One of the most important aspects of your digital strategy is having evergreen content that is interesting, credible, and relevant to your audience.
Not only does this help with your ranking in Google and boost your ability to be found online, it also helps potential customers trust you and gives your brand its own unique voice. In essence, content allows your brand to extend its reach beyond standard, run-of-the-mill blurbs and social media posts.
But what exactly is evergreen content? And where does it fall within your digital strategy? How do you go about implementing an evergreen content strategy? These are the questions we’ll be pondering in today’s article.
What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is any piece of long-form content that maintains relevance for months and years into the future. This could take the form of blog posts, videos, graphics, or even white papers.
For example, if you’re a yoga instructor writing about how to properly do a downward-facing dog, that’s something that people can come back to years into the future and still get accurate and relevant information.
On the other hand, things like scores or dates will not always be relevant. You may want to know what day the Buffalo Bills play this week, but the day after the game happens, people will not be searching for that information anymore.
Similarly, older tech products and updates may be interesting for history’s sake, but doing a video on how to use MySpace in 2021 will probably not garner a lot of traffic.
The Importance of Evergreen Content in Digital Strategy
There are several reasons to invest in evergreen content, the first being that it is guaranteed to give your brand a boost overall.
However, there are several other considerations when building a strategy with evergreen content. Here are just a few:
Search Engine Optimization
Due to the fact that evergreen content is timeless, you’ll find that it tends to consistently do well with search engines.
Because you’re talking about a piece of information that’s always relevant, its searches won’t go up or down with passing fads.
As long as you do plenty of keyword research ahead of time and make sure you’re optimized for Google, you’ll have a piece of content that brings back returns both now and well into the future.
Brand Reach and Recognition
Evergreen content has a long shelf life, meaning it can be shared at almost any time and still be relevant. By creating several highly-shareable pieces of content, you can assert your brand as the expert in one or a few related fields.
Plus, if your pages continually rank well, you’ll find other content creators and thought leaders referring to them months and years later.
Bounce Rate
If you find that users are clicking on your website and then spending very little time there (bouncing), you may notice that your website has a high bounce rate.
Evergreen content is relevant, interesting, and well-researched. By its very definition, it is intended to keep audiences engaged.
Therefore, by continually creating high quality pieces of evergreen content, you’ll probably notice your bounce rate go down over time.
Implementing an Evergreen Content Strategy
Creating evergreen content that is high quality and consistent with your brand voice takes a lot of time and energy.
According to a study by Ragan, it takes about three hours and 16 minutes to write a good blog post. Plus, Marketing Insider Group recommends publishing 11 or more blog posts per month.
Even if you decide to go a different route with your evergreen content, the point is that it takes a lot of time, effort, and knowledge to create an effective evergreen content strategy.
Here is the basic outline for what an evergreen content strategy will look like:
- Identify what your niche is and what you want people to see your brand as an expert in.
- Complete extensive keyword research to know what you want to compete for and what will get you on the first page of search results.
- Complete extensive audience research to know more about what they want to see from you and what kind of content they’ll gain enjoyment from.
- Build evergreen content topic ideas off of these keywords and your audience research, as well as a schedule for getting this content created and out into the world.
- Make the content, ensuring that you’re following SEO best practices and adding value for your audience.
- Publish the content.
- Promote the content on your social channels in a way that gets others to share it. Use a brand-appropriate voice and unique hashtags.
- Go back every so often to make necessary updates to content and continue to promote it as time goes on.
Because of the sheer amount of time that goes into this strategy, many small businesses choose to work with a third party in order to accomplish it.
By working with a third party company, they can complete all of these steps for you while you focus on running your business. Plus, they have all of the industry insights to get the strategy off the ground right from the start.
In Summary
Evergreen content is necessary for the voice of your brand. Without it, you risk being beaten out by competitors and other large corporations for the attention of your customers. It’s an essential tool in the digital strategy toolbox.
Are you interested in getting your evergreen content strategy started, but aren’t sure what to do? Get in touch with Vervology. We’ll handle the strategy end for you so that you can focus your full attention on your business.
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