A relatively new trend that marketers are beginning to embrace is the use of Evergreen Content. For years marketers around the world have used Bill Gate’s colloquial phrase “Content is King” as the foundation of their marketing strategy. Today, marketers from various industries have heard about the power that content marketing offers. As a result, many marketers have embraced content marketing over traditional advertising.
Let’s take a look at some content statistics:
- 93% of B2B marketers actively use content marketing.
- 78% of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing.
- 58% of marketers said “original written content” is the most important type of content.
- 82% of marketers who blog see a positive ROI from their inbound marketing.
- 72% of marketers are producing significantly more content.
- 81% of marketers plan to increase their use of original written content for 2017.
These statistics are great if you are creating content that is more helpful and of higher quality than your competitors. In a world where people are obsessed around “buzzwords” and “trending topics,” many marketers make the mistake of crafting content around current events. Unfortunately for them, these types of posts tend to lose their relevancy in just a few short days or weeks, and have an extremely low ROI.
The Value of Quality Content
However, every marketer knows that content creation takes a lot of effort. LookBookHQ reported that content production is the biggest challenge for 44% of marketers. It’s no wonder why so many report this challenge: You need to craft topics that will resonate with your readers, write interesting, thought-provoking content that will hopefully get read and meet your metrics, optimize each piece of content for reader experience all while doing this multiple times a week.
Here is a sad truth: The majority of the content that you create will never be read after its initial publishing date. Google reports that roughly 2 million new pieces of content are created daily, and Google’s SERPs will only aggregate less than 10 organic results. If your content is not of high quality, it can be difficult – almost impossible – for your content to be discovered. This is why many marketers are beginning to integrate Evergreen Content into their marketing strategy.
What is Evergreen Content?
The evergreen tree maintains its leafs throughout the year; it’s always green unlike other types of trees. In a similar manner, evergreen content is able to endure time and remain relevant long after it was created! This is because this type of content contains virtually unchanging information, processes or practices.
As a result, the evergreen content that you create can help sustain your website months or even years after you create. Since Evergreen Content has no expiration date, people will find it useful and informative no matter when they read it.
What are the Types of Evergreen Content?
Before you beginning crafting content, you may want to evaluate what constitutes as Evergreen Content in order to avoid wasting your time.
Examples of engaging Evergreen Content include:
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- “Top” Lists
- How-to Guides
- Tips and Hacks to help people achieve their goals
The types of content not considered Evergreen Content are:
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- Breaking News Articles
- Content focused around current trends
- Opinion Pieces
- Statistics relating to a particular time that are likely to change
Using Evergreen Content to Maximize SEO
Creating evergreen content is an excellent strategy for improving your search rankings, as well as improving the overall quality of your content. Since evergreen content works over a longer period of time, it can help deliver traffic, social shares, and can continue to help you in search rankings for months or even years after the publish date.
When you invest in evergreen content, you no longer have to create new posts daily. If you examine past content on your site, you’ll probably notice that many of your articles have the foundation of evergreen content; you simply need to update them with new information, harnessing relevant keywords, and include eye-catching visuals.
Develop Content That Lasts
If you want to get the most out of your content, you need to begin crafting content that will be able to stand the test of time. That is not to say, however, that you should quit creating newsworthy posts. You need a consistent balance between both news stories and Evergreen content. Doing so will relieve the pressure of having to create daily content and allows you to focus on creating content that your readers will find meaningful for weeks, months and even years to come.