Good SEO Content is Evergreen

One of the requirements of good content for SEO is that it’s evergreen. I find that when my clients or companies I work with are tasked with producing a specific number of pieces of content for a particular amount of time (e.g., four blog posts a month, two blog posts a week, etc.), writer’s block can make that difficult. How do you produce that volume of content?

Sometimes, writers will be bored with writing that amount of content. They end up doing is writing something that is cute like, “The five things you need to know about blue widgets for Valentine’s Day.” That might be valuable to someone- if there is a reason to care about blue widgets on Valentine’s Day. However, something like that has a finite shelf life. Instead, think evergreen. Focus on something that will last longer than a couple of months a year.

How Do You Find Evergreen Content?

Google Auto Suggest

There are several tools we can use to help us find evergreen content. I like to use Google. All you have to do is type in an idea into Google and let Google suggest to you what other people are talking about. When you enter an idea into the search box in Google, you’ll notice that Google’s auto-suggesting phrases to you as you type. You’ll get a lot of ideas from the autosuggest.

Google Auto Suggest Tools

Some of the other tools out there that I recommend are keyword.io or AnswerThePublic. Both of these tools will give you a list of topics that Google is auto-suggesting based on a phrase that you enter. When I need new ideas for evergreen content, I’ll type a topic into one of those tools, download the list, and go through them to get some great ideas. I look for the interrogatives: who, what, where, when, why, how, can, should, does, etc. These are the kinds of things people are asking when they enter a search phrase.

Rich Snippets

Even if you don’t use those tools, Google will help you with question suggestions and the rich snippets that other people are asking. As you type a topic into Google, you’ll see the rich snippets and the questions people are asking. Perhaps you can write a better answer than someone else. Maybe you can write a more specific answer than someone else.

“People Also Search”

There’s another spot on the Google search result page where you can look for ideas for evergreen content. At the very bottom of the page, there’s a section where Google tells you, “People also search for this.” You can use this information to produce content on your site for the other phrases or terms that people search that are related to your original phrase.

Beat Writer’s Block and Create Evergreen Content

All of the above suggestions will help you break out of the “What should I write about today? I’m going write something cute,” idea and produce more evergreen content that’s ripe for SEO. My writers have written for some pretty boring topics. But using these tools usually helps them generate so many topics we can’t possibly write all of them.