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 Content
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.