Tag Archives: content marketing

What is Evergreen Content?

What is evergreen content

You know that content is an important factor for SEO.  You might also have read about the importance of producing ‘evergreen content’ in order to give your site lasting SEO value and keep visitors coming back to your pages repeatedly. So what is evergreen content? And how can businesses use it to drive web traffic and SEO results? Let’s take a look.

When it comes to content marketing, evergreen content is perhaps the most important staple that you need to have in your copywriting diet.

However, many people do not understand the definition of evergreen content, nor why it is so important. We looked at some of the key principles behind evergreen content creation, and analyzed how it can make such a difference to your website.

Defining Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is a piece of writing that will retain its relevance long into the future, ideally for months, if not years. This means that a piece of evergreen content will attract visitors to your site, even if something has been written six months ago. If you work in an industry that is reasonably stagnant and slow to evolve, then your content could be valuable for years at a time.

While it is true that Google loves original content, if you search a particular keyword, you’re still going to be shown the best piece of writing for your needs, irrespective of when it was produced.

As a result, a piece of evergreen content will still see an initial spike in visitors when it is first uploaded or indexed by Google, but in the time that follows, there will still be regular traffic to the page, rather than a total drop off in visitor numbers.

How to Write Evergreen Contentwriting

The best approach to take to evergreen content is to look at it as a resource post. By approaching it in this manner, you will be able to build up your reputation for communicating quality information and quickly earn a regular readership for your site.

Write your content in a way that will be easy to update should anything change within the industry. For example, if you are writing resources for local SEO, you will want to be able to easily amend anything should new citation techniques, for example, become available, or Google implement an algorithm that changes how local businesses can rank.

This is in contrast to a regular blog post, where you might talk about a recent event within the industry or speculation regarding something that might occur. While this might be valuable content, it is likely to lose its relevance quickly, and regular posts of this manner will be needed to maintain traffic.

Your Content Marketing Strategy

Please do not take this as an instruction to stop writing blogs and other spontaneous posts. While evergreen content has the potential to be a long-term SEO benefit, you should remember that a variety of writing is the best approach to bringing in traffic and additional business.

Rather than making evergreen content your only strategy, make it a central part of it, and fill your site with a range of resources, from white papers to ‘How To’ guides, and you’ll quickly find your traffic and site popularity on the rise.

Peter Marino is a digital marketing specialist who works with small and medium sized businesses to develop high-quality website content that helps companies rank higher on search engines.

How to Find Quality Images for Your Content

Quality Images for contentPhotos give customers a rich impression of your business, and articles with photos in them are 47 percent more likely to be clicked on, reports content creation agency Curata. Not only do compelling photos encourage engagement, they aid in SEO efforts, since photos may be tagged with keywords and show up in search results. Photos are essential for a company’s SEO strategy, writes SEO agency AudienceBloom CEO Jayson DeMars. Besides supporting written or filmed content, photos tell stories. Great photographers combine technical proficiency, style and vision to creatively illustrate ideas, according to a digital photography school. Whatever your budget, there are things you can do to ensure you only use quality images for your content.

Rule of Thirds

While outsourcing to professionals is ideal, if you shoot photos in house, there are things you can do to make the pictures look professional. Spanish business photographer Alexandro Lacadena Gomez suggests you are conscious of the rule of thirds; imagine an image is divided into nine parts with two horizontal and vertical lines spaced equally, and put your subject where the lines intersect, since that is where people’s eyes naturally gravitate.

Show Perspective

If you’re photographing a product, shoot it from all angles to show off all features. For other subjects, shoot from multiple angles to show unique perspectives. Use black or white for your background to make your product pop, and light the product from all sides. Be mindful of your white balance setting to ensure white backgrounds don’t appear yellowish or brownish, according to blog.cx.com. Consider diversity when using models.

Composition

Once you’re familiar with composition, you’ll be surprised how universal most of the tips are. You’ll find the way to make a photo look professional, according to photographymad.com, instead of a snapshot:

  • Place your main subject off center
  • Think about the way you place your leading lines: straight, diagonal, radial, zigzag, curvy, etc.
  • Work with symmetry and patterns
  • Consider photographing from above, ground level, close up, far away, from the side, etc. for a unique perspective
  • Keep the background simple
  • Give depth through a background, middle ground and foreground

Cropping and Editing

After shots are taken, crop photos to optimize them if needed. Photos may be edited later for color, for elimination of red eye, and for exposure — most basic computer editing programs, such as Apple iPhoto, have these features built in.

Learn.columbia.edu has a photo resolution and size guide, which recommends photos for the web be at least 600 pixels wide with a 72 DPI resolution and a file size of 20-200K. To embed photos into your website, use a free popular uploader such as Picasa or Flickr, according to Practical Ecommerce, since your Web platform may have photo limitations.

Portrait Lighting

Photographer Bill Hurter’s book, “The Best of Photographic Lighting,” states there are five basic portrait lighting setups:

  • Paramount, butterfly or glamour lighting: produces symmetrical shadows beneath the subjects nose
  • Loop lighting: great for people with oval-shaped faces
  • Rembrandt lighting: the shadowed cheek of the subject has a small, triangular highlight
  • Split lighting: occurs when the key light illuminates half of the face
  • Profile lighting: used when the subject’s head is turned 90 degrees from the camera lens

Inexpensive Photography Resources

Using royalty-free photography can give you many quality photos for free through sites such as SXC.hu or Flickr. Examine the photographer’s terms to ensure you’re using the photos legally, suggests Search Engine Journal.

During the photography process, relax and breathe, Phoenix-based photographer Maria Vassett told Phoenix People. She encouraged photographers to follow their creative sides and inspirations when shooting.

By Peter Marino, owner of reelWebDesign.com, a complete content marketing company in NYC.