Imagine you’re publishing the latest news about your company. Or an article about a new, trending topic. You’ll most certainly see a spike for the next 24 to 48 hours in traffic, but what happens after that? In SEO, we always look for long-term success and in the case of content marketing, the magic word is often ‘evergreen’.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF EVERGREEN CONTENT?
Evergreen content is based around topics that remain relevant for a longer time after they are published. The content can vary from case studies, FAQs, listicles, product reviews, expert interviews, tutorials and much more. Some benefits include:
– Sustainable traffic: Unlike new stories, evergreen content has a longer shelf life and can drive regular organic traffic
– Chance to target evergreen keywords: Search queries that are not only relevant for a short period of time
– Site hierarchy: Evergreen pages are a great way to organise your site content
– Builds authority: You can become a reputable source of information on that topic
HOW TO REFRESH EVERGREEN CONTENT:
Just because your content is relevant for a longer time, doesn’t mean you should get lazy and not touch it every once in a while. The tips below will help you dust off your old content:
ANALYSING YOUR CONTENT:
Start by auditing the landing page, monitor your targeted keywords, and review competing content and promotions. Also, check your meta data, alt tags and referring links. We recommend you continuously track your rankings as they determine how relevant your content really is.
CONTENT REFRESH:
Optimising your on-page content is what makes the difference in your ranking. Expand on original articles, merge it with other relevant content or set redirects from underperforming pages. If you lose a ranking, it can mean that some stats are outdated, so check things like links (broken/irrelevant), year in the title, etc.
DON’T HIDE IT:
Most publishers feature their news stories prominently on their website and forget about their evergreen content. This won’t get you the results you’re hoping for though. So, re-run them at the top of your blog, add them to your sidebar or build a social media campaign around them. Give evergreen content the platform it deserves.
KEYWORD TARGETING REFRESH:
Once your content has started to rank, take the time to look at the keywords it’s generating clicks and impressions for within Google Search Console. If you wish to rank higher for some new terms, you have noted within this data, then consider adding these terms to your page titles, headers or within your content.
To conclude, evergreen content will bring you long-term value as the traffic continuously grows over time. But only if you also maintain it properly! So, let’s invest some time and research into timeless topic ideas, write kick-ass content, maintain it every so often and live happily ever(green) after.