sensitive content

At its core, evergreen content means providing solutions and answers to timeless questions or problems your target audience consistently faces.

For example, “Social media trends for 20XX” is topical and helpful to marketers and digital creators alike, but will quickly become outdated a year after it’s published.

To turn this idea into an evergreen piece of content, we’d reframe it as “How to create a successful social media strategy” ensuring its relevancy for years to come.

So, how does evergreen content compare to other content types? And what’s the opposite of evergreen content? Let’s break it down.

Evergreen vs. non-evergreen content

Not all content has the same lifespan. As mentioned, a well-rounded content strategy should include evergreen and non-evergreen content.

Both have their advantages and challenges, depending on your unique marketing goals.

We’ve provided a breakdown of the pros and cons to help you understand the difference when planning to execute your strategy.

Evergreen content: pros and cons

Pros of evergreen content:

• Remains relevant and valuable for years.
• A consistent stream of visitors from search.
• Engages audiences long term.
• Requires minimal updates and refreshes.

Evergreen example: ‘A beginner’s guide to outreach’.

Cons of evergreen content:

• Takes longer to gain traction in search rankings.
• Can be highly competitive so will require more initial effort to make your content unique and valuable.
• Less effective for covering topics suitable for advanced audiences.

Non-evergreen content: pros and cons

Pros of non-evergreen content:

• Captures immediate interest and trending search traffic.
• Positions your brand as a thought leader on current issues and industry news.
• Generates spikes in engagement and social shares.

Non-evergreen example: ‘Google’s latest algorithm update explained’.

Cons for non-evergreen content:

• Short-lived, traffic often declines quickly after the trend passes.
• An influx of traffic initially, then a sharp decline.
• Requires frequent updates to stay relevant and useful for audiences.
• Has a shorter lifespan and less long term SEO value.
• Becomes outdated within weeks or months.
• Requires an “always on” mindset to capture what is trending.

Combining evergreen campaigns that build lasting SEO value, with non-evergreen campaigns that attract higher volumes of interest is the ideal content strategy mix.

For brands looking to build lasting authority and brand awareness, ensure your website provides content that caters to top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) searches and traffic driven by informational keywords.

This will help to secure the longevity of rankings and SEO success without the constant demand on internal resources and content production.

Creating a successful evergreen content strategy

Now for the really juicy stuff – implementing your evergreen content strategy!

Below is your framework that can be widely adopted, whether you’re a B2B, B2C, small or large business.

So, hold on to your hats and let’s get cookin’ some evergreen content for your website!

1. Identify evergreen content ideas

The first step is choosing the right topics for your evergreen content.

Focus on timeless topics when coming up with evergreen content ideas – ones that address recurring customer pain points or challenges.

Competitor analysis is the quickest way to identify potential topics for your evergreen strategy.

Use tools such as Ahrefs and Google to:

Check competitors’ top-performing evergreen articles

You can do this by using Ahrefs Top Pages report to find ideas that are equally relevant to your target audience.

Look at the structures and formats to understand and pinpoint exactly why this is being presented by Google to audiences looking for answers to key questions.

Identify the content gaps

Where are your competitors undeserving audiences in their content? Have they missed answers to key questions that you know are important to customers? Where is their value falling short?

Answer common questions from your target customer

Use tools like Google’s “People Also Ask,” forums, or customer feedback to find these questions.

Create evergreen content that solves these queries in-depth for your industry, such as “What is X?” or “How does X work?”.

Understand the value you can bring to a given topic

Do you have the E-E-A-T that can produce a resource 10x the value and insights currently available to audiences? If so, get creating!

Once you have your list of potential evergreen topics, focus on themes that have ongoing relevance and address universal issues – productivity and leadership are always safe bets for B2Bs.

Understanding user intent for evergreen content ideas

User intent is the reason someone is searching for a topic and what they hope or intends to find.

As part of Google’s focus on providing helpful content to users, it prioritises results that directly satisfies user queries.

So your evergreen content should match search intent to increase the likelihood of clicks and engagement.

For a comprehensive list of evergreen topics, focus on a mix of high-value keyword types and keep in mind the search volume potential behind each idea.

The main keyword types to keep in mind are:

• Informational keywords: Educational topics e.g. ‘What is evergreen content?’
• How-to keywords: Practical advice and guidance e.g. ‘How to create a marking plan for beginners?’
• Comparison keywords: Help audiences in their decision-making e.g. ‘Organic SEO vs. Paid SEO: which has a higher ROI?’
• Authority keywords: Position yourself as a trusted industry resource e.g. ‘The ultimate content marketing guide’

The second part to consider when targeting the right keywords for evergreen articles, is SEO keyword intent from a business perspective.

These need to align with your wider business goals to ensure your evergreen content marketing delivers ROI commercially.

Types of keywords when considering business intent

The 4 types of intent keywords support your conversion funnel and can be remembered by TICaN (Transactional, Informational, Commercial and Navigational):

Transactional: Searchers are ready to make a purchase or convert in some way.

Informational: Searchers are looking for information or an answer to a specific question.

Commercial: Searchers want to research brands, products, or services and compare them before making a purchase.

Navigational: Searchers need help finding a specific brand, website or page.

2. Target the right keywords for evergreen articles

Once you’ve landed on an evergreen content idea that you can’t wait to create, the next step is to find the right keywords to ensure long term search visibility.

Look for stable, consistent interest rather than fluctuating trends.

Also, keep in mind the intent surrounding the keyword you’re targeting. This is important for how you write evergreen content – which we’ll cover in step 3.

How to conduct evergreen keyword research

Here’s how to conduct evergreen keyword research effectively:

• Use SEO tools like Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer, Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to analyse search volume stability over the past 12-24 months.
• Look at Google’s People Also Ask and Related Searches to identify common, long-standing user queries and highlight relevant keywords to your topic.
• Check GSC to find existing pages on your website that already attract consistent organic traffic – these can be expanded or optimised further.

3. Create your evergreen content

Once you’ve landed on an idea, and understand your target keywords and the intent behind them, it’s time for the exciting part – how to write evergreen content!

Your first question is, what format do you want to create your evergreen content in?

The format of your evergreen content will likely be led by your competitor analysis. How the top-performing content is currently structured for your target topic or keyword, is likely what your audience will be expecting and looking for. Be sure to pay attention to this and choose your format carefully.

To help you hit the fundamentals of creating evergreen content, we’ve put together the following checklist:

• Evergreen content should be original, comprehensive, actionable and user-focused.
• Use clear headings and subheadings, breaking content into logical sections for improved readability and navigation.
• Offer a unique point of view or solution to a consistent problem.
• Bring your personal experience and expertise to establish credibility on the subject matter.
• Spice it up with visuals. Bring your words to life with; graphs, GIFs, videos etc. This will help engage your audience and retain their attention for longer.
• Keep evergreen content future-proof. Avoiding dates or time-sensitive anchors – unless absolutely necessary.
• Avoid jargon at all costs when creating evergreen content. Focus on writing for beginners but make it inclusive and applicable to a broad target audience.

4. Optimise evergreen content for SEO

So you’ve created a killer piece of evergreen content that’s about to blow the socks off your competitors and have them shaking in their boots, you go to publish…but wait!

We need to optimise to ensure it’s picked up by search engines.

Without optimising evergreen content for SEO, you reduce its chances of ranking in the SERPs – resulting in no clicks and a very sad, unloved resource on your website.

As a bonus tip, make sure you optimise your evergreen content for featured snippets and AI Google Overview.

Optimising for Google AI and featured snippets

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing how content is being searched for and served up to users.

Google’s AI Overview and featured snippets prioritise well-structured, concise answers to searches.

To increase your chances of ranking for these in the SERPs:

• Use question-based headings and frame subheadings as questions. For example, ‘What is evergreen content?’.
• Provide direct, concise answers in the first paragraph of each section.
• Use bullet points and numbered lists to structure content.
• Optimise for voice search – keep sentences short and conversational (this is ideal for AI responses).

SEO fundamentals for evergreen content

To improve search rankings, focus on implementing these SEO fundamentals when finalising your evergreen content:

Meta descriptions and titles: Include primary keywords and a clear value proposition.

Use Schema Markup: FAQ Schema and HowTo Schema to help Google understand your content better and elevate how your page appears in the SERPs.

Optimise for mobile users: Readability and navigation are key for a positive user experience.

CTAs: Turn passive readers into engaged prospects by focusing on engaging readers and encouraging them to take action whilst reading your evergreen content.

5. Internal and external link strategies

Once your evergreen content is optimised for SEO and user intent, the next step is to put a rocket ship behind it to ensure visibility, authority, and engagement by implementing a strategic internal and external linking strategy.

From a slightly more technical standpoint, internal linking between evergreen content pillars can improve your website’s crawlability.

It allows Google to quickly discover and index your content, helping them understand the structure and nature of your content and how best to serve it up to their users.

This has a direct impact on how successful your evergreen content performs in the SERPs and ensures your content gets in front of audiences quicker with relevancy in mind.

Internal linking for evergreen content

• Connect related content across your website with internal links.
• Use descriptive anchor text. “Click here” doesn’t provide any descriptive context to Google or your visitors. Optimise at every opportunity for improved navigation throughout your website.
• Internally link new evergreen content directly to your most important pages to pass link equity and improve its rankings.

External linking for evergreen content

External links, off-page backlinks, evergreen links – whatever you want to call them are essential for a successful content marketing strategy.

Topical and authoritative evergreen links help strengthen your SEO rankings and increase domain authority and content lifespan – ensuring success long after you hit publish.

There are many ways to execute a powerful link building strategy, but to get started here are a few quick wins to strengthen your evergreen content’s potential:

Contact media, publications and industry leaders

Pitch your evergreen resource. Proactive outreach can supercharge your evergreen content’s performance and exposure

You have nothing to lose. Don’t hesitate to share your resource with bigger names in the industry.

If you feel reluctant, it could be a strong sign to revisit and improve your content until it’s something you’re excited to promote.

Guest blogging

Writing and pitching guest posts to niche and industry-relevant publications is a powerful way to build relevant backlinks.

The Skyscraper Technique

We previously touched on the Skyscraper Method earlier in this guide. The Skyscraper method can help identify outdated competitor content, find their backlinks and pitch your resource as an improved resource worthy of their backlink.

6. Evergreen content promotion

So, you’ve published your evergreen content, congrats! 🎉

Now it’s time to double down and really milk what’s left of this cow.

You’ve put in all the hard work, created the best evergreen resource your industry has to offer, optimised for SEO and intent and are probably ready to shut your laptop and move on.

We’ve been there. But the real impact comes from how you promote your evergreen resource once it’s live on your website.

How to promote evergreen content

Alongside the off-page link building strategies we’ve covered, there are plenty of ways to ensure your evergreen content reaches the right audiences at scale.

The good news? If you’ve done the heavy lifting during the keyword research, content creation and optimisation stages, your content will naturally rank over time.

However, to achieve long term visibility and give your evergreen content the best chance right from the get-go, here are the promotional strategies worth implementing.

Social media and content repurposing

• Share your content on social media to help drive engagement.
• Use key takeaways in TikTok or Instagram Reels to visually engage audiences.
• Repurpose into different formats by turning your evergreen content into a video, podcast, or infographic for wider reach and to diversify how audiences consume your content.

Paid and email marketing

• Target long-tail keywords in Google Ads or Social Ads to attract high-intent search traffic.
• Share your evergreen content in newsletters and email marketing campaigns.

Community engagement and influencer outreach

• Engage in discussions on niche industry forums with audiences that can benefit from your evergreen content.
• Mention influencers in your content and tag them when promoting your content online to leverage already established audiences.

External platforms

• Feature your evergreen article as the go-to resource during podcast interviews, webinars or industry panels – there’s no shameful plugging when the content is this good!
• Republish evergreen articles on content syndication platforms like Medium, LinkedIn or industry platforms for additional exposure.
• Create a downloadable eBook for users.

7. Review, analyse and improve

Evergreen content is designed to remain relevant and valuable over time, but that doesn’t mean it should be published and forgotten about.

There’s always some level of housekeeping to avoid performance dips.

Regular content reviews help identify low performers, content gaps, and opportunities for improvement and secure long term value and relevance for your marketing efforts.

Even if your evergreen content is currently outperforming competitors and offering 10x the value – industries and algorithms move fast, especially in competitive spaces.

A competitor might update their resource after seeing yours suddenly take the top spot in the SERPs for the target keyword they want.

Ongoing maintenance, albeit less than time-sensitive topics, is still important to maintain rankings and SEO benefits.

Key evergreen metrics to track

To keep your evergreen content performing at its best, track and measure these important metrics:

Organic traffic: Monthly visits from organic search to see if traffic is growing, declining or stable.

Bounce rate: If visitors are landing on your page and quickly leaving, you may need to revisit and improve your content for clarity, and structure or improve load times.

Position in rankings: Use GSC to see if your content is ranking for your target keyword.

Impressions and Click-through rate (CTR): If you’re getting lots of impressions but low CTR, it’s worth revisiting your meta titles and descriptions.

Backlinks: How many backlinks have you earned? How many were achieved organically from third-party websites? Have you lost any?

Conversion rate: How many visitors are converting? If it’s low then consider revisiting your CTAs to ensure they’re relevant, helpful and clear for users.

By following this 7-step framework outlined in this guide, your evergreen content will remain a valuable asset that’ll only compound over time.

Evergreen content is a core part of a sustainable content marketing strategy, helping attract ongoing traffic, build authority, and generate leads over time.

Still have questions about creating evergreen content for lasting SEO success? Below, we’ve answered some of the most frequently asked questions.