Are you creating tonnes of content but still struggling to grow your audience and maintain steady traffic? After every post, is there a spike in traffic, and then drops back to 0? Your marketing strategy may be missing evergreen content.
Whether you have a YouTube channel or a website with a blog, your marketing strategy will benefit from evergreen content. It’s not called the King of Content for nothing. Evergreen content is an integral part of a well-rounded marketing strategy. So when it comes to building a solid foundation for sustainable organic growth, look no further.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content refers to content that remains relevant and valuable long after it’s published. Unlike timely and trending content, which quickly loses relevance, evergreen content continues to generate traffic and engagement, month after month and year after year. It’s the type of content that remains consistently useful, regardless of current trends or events. Creating evergreen content requires a strategic approach. It involves crafting content that addresses timeless topics, and providing information that is always relevant to your audience.
Trending and Timely Content Versus Evergreen Content
For any number of brands, trending content might mean promoting a sale, an event, or, a promotion. These will result in a jump in traffic for a moment but have an expiry date on their relevance.
Examples of Evergreen Content
Almost any brand can benefit from it and most brands are missing opportunities to engage their audiences with it. Whether you are a dentist, or a florist, evergreen content can help you grow your social media channel or website traffic.
- Tutorial ‘How To’ Videos
- Best of Lists
- Guides and Resources
- Timeless Fact-based Information
- Industry FAQ’s Answered
- Historically Relevant
By focusing on creating evergreen content, businesses can establish themselves as authorities in their industries and consistently attract a steady stream of organic traffic.
The benefits of evergreen content for sustainable organic growth
Evergreen content continues to be relevant long after it’s published.
Evergreen content plays a crucial role in building a solid foundation for sustainable organic growth. When businesses invest in creating evergreen content, they are investing in long-term results. Unlike other forms of content that may temporarily boost traffic, evergreen content continues to attract visitors over time. This consistent flow of organic traffic helps businesses establish a strong online presence and build trust with their audience.
Search Engines Love It
Moreover, evergreen content allows businesses to capitalize on search engine optimization (SEO) benefits. As evergreen content remains relevant and valuable, it has a higher chance of ranking well in search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that businesses can attract organic traffic from search engines without constantly creating new content or relying heavily on paid advertising.
Demonstrate Expertise with Relevant Content
Evergreen content can be an opportunity to show off your expertise and educate your audience. If you successfully do this, you are more likely to have return visitors who are interested to hear more.
Content You Can Promote Over and Over Again
Since evergreen content doesn’t have an expiry date, you can promote it over and over again. Whether it is a YouTube video on your channel or a blog post, pay attention to your analytics to keep track of top performers. These are the ones you will definitely want to promote even more.
How to identify evergreen topics for your content strategy
To start identifying evergreen topics for your content strategy think about your brand, industry, and audience. Doing some keyword research is essential to identifying often searched topics. Look for topics that are not tied to specific events or trends but are relevant to your audience’s needs or interests on an ongoing basis. If you are a florist, consider talking about the unique characteristics of different flowers, talk about flowers in folklore or tradition, or give advice on flower care.
Be Specific
Rather than talking broadly about a bunch of different things in one video or article, talk about one specific thing in great detail. When people do searches, they are usually asking specific questions. If they get to a video or article where they have to dig deep for the info relevant to them, they will likely not stick around long enough to find it. However, if you can maintain focus on one topic at a time and establish your content as relevant to a specific search, you are more likely to be found and engaged with. This will also help maximize your content as you can break down larger topics into multiple content pieces of content to engage with.
Be Informative
Educational content that provides foundational knowledge in your industry tends to remain relevant for a long time, as it addresses fundamental concepts and principles that don’t change much over time. Equally, informative and educational content helps to establish you as an authority in your field, which will help customers trust you and this encourages return visitors.
Answer Frequently Asked Questions
One approach to finding evergreen topics is to look for frequently asked questions in your industry. These questions often represent common pain points that your audience is seeking solutions for. By addressing these common questions and concerns in your content, you can provide valuable information that remains relevant over time.
Research Your Industry and Competition
Your industry and competitors can probably provide clues for great content. Research the leaders in your industry to see what kind of content they are creating. Provide your own take on popularly covered topics. Don’t worry if it has been done before, the important thing is to cover the content that is relevant to your customer and establish yourself as knowledgeable within your industry.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is super critical to an evergreen content strategy that actually works. Doing some simple keyword research can tell you which Google or search engine searches are most popular. You want to address the popular topics, keywords, search terms, and search phrases that people are looking for. If no one is looking for your content it’s not going to be much use, is it? But if you can find those search terms that get hundreds or thousands of searches a month, then you might stand a chance of generating some traffic from your content.
Keyword search tools will tell you which search terms or phrases are most common for a given keyword. They will tell you the search volume (how many searches it receives a month), as well as its search difficulty score (how much competition there is for it). The idea is to find searches with high search volume but a low search difficulty score.
Tips for Creating Evergreen Content
Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, you can create evergreen content that speaks directly to their needs and interests.
Be Specific and Concise
It’s important to strike a balance between providing comprehensive information and keeping it concise. Break down complex topics into easily understandable sections and use examples and case studies to illustrate your points. This will help your audience grasp the information and apply it to their own situations.
Use Headlines and Subheadings for Quick Points and Skimmable Content
Craft compelling headlines that address their pain points and include your keywords! Structure your content in a way that is easy to read and digest, with subheadings, bullet points, and visual elements to break up the text.
Optimizing evergreen content for search engines
To maximize the reach and visibility of your evergreen content, it’s essential to optimize it for search engines. Start by conducting keyword research to identify the terms and phrases that are relevant to your content. Incorporate these keywords naturally throughout your content, including in the title, headings, and body text.
Utilize Keywords
In addition to keywords, focus on creating high-quality content that provides value to your audience. Search engines prioritize content that is informative, well-written, and engaging. Use descriptive meta tags, optimize your images, and ensure your content is mobile-friendly to improve your chances of ranking well in search engine results.
Link Building
Another important aspect of optimizing evergreen content is building internal and external links. Internal links help search engines understand the structure of your website and navigate between pages. External links to reputable sources can also increase the credibility and authority of your content. Backlinks are crucial to lending authority to your content. A backlink is a link from another website to your content or post. The equivalent on social media would be a ‘share’ of your post.
Share On Social Media
As backlinks are important to your content, social media shares of links to your content will help lend credibility and will help generate traction with search engines.
Guest Posts
Look for opportunities for guest posts. This is when you have another brand with an online presence post on your site or you post on theirs. The collab provides another opportunity to build backlinks.
Promoting evergreen content for maximum reach and engagement
Creating evergreen content is only the first step. To maximize its reach and engagement, you need to promote it effectively. Start by sharing your content on your social media channels, email newsletters, and other relevant platforms.
Present it in multiple formats
Consider repurposing your evergreen content into different formats to reach a wider audience. This could include creating infographics, videos, or podcasts based on your original content. By repurposing into different formats, you can attract different types of learners and engage with your audience in new and exciting ways.
Encourage Followers to Share
Collaborating with influencers or thought leaders in your industry can also help amplify the reach of your content. Reach out to relevant influencers and ask them to share your content with their followers. This can significantly increase its visibility and attract new visitors to your website.
Updating and repurposing evergreen content to keep it relevant
Updating
While evergreen content is designed to remain relevant for a long time, it’s essential to periodically review and update it to ensure its accuracy and freshness. Industry trends and best practices may change over time. It’s important to reflect these changes in your content.
Repurposing
Regularly reviewing and updating your content also provides an opportunity to repurpose it into new formats. Consider turning a popular blog post into a video tutorial or an e-book. By repurposing your evergreen content, you can reach new audiences and provide additional value to your existing followers.
Measuring the success of your evergreen content strategy
To measure the success of your evergreen content strategy, you need to define clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). These could include metrics such as organic traffic, time on page, bounce rate, and conversions. Use web analytics tools to track these metrics and analyze the performance of your evergreen content over time.
In addition to quantitative metrics, it’s also important to gather qualitative feedback from your audience. Pay attention to comments, social media engagement, and direct feedback to understand how your evergreen content is resonating with your audience. This feedback can help you make informed decisions about future content creation and optimization.
Conclusion: The long-term impact of evergreen content on your organic growth
Evergreen content is the cornerstone of a sustainable organic growth strategy. By creating content that remains relevant and valuable over time, businesses can establish themselves as authorities in their industries and attract a steady stream of organic traffic. This provides ongoing value to your audience and helps build trust and credibility.
To create effective evergreen content, it’s important to identify topics that are timeless and relevant to your audience’s needs. Craft compelling content that resonates with your target audience and optimize it for search engines. Promote your content to maximize its reach and engagement, and regularly update and repurpose it to keep it relevant.
By measuring the success of your evergreen content strategy, you can refine your approach and continuously improve your organic growth efforts. With evergreen content as the foundation of your content strategy, you can build a solid foundation for sustainable organic growth in the ever-changing online landscape.