Evergreen Content and the Affiliate Marketer

Evergreen content, to those not familiar with the term, refers to timeless content. This is the kind of content that remains relevant years after it has been published. Hence, “evergreen”: content that is always fresh.

So what does evergreen content have to with affiliate marketing?

It helps drive traffic to your site. Just like any other article you publish on your site. The only difference is that evergreen content is sustainable. Evergreen content, being content that is always relevant, is capable of driving consistent traffic to your site through constant links and references by other sites as well as sharing on social media.

Let’s take as an example this lesson on affiliate marketing: How does affiliate marketing work?. This lesson was published years ago, and yet, if you look at the content, it is still relevant. Certain parts need to be updated, but as a whole, it remains true to what is affiliate marketing and how it works. Despite having been published a few years back, this article is still linked and referred to by other sites. This equals to getting traffic as well as backlinks, which eventually lead to conversions

Fortunately, most niches in affiliate marketing are evergreen: weight loss, self-development, love and romance to name a few.

How to Write Evergreen Content

Writing evergreen content for your affiliate marketing site can be tricky, but it is not difficult. It’s the same as writing any other article for your site. The difference lies in the subject matter and the format. Keep in mind that what you want to write is an article that gives information that does not change. These would usually be lists (like those 10 Things I Have Learned in Life that always gets shared around on Facebook), or how-to articles (How to manage your time, or, how to train your dog and similar articles). You can also write a “Tips” article like those “ 10 Tips to a Slim Waist”, for example. Product reviews are also considered evergreen content.

A few other things to take note of when writing evergreen content is to keep the tone of the article light-hearted, and the language simple and straightforward. Who wants to read an article that is full of technical jargon? One key element of evergreen content is that everyone can relate to it. All readers understand it.

Make sure to narrow down your topic as well. This applies to all articles, not just evergreen ones. Narrowing down your topic helps to keep you organized. It’s much easier to write about a single topic than several different ones, even if they are related. You’ll be able to link your article to a related post anyway. In fact, we always recommend you link your article to a related post on your site. Articles with evergreen content are no exception. In fact, links are a major factor in evergreen content, so make sure to link articles together.

Evergreen content means SEO

SEO is essential in affiliate marketing. Sure you can drive traffic to your sites without the help of search engines, but every affiliate marketer knows that being at the top of the SERPs for your target keywords is still the best. Evergreen content helps you with SEO for your site. This doesn’t mean you’re just going to put the evergreen content out there. Like any other article on your site it needs to be optimized for your target keyword. Evergreen content will eventually be acquiring links on its own, but you would need to build links to it at the onset. Before it can begin driving traffic to your site on its own, you need to make sure to drive traffic to your evergreen content first.

Having evergreen content on your site is certainly helpful, but you do not have to make all your articles evergreen. Not because the article is made of evergreen content means you will not update it either. You still need to write current, topical articles to make your site relevant and timely. You need too review and update evergreen articles from time to time too. That’s a key factor to make sure your evergreen content stays evergreen.

There’s a lot of information out there about evergreen content. There’s this excellent case study by SEOMoz that I suggest you go over. Our very own Jason Acidre also wrote a superb article on evergreen content and how it affects your site’s marketing and sales.

Before you can publish evergreen content on your site, or any article for that matter, you need to polish your writing skills. Affiloblueprint has some excellent training on creating content. Make sure to check them out! :)

I hope you found this article helpful. Go ahead and leave a comment! I would love to hear from you!