How to make news articles evergreen

A good story never really dies. (public domain photo)

News stories are good for page view spikes. Evergreen content gives you steady page views. While these things are true, there's a way online article writers can have the best of both worlds. By learning how to make news stories evergreen, we can have both the timely news spikes and the evergreen content stability. This will keep overall page views on a permanent upward climb.

Chose carefully

You can't do this with every news article. Some news or current events lend themselves well to this technique, while others are better left alone. Practice is the best teacher. Still, considering each news article as a possible evergreen article is a good idea. To decide if a news story can become evergreen, think of the ways it can be done. If your article can be manipulated in one of these ways, it's a possibility.
Subject matter

Most online article writers realize that subject matter is key when it comes to the web. There are certain things that never really go out of search style. When a story comes up concerning a high search value person or subject, use one of the techniques outlined below to turn your news story into an evergreen article. It may seem complicated. It's really quite simple once you get the hang of it.

Be an authority

Be the "go to guy" of online article writers on a given subject. People are more likely to search your queue for related information, the next time a similar article is in the news. Make a niche for yourself. Become famous for a certain type of story. That way, people will seek you out to see your take when a story breaks and after the thrill ride is over.

Use a secondary subject in the title

One very sure way to make online news articles evergreen is to use a secondary subject. Provide extra information that will continue to be searched in the future. For example, if something happened to a tiger at the zoo, you might use that as the main part of your title, then add something that might be a permanent search. Like this, "Tiger Mauls Trainer at Denver Zoo - Can Zoo Life Lead to Animal Aggression?" You will get a spike in page views for the main subject, as well as stable page views from the secondary subject.

Elaborate

The more you elaborate on a news story, the more search-able information it contains. Be sure you are using a lot of additional information in your news articles. Online article writers already know using related words helps the search value of their content. What they may not realize is, related information can do the same thing. You can easily turn a news story evergreen using elaboration, or one of the other techniques. Why not enjoy the page views for as long as you can? It just makes good sense.

This post was previously published on Yahoo! by this author.