Have you ever heard of a place in the Western US where civilization has not taken place? It is found deep in the forest in a grove of trees where you will also find worn out stuffed animals and worn out dolls.
You will not see this place being advertised and it is hard to locate it unless you have been there before. Yet, a lot of people trek for long distances just to visit this place to see this grove of trees. No one knows for sure why…but trees are filled with dolls and stuffed toys.
Personally, I have seen trees with shoes. And what came to my mind is that maybe it started with just one pair and grew from there. If you tie the shoes together by the shoestrings, you can fling a pair into the air, and eventually cover nearly the entire tree with old shoes.
Since the stuffed toys cannot hang on the branches, you have to place them by hand, placing them in lower branches and leaving the higher branches for those people with ladders and climbing ability.
There is also a bra tree found in a place South of Las Vegas, Nevada. This bra tree goes against the popular slogan in Las Vegas that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”. However, we all know that not everything that happens there stays within the locality. Again, people come from all over to see this tree of bras.
This now brings us to our topic today – the need to come up with evergreen content. People will continue to visit these trees irrespective of whether it is during the heat of summer or the blistery cold of winters now and then. This is the dream of any site owner; to have their content remain relevant for a long time and attract visitors.
However, the problem is that most of the evergreen content tends to be dry. Just like the previous description of the tree, it might stand the test of time, but it won’t attract a lot of shares, likes, Tweets, and so forth. No one gets overly excited by an ordinary grove of trees in Oregon because, basically, you will find trees everywhere. However, people get excited to see these trees filled with spooky dolls and stuffed animals.
So, if you want to make your content evergreen, here are eight tips to help you out. People will be telling others to visit your site and to read it year in & year out.
1. Personalize Your Posts
It is not the grove of trees that makes them stand out – it is the shoes, bras, and dolls hanging on their branches that make them stand out. They are unique, they are different, and above all, they have a personality.
Your content needs to have a personality too. Breathe life into it by injecting your own personality. You might not be able to fill it with bras and shoes, but you can twist the way of presenting it and find unique angles of presenting your info in a way that makes it interesting, captivating, and worthy of sharing.
2. Write Content for Your Customers Not For the Search Engines
You need to capture your customer so write content with your customers in mind. In fact, pick a tone that they can relate to and write as though you are speaking directly to them. Don’t write as though you are writing a textbook. Write as though you are addressing a good friend. This way, it will sink in their mind.
3. Inject A Little Humor into Your Content
Use fun in your content wherever it is applicable. Even if you are not a humorous person, come up with a creative way of making people smile once in a while. Humor goes a long way in making your content remain fresh and memorable.
4. Use Stories
Using real-life stories makes your content relatable. Stories make your content interesting which makes your audience share it with others.
5. Keep Your Content Updated
As times goes, dolls fall apart, shoes fade, and bras wear out. But because new bras and dolls are continually hung on these trees, people keep coming. Your content should work the same way if you want it to be evergreen. After several months, revisit your posts and update your content where they need to be updated.
Your content cannot be evergreen if it still holds 2010 statistics and it is 2017. Add any new changes that might have been enacted recently. Not only will this make your content relevant to your audience, but will also be good for the search engines.
Keep in mind that Google loves fresh content, but this doesn’t mean it has to be new. By updating your content regularly, you will benefit from better ranking by search engines as much as you would by writing new posts. Better yet, updating your content is a lot easier than coming up with new content.
6. Keep a Record of Your Content
You might want to create an inventory of your blog posts and articles to help you know how they are faring. This will also help you to stay organized. You will learn which content is performing better and which requires an update.
7. Make Use of Dates
A good way to make your content relevant is not by displaying the date when your content was posted, but by displaying the dates when it was updated. Failure to use dates may spark several questions among your readers such as how old is this content and is it up to date. And this might not be a good thing for you.
Also, if your publish date of your SEO article reads 2013, then someone might think that it has outdated tricks and probably you don’t know what you are talking about since a lot of changes have occured since then.
Therefore, instead of failing to include dates, a common trick in blogging is to use the dates of your last update. There is no reason not to put today’s date if you just updated an article you published two years ago. Your article will retain all the backlinks, and your readers will know that your content is up-to-date.
8. Go Against the Odds
No one expects to see bras hanging on trees, and that’s why people flock the area to see it. Similarly, you need to surprise your audience by coming up with unexpected content that will make them tell others about it, regardless of when it was published.
