Your 5-Step Roadmap to Creating Evergreen Blog Content

There you are, staring blankly at your laptop screen trying to figure out what to publish this week for your blog. You comb the web for the latest hot topics and land on something that feels fresh and timely. You crank out the post and hit publish. Only to do the exact same thing next week. Sound familiar?

It’s time to get off the merry-go-round. A blog is one of the biggest traffic drivers for a business. Not only is it a great way to educate your potential clients about your products and services, but it is a great way to boost your SEO (search engine optimization aka google ranking). This is why it is super important to choose topics that are evergreen.

1. Choose Timeless Topics

Evergreen means the content is timeless, like a Chanel handbag. It will never go out of style and will make sense to someone brand new to your website. Another good rule of thumb is to make sure that the topics you cover will be relevant to your readers. This is why it is good to stick to roughly 5 general categories and cycle through those topics with posts that narrow the focus down to key points and topics in each category.

For example, if you are a Graphic Designer rather than writing one blog that covers branding as a whole in a very general way, break down elements of graphic design into more specific blog posts like ‘5 elements you need for a killer logo’, or ‘selecting the perfect color palette for your audience’.

2. Brain Dump

Rather than trying to come up with one blog post a week, do yourself a favor and create a list of topics for each category you plant to blog about. For starters, spend a solid hour or so writing down all of the different ideas that come to mind. Get super specific about topics and really break them down to their core.

It is also a good idea to make that list accessible to you on the go. Ideas don’t come just when you want them to. They come when you are in line at Starbucks waiting for your Dirty Chai, so it helps to have the list handy so you don’t let any ideas slip away.

If you are having trouble coming up with topics, Google is your BFF. Have you ever noticed that when you begin to type a topic into the search bar it begins to auto-populate search topics? These are the most searched topics on Google. Use this to your advantage. Take a look at what answers people are looking for in relation to your line of work and use this to craft your blog post topics.

3. Format For the Win

Did you ever see that Kate Hudson movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? Remember Andie Anderson the ‘How-To Girl’? There is a reason Composure Magazine wrote their titles that way. How-to articles are one of the best ways to craft your posts because of how Google reads (or crawls) and ultimately ranks them.

When drafting your posts and titles, Google also likes it when you break the post down into X amount of steps - like, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, this not only makes the blog post easy to read, it makes the article much more searchable on Google which in turn boosts your SEO. So create your articles with this format in mind and please for the love of unicorns, use headers!

4. Come Up With Click-Worthy Titles

When it comes to crafting your blog post titles, rather than trying to make it coy and catchy, aim to make it easy to understand. You want the reader to know exactly what they will get when they click on your post. WhoWhatWear.com is AH-mazing at this.

• 8 Pretty Outfits Featuring Just Dresses and Sneakers
  
• 13 Ways Everyone is Wearing their Swimsuits Inside
  

Their titles might seem long-winded but you know exactly what you are getting when you click on that post. This is your goal. It might seem like a fun idea to create cute or catchy titles but in the end this only hurts (not helps) your organic search results.

5. Get Trigger Happy

You will also want to consider using ‘trigger words’ that will attract people to your posts. A trigger word/phrase is something that grabs a person's attention and compels them to act. In your blog posts case, you want the person to read the title and click on the link to your post. If you are writing content to educate potential clients, think about what kinds of trigger words will make people want to read your posts.

Some examples of trigger words/phrases include:

• How To ______
  
• The Ultimate Guide to _____
  
• Your ______ Roadmap for Success
  
• X Things You Can do to Improve _____ Today
  
• The ______ Challenge
  
• X Helpful Hacks for ______
  
• X Tips and Tricks to _______
  

Now it’s your turn!

No time like the present! Grab a pen and paper then list the 5 different categories you are planning to blog about and brainstorm some topics you can cover for each one. This is a great way to start your idea bank and get the creative juices flowing!