Evergreen content is relevant content that drives traffic to your website over time, long after it’s published.
Why consider evergreen content for your marketing strategy?
Evergreen content provides value to your target audience.
Evergreen content is an opportunity for you to position your brand as an industry leader in a unique way that is different from your competitors. It’s beneficial because you can tailor it to your business marketing goals and create ads that remain relevant for a long period of time.
This can help you generate more leads and sales for your business, as you’re able to reach a greater audience over time and gain more brand recognition as you move up in the search engines.
In this post, we’ll discuss three different types of evergreen content and how you can use each of them to your advantage to elevate your brand’s content strategy.
7 Different Types of Evergreen
1. Listicles
A listicle is an article in which the content is displayed in the form of a list pertaining to a specific topic, with details provided on each item. For example, our article 7 Benefits of Adding a Blog to Your Website is considered a listicle because it explains that having a blog on your website is beneficial and elaborates on the idea with seven different reasons. Lists can be appealing to readers since the text is more broken up and easy to read.
2. Tips
An article providing advice on a specific topic. For this type of evergreen, you can think outside the box with the tips you include, based on what your audience is interested in, or a problem they are trying to solve. An example of this content is our article Two Important Steps to Drive Your Business Forward provides steps for readers to follow to grow their business.
3. How-To Content
Because Google is looking for high-quality, relevant content, it favors “how-to” content, since it provides value to readers and includes the content they are usually seeking in the search engine. “How-to” content is similar to tips and provides advice on a topic, but is often more step-by-step. An example of this would be “How to Buy a Car”, with specific steps for the purchase.
4. Product Reviews
Reviews about your product can speak for themselves if they’re mostly positive and further showcase your credibility in the industry and as a business.
5. YouTube Videos
Perficient Digital’s 2017 study says, “YouTube videos rank far more frequently in the top 10 than videos that are either self-hosted or hosted on other video platforms.” In other words, YouTube videos do well on search engines. Creating videos about your brand can be beneficial evergreen because videos already gain results.
6. Case Studies
A case study is research conducted by a business on a specific topic or situation through real-life example(s). It can be told as a story, which is one of the most compelling types of content you can create to engage an audience. It also shows real-world results to your audience. An example of this could be a shampoo brand explaining how a group of individuals were struggling with dandruff and dry scalp and after 60 days of using the brand’s shampoo, their dandruff significantly decreased.
7. Questionnaires\FAQs
Incorporate questions frequently asked by your consumers. This could be done by sending out a questionnaire or survey via email. Buffer Marketing Library explains that answering questions from your audience can be great evergreen content if you provide helpful advice and content.
5 Ways On How To Use Evergreen To Your Advantage
1. Use long-tail keywords.
When you and your team are brainstorming topic ideas for your evergreen content, evaluate search volume for different keywords and try to find ones that are ranking in search engines. Building a topic incorporating high-ranking keywords can help the content perform better. In addition to a primary keyword, include more specific long-tail keywords to allow you to gradually gain more traffic.
2. On-Page Optimization
Because high-quality content is well-structured and follows a typical page format, you’ll want to make sure to optimize your content for search engines. The Digital Marketing Institute defines on-page optimization as “the process of ensuring the content is both relevant and provides a great user experience.” Essentially, make sure you have a title with a keyword in it, an H1 header, keywords that are not being overstuffed, images have alt text, sources are properly credited, and the content is well-written.
3. Write for beginners.
Blue Interactive Agency conveys that “your content needs to be formatted so it’s easy for readers and easy for Google to scan and understand.” You want to be concise and quick to the point, with short paragraphs and content broken up into subsections. Organizing your content into lists and bullet points caters to readers of all levels.
4. Highlight your evergreen content on your website and through social media.
Evergreen content can only succeed if it is actively highlighted on your site and social media platforms so users discover it. You can link it to other content you’re already posting, like social media campaigns.
5. Update the content consistently.
Revisit your evergreen as much as possible to update the content so it stays relevant. You can also use this as an opportunity for an on-page SEO check and to optimize structure and keywords as needed, based on content and competitors’ performance for similar topics.
Final Thoughts
Buffer Marketing Library describes evergreen as content that “will always be interesting to your audience. You’ll be able to provide content your target audience is already looking for while gaining traffic and organic rankings for your brand. You can then generate leads and get visitors into the sales funnel.
Creating evergreen content is essentially solving the consumers’ problems with your content. It’s not time-sensitive, so you can publish it anytime and update it as needed.
By implementing evergreen into your content strategy, you can steadily drive traffic to your site, increase brand awareness, and ultimately help your brand remain valuable to your audience for a long period of time.
