There’s no denying the significance of content in an SEO strategy, given that it’s been confirmed as one of Google’s top three ranking factors, alongside backlinks and RankBrain. However, not all types of content can contribute to success in the same way when it comes to driving organic search growth. Evergreen content, on the other hand, is typically the backbone of a successful strategy. In fact, there’s a good chance that you are missing out on valuable search traffic if you don’t use evergreen content to deliver ongoing growth.
Simply put, evergreen content is content that manages to stay relevant and is not time-sensitive. In addition, it continues to drive traffic long after it has initially been published.
In this article, we will look at what evergreen content is and how to create it in order to increase your site’s organic growth.
What is evergreen content?
The topics covered by evergreen content generate a consistent level of interest and do not have significant seasonal peaks and troughs in demand. People are always interested in consuming content related to these topics. This remains the case regardless of what stories are being told in the news or what time of year it is. The information in evergreen content pieces is always up to date for readers looking to learn more or answer a question.
Why do we call it evergreen content? The term is based on the assumption that even people who are not marketing experts are familiar with the term “evergreen. After all, evergreen trees (usually the pine or fir variety) are frequently used to decorate homes at Christmas. Since they do not shed their leaves throughout the seasons, the evergreen tree symbolizes eternal life. Just like trees, evergreen content is thought to be long-lasting and sustainable. It’s easy to assume that all content online is sustainable since articles and blog posts never disappear. However, when we say that a piece of content is “evergreen”, we mean that it remains relevant long after it has been published. This results in increased and consistent traffic.
Some standard evergreen formats that are known to generate lasting content include lists, top tips, instructional “how-to” tutorials, encyclopedia-Esque entries, product reviews, and some videos. This does not include news articles, statistical or numeral reports that can change or go out of date, pieces about a specific holiday or season, articles that are focused on a current trend or pop culture fad, or the latest clothing and fashion trends.
Why does evergreen content work?
The three main reasons this type of content is the cornerstone of any company’s overall content marketing strategy include the fact that it provides value to consumers, backlinks for the brand, and is great for SEO. When you publish successful evergreen content, it can bring you traffic for years to come. You won’t have to keep your foot on the gas and produce new content all the time. Additionally, “linkbait” is no doubt a good result of evergreen content. After all, an evergreen article can keep generating backlinks years after it first goes live. Evergreen posts also rank well in search engines because they attract links. Finally, evergreen content is great for SEO.
This type of content can help you to implement a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that helps you to rank for competitive keywords and generate consistent traffic. Ranking a piece of content in the search engine results pages (SERPs) takes time. Great content is rarely enough to achieve top rankings on its own (unless we are talking long-tail topics or a very authoritative brand that is publishing the content). Most companies must also actively build backlinks to their content and promote it to their target market. This means that it is common for a piece of content to gain visibility and reach its peak performance weeks, or even months after it’s been published. Furthermore, evergreen content attracts more links because you can promote it for a more extended period. You only need to get your content to the top of the search results, and you will reap the long-term benefits.
Tips for Writing Evergreen Content
Now that we’ve established what evergreen content is, as well as the formats that work best, here are some specific writing tips for evergreen content:
1) Choose the right keywords
Even the most lasting evergreen piece is not worth it if many people are not searching for that specific topic. For this reason, it is essential to do research into what kind of content people are looking for. The research process can be broken down into two different categories: topic research and keyword research.
How to do topic research
You can identify topics that are associated with your core product or service offerings in minutes using a Topic Research tool. Such a tool would give you a complete insight into the content your target audience is looking for. All you’d normally need to do is type in a keyword and click search to get a list of topic suggestions that you can sort by volume, difficulty, or efficiency. Some Topic Research Tools, like SemRush, include a Screenshot feature that can provide businesses with a slew of new ideas. On the other hand, most effective content creators go a step further to understand both the primary and secondary keywords being targeted. These content creators are usually eager to learn how they can create content that aligns with the company’s overall SEO strategy.
How to do keyword research
You can use keyword research to determine the potential your piece of content has to increase your online visibility. Let’s assume that you have discovered a great topic as a result of the above research. You can then use a Keyword Tool to generate a variety of keyword suggestions, including long-tail keywords, questions, related suggestions, and more. It would have been easier to just skip this step and create content that targets the topic’s top-level term. However, if we dig a little deeper, we can see enough volume to target specific keywords within this content.
Keyword research helps define the scope of a piece of content. We can already see from this study that we’ll need to include key content about the costs associated with the chosen topic in our strategy. In all likelihood, these will become evergreen pieces in their own right. If you skip this step, you may be missing out on significant opportunities to increase traffic to your content.
2) Optimize for SEO
You should remember to use SEO best practices for on-page optimization like title tags and meta descriptions once you have your keywords. You can do so by including alt text in images and including the keyword in the title, URL, and body copy. Nevertheless, it’s important not to stuff keywords in there. Other aspects to pay attention to and consider include internal linking, outbound links, images, CTAs, and other rich media. To improve SEO rankings, you should also link related evergreen articles together.
3) Write for beginners
You may feel compelled to share your knowledge, but you must do so in a way that is accessible to complete beginners. After all, you want to create evergreen content that will attract a large and returning audience.
Newcomers to any niche tend not to know the overly technical language within the industry. To avoid turning this audience off with language that is too complex for them to understand, you should avoid using jargon whenever possible.
4) Narrow Down the Topic
If you write about a broad topic, you will end up with a much longer piece that will lose the interest of new readers. General topics tend to have more competition because they have shorter keywords or head terms. It is also more difficult for the writer to write a longer piece. Simple, specific topics like “How to Throw a Roundhouse Kick” are more appealing than “Guide to Powerful Kick Techniques.”
5) Repurpose Content
When you create great content, you have many options for repurposing it and reusing your great ideas in different formats. Some of these formats include webinars, guides, case studies, interviews, visual content, infographics, and podcasts.
Video Tutorials
First of all, webinars can turn into video tutorials. You may host a fantastic webinar that draws a large number of people and is a huge success. Of course, not everyone will be able to attend the webinar. For this reason, you will continue to have new site visitors and leads months later. You should not let that excellent webinar pass you by. Instead, you can turn that webinar into a YouTube video series, therefore ensuring that your valuable content is perpetually preserved. Not only will that asset look great on your website, but it may also help you attract new visitors via YouTube.
How-to Guides
Secondly, you can turn old blog posts into guides. You should consider repackaging your blog posts into a fresh new guide once you’ve blogged extensively about a specific topic. You may, for example, have written several blog posts about the ins and outs of Pinterest. Once this content is live, you can turn those blog posts into “The Complete Guide to Pinterest Perfection.” You can then use these in your email marketing and lead generation efforts, rather than keeping them as separate posts. Keep in mind that you may need to update your blog posts before republishing them, depending on how old they are. When you’ve already invested time and effort into creating high-quality blog posts, you won’t want them to go unnoticed.
eBooks
You can also turn interviews into expert advice eBooks. Interviews are a popular type of blog content. They’re easy to put together, edit, and they generate lots of attention. You can repackage these interviews as expert advice eBooks. You’re essentially repurposing the same content for a different medium. This is smart content marketing. In fact, some people prefer eBooks to blog posts because they’re easier to download and read later. What’s more, the new expert advice eBook may pique the interest of those who missed the first round of interviews.
Newsletters and Podcasts
Finally, you can use your old blog posts and create a podcast or tips newsletter out of your content. You should consider promoting your blog posts in a weekly tips newsletter to get the most bang for your buck. Hopefully, you already have an extensive list of email subscribers. Nevertheless, remember that even the most devoted fans will not be able to read every post you publish, especially if you post multiple times per day. A friendly tips-oriented newsletter can highlight your best blog posts of the week. This kind of newsletter will also give users an extra push to visit your website and read your most memorable content pieces.
Conclusion
You should not focus solely on evergreen content. However, when integrated into your company’s overall content strategy, evergreen content can help you become an SEO powerhouse. You can develop a winning content strategy for continued organic growth by creating pieces of evergreen content. It also helps if you can stay up to date on industry news and trends. In order to do so effectively, you must first determine what kind of content is evergreen I your market. Then you’ll need a scalable and repeatable process. In this way, you can build on your success piece by piece. To meet the goals of a marketing campaign, a successful content strategy must balance the various types of content available. Ultimately, using a single type of content will rarely produce the same results as using a combination of reactive and relevant content.
How Pressfarm can help with your content creation
Do you need help producing outstanding content for your brand? The PR experts at Pressfarm are skilled at creating content that helps brands stand out. The Pressfarm team is skilled at not only crafting press releases and writing memorable feature stories but also optimizing this content for SEO. In addition to getting quality content for your brand, you can use the Pressfarm media database to find media contacts to share this content with.