Tracking and updating evergreen (with spreadsheet template!)

We're talking evergreen content again. We’ve got tips for tracking evergreen content with a spreadsheet, how to effectively update it and lots of screenshots.

May 13, 2024

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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie here (again!), pleased to report it is now officially softball season. Three games in three days, and while neither The Green Beans nor Jennifer Glove Hewitts won their matches based on the number of runs scored, we did win in spirit points earned.

This week: We’re back to evergreen, a perennial favourite. Last week, we talked about finding evergreen content and “news durables.” This week, it’s all about how to analyze what works and updating evergreen content.

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Let’s get it.

In this issue:

Recap: What is evergreen?
Updating news evergreen content
Auditing what works, evergreen edition

THE 101

What is evergreen?

As we covered last week, evergreen is content on a topic that is relevant to readers over a significant period of time, but is not tied to a single, short news event. It should drive traffic, answer the W5s or How questions and provide information that doesn’t change significantly over time.

For publishers, the appeal of evergreen content is having a source of continuous, quality traffic for little ongoing effort. When packaged well on-site, evergreen content can also drive solid internal referral traffic and keep readers engaged.

A durable news story or explainer, meanwhile, requires updates more frequently than true evergreen content. Durable content has a shorter shelf-life than true evergreen, and may require more updates, but it is less overall effort than a new piece.

How to identify and track evergreen content

Start by taking inventory of your existing content that you consider to be “evergreen.” Create a spreadsheet of all URLs for content published more than 90 days ago that is still seeing traffic.

For durable content — or content related to newsier topics like COVID or Russia’s war in Ukraine — adjust the timeframe. Consider what news moments your publication has covered in-depth, and when you produced explainer-type content that needs updating.

Pull this using Google Search Console, Botify, Screaming Frog, SEMRush, Google Analytics, another SEO tool or your internal analytics. Identify the evergreen content worth updating by looking at the metrics that are meaningful in your newsroom (page views, sessions, attention time, conversions, etc.) for the respective timeframes.

Use those metrics, along with the following questions, to help identify the evergreen content you want to update and track:

Does this content follow an easy to update format?
Does it answer a W5 or how question?
Is the topic evergreen, and does the advice/information change often?
Is there enough content on the page? (Evergreen is sometimes longer, upwards of 2,000-5,000 words).

Make a copy of our evergreen tracking template, then import your subset of URLs. Follow these instructions to complete the tracking sheet:

In the Evergreen tab, populate column A with the link to the existing content;
Columns B-J should automatically populate to include the current headlines, meta descriptions, canonical URL (and the character count for each), along with the original publish date. If not, pull the IMPORTXML formulas down from row 1 to the rest of the sheet.
- Here’s a handy resource for using IMPORTXML.

Your spreadsheet will look like this to start, with columns B–J populating with data automatically thanks to IMPORTXML functions.

Update columns K-L manually using your internal analytics for the sessions (per month over 6 months, or whatever timeframe works for you), and the page’s primary keyword focus (use GSC or another SEO tool, along with your news SEO judgment, to populate this).
- This will identify the search intent of the content; and if there’s lots of interest in the piece, perhaps indicates you need to publish more on the topic.

Update columns M-V manually. This is a useful process and necessary to plan how you will update your evergreen. However, it can be time consuming, so consider handling a handful of URLs at a time.However, it can be time consuming, so consider handling a handful of URLs at a time.

Updated?: Only update this to YES when you’ve republished or substantially changed the content;
Updated by: Keep track of which reporters or editors are responsible for the maintaining the content;
Update included: When the file has been refreshed, indicate what changes were made (for example, headline refresh, adding a new section, or updated images, etc.);
Is this piece part of a content pillar?: Content pillars and clusters communicate your expertise on a topic (this could be section/category pages). If the piece fits within a defined cluster, identify that here — and then start thinking about ways to build out the content pillar.
Level of effort (LOE): How much work is the update? This will be key when deciding where to start and how much resourcing is needed;
Category/section: The on-site categorization of this content (i.e., Sports, Technology, Health, etc.).

This is what the sheet will look like after populating columns K–V. It’s a time-intensive process, but will set you up for success in the next step (updating the content). Make use of data validation (the dropdown buttons) in the spreadsheet to keep your tagging consistent.

Bonus: To track the performance of evergreen or see what formats you use most often, populate columns W-Y:

Content type/format: Is it a list, guide, FAQ or another type? Use the categories that make sense for your publication. Refer to the data validation support docs for help with editing the options.
Tone of content: Is conversational? Is it first-person or another type we have not included in the data validation dropdown?;
Audience profile, persona or user needs: What type of reader are you targeting with this evergreen?
- Pro tip: Run the “audience canvas” exercise to identify personas, or make use of BBC’s six audience needs — both exercises are a chance to think more deeply about your readers and define, precisely, who you are writing for. This framework can help a lot when pitching a new evergreen — you can better match what and how you create with how you want to read it. TL;DR: Who are you writing this for?

Content type, tone and audience personas or user needs are all bonus/optional columns that can give depth to future analysis of evergreen content.

Consider columns W-Y as a “nice to have” — it is extra work, but could help with future editorial planning or analysis. You could make a pivot table (see the sample tab in our spreadsheet) and determine that a specific content type (i.e., lists) works for a specific vertical (home and design), but not as well for sports coverage.

Finally, make sure this spreadsheet aligns with your editorial priorities. If another metric matters more (for example, subscriptions over sessions), update the sheet to fit your needs. In the future, you can also add a column for traffic to the story since the update. This way, you can measure the level of effort (LOE) against the gains.

Pro tip: Try automating content tagging using GPT for Sheets — with the (all caps) caveat that you MUST follow your newsroom’s policy for working with AI.

Evergreen best practices: Tips for updating content

Now that the spreadsheet is populated, it’s time to get to work updating your evergreen content.

Using the example of “best cooking oil,” we can look at ways to refresh our evergreen content.

Start with the main keyword (column L), and do additional keyword research. Are there new or useful questions available that you have not covered? Has anything changed since you first published this piece?

Google Trends with Glimpse shows the consistent interest in the query, related attributes (“best cooking oil for high cholesterol”) and in the Related Queries section, a rising search term to consider (“best oil for cooking on blackstone”).

Tools like Glimpse or AlsoAsked can be useful in uncovering new and interesting questions, and if interest is rising or falling. Consider social media and forums (for example, Reddit) for new reader questions to include, as well.

Compare your content against what’s ranking for your top keyword. Literally Google the keyword, then compare the first page of results against your own content. What angles, subtopics, questions or content formats have you missed?

For example, for “best cooking oils,” the top results include a list of storage suggestions; an FAQ section; pros and cons of each oil; and shopping recommendations.

Consider the on-page elements used by your competitors in high-ranking evergreen content.

For the angles, subtopics and questions you missed — if there’s a relevant subtopic, can you incorporate it into your piece? If you’ve added a relevant e-commerce vertical since the evergreen was first published, this is an opportunity to consider a buy or recommendations guide, as well.

Remove date references in the body copy where possible. Phrases like “this year” or “last week” are the norm in news, but these phrases can make your content seem out of date. Check with your standards or readers editors in case your newsroom has policies around these types of updates. Try to make evergreen/durable content as date-agnostic as possible.

Be comprehensive in your updates, and think of non-text ways to provide useful information: infographics, charts, checklists and interactive elements can be very useful (see the NYT’s rent or buy page, or Vox’s exercise explainer). This is 10x content — coverage that is ten times better than your competitors.

The NYT and Vox included infographics and an interactive calculator tool to make their evergreen 10x content.

Look at creating topic clusters and updating your internal links to connect all the stories together. Check your backlinks, too, and do outreach if other, bigger outlets mention your content, but don’t link to your site.

Check the on-page elements: The headline, meta description, subheadings, links and images should all be optimized as much as possible. Consult our on-page SEO guide for best practices for each element.

Treat the updated evergreen as if it’s a fresh story: Promote it again on the homepage and key section pages, and consider inclusion in the navigation. Promote the article back on social platforms or in a newsletter. If it’s worth updating, it’s worth promoting.

Set a reminder to look at the content’s performance in six months (or the interval you feel appropriate). Go back into the spreadsheet and refresh the Sessions column. Use the pivot table(s) to review what does and doesn’t work for evergreen updates — and use this analysis to inform your future updates.

Pivot tables use key metrics from the tracking sheet to analyze the kinds of evergreen formats and updates that return healthy traffic. In the dummy data example, adding new internal links and changing the headline was the update type that drove the most sessions.

Evergreen can bring in new audiences and traffic to your content, but must be updated properly. Data analysis and reviewing your work can help undercover reader behaviour trends or inform your next audience development experiment.

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The bottom line: Evergreen makes use of the archive of content, and can drive internal referral traffic. Updating and tracking evergreen can be time-consuming, but it’s worth it for the new traffic to our existing work.

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