On one of the many podcasts I subscribe to discussed evergreen posts and how to use those to leverage the content you’ve already created. I’ve written a few evergreen posts, or ones I hope to be evergreen and would like to share what I know from this experience.

First of all, what is an evergreen blog post? As you may imagine, it’s evergreen 🙂 These posts are timelessly relevant which means they are filled with sustainable content to which you can refer back to in a current post. I have labeled these posts as “From the Archives” because a tip about gift wrapping or plants can be enjoyed any time of the year, every year. For some reason, it’s common for readers, including myself, to only want the newest, freshest content when reading blogs. However, what is relevant five years ago can still be relevant in today. Recipes, decor ideas, thrifting tips, book reviews, blogging tips (though there is a caveat to this, if blog platforms change or algorithms change, the post becomes non-evergreen) is all content that stays fresh. Here are my tips for writing an evergreen post:

1. Chose helpful content that new readers will want to devour when they find your blog. Some of the most requested posts I’ve gotten are my tips for blogging, thrifting, cooking, decorating, traveling, writing, and saving money. What’s something that readers will want to come back to? What tips or helpful information can you provide to your readers?
   
   
2. Move away from month, date, and year – ing each post. As an avid journal writer since pink diaries came with flimsy, pink heart shaped locks and keys no one could ever keep up with, moving away from dating my posts was difficult. I have dated each entry in my journal since the days of scribbling my crush’s last name after my first and middle names with a sickening amount of hearts on the page. So I get it. This is something I picked up from one of my favorite blogs that I write about a lot, A Beautiful Mess. They used to include the year on their posts but revised that when they moved to their new branding. I’ve seen them post on their other social media channels about posts they wrote years ago that still hold water which gives those posts some more play. When I search, it looks like they could have written the post last week or three years ago. Brilliant! Another very successful blog that does this is Gal Meets Glam. After realizing this, I took all the dates out of my blog altogether. I’ll ride that wave for a bit, see how it works, and report back.
   
   
3. Make your evergreen content as easily searchable as possible. This will improve your search engine stats. When I think about how to optimize search engine rankings and stats, I try to think of a few words or phrases that someone searching for my content would use. If it’s a post about a recipe, what are the simplest words and terms that I can use? I might tag it with “food” or “recipe”. I learned years ago that the most clicked on hashtags are the broadest in scope like “love” or “fun”. What’s the broadest you can go with the scope? Also consider different forms of the word. For example, for this post, I tagged it “blog” and “blogging”. I don’t want to miss the person who wants to use the verb instead of the noun.

For more general and reliable tips on evergreen posts, visit here.

What’s an evergreen post idea for your blog, page, or social media?

xMae