Evergreen content. You’ve probably heard that it’s super important for your blog, but often people forget to mention why that is and how you can make it work for your blog specifically.

So first, let’s cover the basics. Evergreen, or pillar, content is content that lasts all year round, for many years—just like the leaves on an evergreen tree. For blogging, this means that your post continues to attract readers to your site continuously after it is first posted.

Your evergreen content is often your most popular because new readers keep finding your site through these “pillar” posts.

As these types of post support your site with visitors in the long term, they need to really reflect your blogging brand and niche. They are the pillars or building blocks of your blog. When your posts do reflect your overall focus, the visitor to your site is highly likely to find other content on your site interesting and stay a little longer to look around.

Let’s break it down.

Why evergreen content?

For us busy bloggers and biz owners, every moment is important. We wear so many different hats, being writers, social media whizzes, educators, salespersons, and more – you don’t need me to tell you our time is pretty stretched.

That is why evergreen content is the must-have type of content for your blog. Why? Because it has the biggest return on investment for your time (ROI).

Rather than constantly producing new content that will be forgotten the next week, your time is much better re-paid by producing content that people will continue to visit weeks, months, and years later. A few hours of work for continuous return in visitors. Sounds good, right?

Even more importantly, by creating your evergreen content intentionally, the visitors it continues to attract will be the right kind of visitors. They will be interested in your blogging niche. This makes them more likely to click through to other posts on your site, sign up for your mailing list, share your content, and buy your products and services.

Pretty valuable visitors, huh? And the content that keeps them coming – even more so.

Spoiler! You have already posted evergreen content!

Some of your existing blog posts will already be pillar content.

You can usually find these types of posts by looking at your analytics. Which posts attract the most page views? Which attracts the most engagement through comments, likes, shares, and pins? These are the current cornerstones of your blog.

If these posts accurately represent your blog’s niche, then use them to guide the next blog posts you create. Look for a trend and create posts from different angles on the same theme.

Let me give you an example. I discovered that recipes including chocolate bars were really popular on Knead to Dough, so I produced more of those. As expected, these have all moved up to my most viewed posts and continue to bring visitors to my site. My target readers are foodie bloggers which many of these visitors are, but not all of them.

I also discovered that my how-to-style blog posts continued to attract traffic. As these directly appeal to my target reader, and the recipe posts offer valuable case studies to them, this is the most valuable of my two types of evergreen content.

It brings the right people to my site to then look at other recipes and my blogging posts. They are also likely to sign up for my free resource library, which includes some guides specifically for foodies as well as general content resources.

How to use evergreen content on your blog

So you know how I use evergreen content to boost traffic continuously for Knead to Dough, but how can you apply it to your own blog?

You’re already starting to assess your popular posts for their suitability as pillar content for your blog and using them as inspiration for more.

You can also create pillar content by creating content that is already known to be successful, shareable, and regularly searched. How-to and list posts are typically very popular as they usually provide in-depth, valuable, actionable advice.

The key to writing successful evergreen content is to provide as much value as possible. Pick your frequently searched niche topic and cover it in depth. Don’t leave your readers with unanswered questions at the end. If your content is valuable and informative, people will continue to find it useful.

Set yourself the challenge to make every blog post evergreen for the next month. If you can, challenge yourself to do this forever.

Tip: Don’t forget to update pillar content as and when changes occur that apply to that topic.

The takeaways?

• Evergreen content gives you the best ROI for your time

• It attracts the right kind of visitors who are likely to subscribe and buy

• Create content intentionally to attract these visitors and provide them lots of value

• How-to and list posts are great options for creating evergreen content

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This post originally appeared on Blog Society. Lauren Fraser helps other blogs and businesses (especially foodies!) transform their social media and blogging strategies to get the traffic, engagement, and leads they want. You can find blogging resources and guides on her site, Knead to Dough, with a pinch of delicious recipes thrown in for good measure! 

This story was originally published on September 24, 2016, and has since been updated.

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