Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
This guide will offer you in-depth knowledge about evergreen content, its significance, and how publishers can re-optimize it to attract valuable search traffic.
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Evergreen content has no expiration date if all things remain the same. It covers topics that add value to the audience and do not experience demand peaks and troughs. It stays fresh irrespective of time and season.
For content to be evergreen, it should be optimized for search engines and contain information that maintains relevant for users regardless of publication date.
“The Ketogenic Diet: A Detailed Beginner’s Guide to Keto” by Healthline is an excellent example of evergreen content.
Performance Analysis: This article drives over 5,834,727 hits from organic searches every month. More than that, it has earned 19.6K backlinks.
What makes this content topic evergreen?
This 2,000+ word article provides detailed information on the Keto diet. Its content reflects high-quality, SEO-optimized content that offers helpful information to the readers. The main point to focus on here is that it isn’t time-sensitive.
Here are a few more examples of evergreen content topics.
Content that experiences a decline in relevance and audience interest after a timeframe is not evergreen. For instance, content published about the current year’s presidential election predictions will become obsolete once the results are declared.
Here are a few more content types that cannot be considered evergreen.
Evergreen content begins gaining momentum when you hit the “publish” and attracts traffic and leads for years to come.
This doesn’t mean you do not have to update it ever. You should update its information to ensure it stays up-to-date. For instance, you can include new studies, findings, developments, and more to make the topic more helpful.
John Shehata, the founder of NewzDash, analyzed 6,000 articles to see the amount of average lifespan of content and the importance of working on it religiously once it goes live.
The key observations were –
The average lifespan of evergreen content came out to be 85 weeks.
The content exhibited –
The lesson? Publishers should refresh the content once a year or when traffic starts to drop. This can help maintain the content’s relevancy, thereby attracting high traffic.
Now that you know the significance of evergreen content, let’s discuss its best benefits.
Current RedPoint Ventures Partner and Former Google Product Manager, Tomasz Tunguz, analyzed the compounding effects of evergreen content.
Notice the graph shared below. It shows how an evergreen post that generates 150 views per day can bring over 250K readers every month after a year of its publication.
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For instance, create a detailed guide on how the target audience can use a product.
Reuse it to build –
The major challenge publishers face while creating evergreen content is that most topics are already covered (by competitors and themselves in the past). There’s a plethora of evergreen articles, guides, videos, and blog posts in the digital space ranking well for a specific topic.
Publishing insightful, latest content is vital to strengthening online presence, but content ideation takes effort, time, and resources. It’s challenging to consistently come up with new value-delivering topics. That’s when re-optimizing old content can help.
Take an existing piece of content, whether a video, blog post, or podcast, and update it or present it in a new format. This way, you can derive high value from your existing content assets rather than starting from scratch.
This content re-usage workflow will help you repurpose content in a way to offer value to your online audience. This workflow is key to identifying the best option to target a used topic again.
#1: Update the Content: If the content is outdated, revise it with new findings and developments. For instance, include new feature updates for an article highlighting the functionalities of specific software.
#2. Expand the Content: Is there anything that can be added to make your existing content piece more relevant and helpful? If yes, analyze the gap in your content. Add new data to create value for the readers while optimizing it for search engines. For instance, expand an article by adding new, relevant phrases and keywords.
#3: Reformat the Content: Can it be covered in another format to make it easy to understand? If yes, change the content format to make it more engaging and helpful for the readers. For instance, convert a blog post on SEO tips into a detailed video with actionable examples.
#4: Curate the Content: Will it make sense to gather multiple content pieces to provide high value to readers? If yes, gather content relevant to a specific topic to create a new piece instead of building it from scratch. For instance, merge content from multiple posts to create a new powerful post.
#5: Refocus: Can the topic be retargeted from a fresh perspective to provide more value to the readers? If yes, recreate or rewrite the content from a new viewpoint. For instance, rewrite an article that describes your product’s benefits by mentioning how it can benefit the target audience in the long term.
Here are a few commonly used evergreen content formats to choose from.
1. Long-Form Article: An article that is a minimum of 1,500 words and offers valuable insights on a specific topic falls under this evergreen format.
Example: Podcasts for News Publishers – A Trend, A Chance, Or Nonsense?
This article shares in-depth knowledge about podcasts and their significance for news publishers.
2. Glossary: This content format defines specific terminologies and definitions to help users understand complex terms.
Example: Glossary Page by KnowledgeOwl
This page serves as a resource for their target audience that searches for specific terms or phrases. Including these pages can help publishers strengthen their SEO strategy.
3. Listicle: This type of content comprises a list with informative details.
Example: Top Three Creative Tools for the Nomad Worker
This article by HuffPost lists the top three innovative tools to help hybrid, remote, and freelancers thrive.
4: Kit/Template: This is a downloadable evergreen content format that addresses user pain points.
Example: Free SEO Starter Pack
Notice how HubSpot offers a free downloadable guide to help beginners create a solid SEO strategy.
5. How-to: This article highlights step-by-step solutions to guide users to achieve a specific goal.
Example: How To Use Wix To Build Our Website
Source
This article by Technopublish provides extensive information on creating a website using the website builder platform – Wix. Publishers can implement the steps to achieve the goal.
5. Resources or Tools: This is a functional content asset to help readers solve their pain points.
Example: AMP SEO: A Guide for Publishers
This article explains Google AMP and its significance for SEO strategy.
7. Case Studies: This evergreen format depicts real-world examples of how users can achieve specific goals by overcoming challenges using a particular tool, product, strategy, and more.
Example: Case Studies – Think with Google
The case studies on this page highlight how “Think with Google” helped brands successfully overcome marketing challenges and attract organic traffic.
8. Videos: This format involves creating comprehensive videos that stay fresh irrespective of timeframe.
Example: Corporate Training Video
This video showcases corporate training tips, making it informative and educational. The high-impact contextual imagery in this video boosts its engagement quotient.
9. Pillar Page/Hub Page: This offers premium content typically of 3,500-4,500 words. Often, it focuses on high-search volume keyword topics.
Example: Instagram Marketing Strategy
This page by HubSpot covers all vital aspects of Instagram marketing and contains links to particular pieces of cluster content relevant to the topic.
10. Uber Pillar Page: This represents the category page for a particular content cluster. It offers comprehensive details on a specific topic and comprises at least one link of pillar content.
Example: Beginner’s Guide to SEO
The SEO guide by Moz is a great example of an uber pillar page. This page contains everything a user might want to learn about SEO. It has links to relevant pillar pages.
Now that you are familiar with evergreen content formats, let’s discuss the top tactics to help you create a successful evergreen content re-optimization strategy. From identifying evergreen topics to creating content assets, you can leverage the below-shared framework to compound your website’s growth.
As we already explained, evergreen content is timeless. In fact, you may already have drafted an evergreen content asset for your website without realizing it.
Here’s how you can search and identify evergreen content:
Pro Tip: Check out the content format section shared above to know the popular evergreen formats.
Content ticking all these requirements is evergreen content. Next, create a list of evergreen topics.
Updating the evergreen content can help you earn top rankings in Google SERPs. For instance, you can revise the content by answering top user queries. However, it’s crucial to understand what articles and blog posts need revision.
Here are a few aspects to consider.
Follow the below-shared tactics to revamp your existing evergreen content.
#1: Update the Content
When to Perform: Content reflects outdated information, and new research and findings are available on the topic.
Here’s how –
Make slight changes or enhancements to your articles.
For instance, create a new headline for the post while maintaining the same URL. In addition, review and update a few sections of your content that lack thorough information. Check internal links and missed keyword opportunities.
Count on tools like Ahrefs and Ubersuggest for accurate SEO analysis. This will only take 10-20% time that you invested in creating the main post.
#2: Expand the Content
When to Perform: Content lacks thorough information and insights on the subject.
Implement the following tactics to expand your evergreen content.
Pro Tip: Deploy Google Search Console (GSC) by Google. This free-of-cost tool offers valuable insights into your website, such as traffic, impressions, queries, clicks, and more.
Use this information to expand your content while optimizing it to achieve top rankings in search results. The tool allows you to connect to the GSC API and extract data, such as –
Analyze and figure out missing phrases and add them to your content for the best outcomes.
#3: Reformat the Content
When to Perform: When you want to present a complex topic in a more digestible form to meet user search intent.
This can be a fun way to boost user engagement and drive high traffic to the website. Share the same information using different formats.
For instance, take a long-form evergreen post and convert it into a PowerPoint format. Use the slides to create engaging videos or images. You can even change the content format to audio and create a podcast using the same content.
In addition, you can reformat an article into a different content type to align with search intent.
For instance, reformat a “how-to” post to a complete guide if the user query reflects informational intent.
Similarly, if the user query depicts transactional search intent (they are ready to buy), consider revamping an article on product examples into a listicle, highlighting information, such as product features, pricing, and more.
#4: Curate/Consolidate the Content
When to Perform: When you have multiple content pieces that alone don’t deliver high value or attract high traffic.
Here’s how –
Combine multiple pieces of content to create a guide on evergreen content. Effective content consolidation can boost traffic and engagement.
What pages are good candidates for content consolidation?
Review these pages and decide if you can use the data to create evergreen content. (If not, deindex or remove the page).
#5: Refocus
When to Perform: When you want to share a new viewpoint on the subject, which is more relevant in evolving digital space., updating CTAs or changing the target audience focus for improved content engagement.
Here’s how you can rewrite the entire article to take it to the next level.
Research and add new examples, visuals, and other crucial data to make it engaging. Perform keyphrase research and incorporate all the subtopics and semantically related phrases. However, you can include the best lines and paragraphs from the original content.
Ensure its length is twice as long. It may take 80-120% of the original time investment, but results will be with it.
Nice to Have
In this section, we will cover the top five things you can quickly scan to ensure the best outcomes from your evergreen content piece. Use the shared tactics to make the most of content re-optimization techniques that we discussed in the previous section.
Let’s get started.
Check whether the facts and figures shared in the content are up-to-date. Analyze the external links and URLs to see if they are active. Replace them if you find new data on the same topic. This is crucial to maintain content freshness.
Pro Tip: Review your competitor’s content that ranks well in Google SERPs to see new findings on the same topic.
Ensure your content satisfies user search intent. Include high-quality content in readable format so that they can find the desired data without hassles.
Pro Tip: If the commonly searched term of your target audience is: compound interest formula, provide them the exact formula with examples. More than that, include a calculator widget to help them calculate and find the answer.
The Google BERT update has empowered the search engine to understand the complexities and nuances of natural language. For instance, earlier, Google ignored stop words (a, on, the, etc.) However, it now understands their significance and interprets conversational language more accurately. The key point is that modern SEO is assembled on entities rather than keywords.
Google understands content as a dynamic subject and focuses on search intent rather than words.
What does this mean for you? Create relevant and valuable content about topics within your expertise and let keywords flow naturally. Rely less on individual keyword inclusion.
Pro Tip: Leverage tools like Surfer SEO to write and optimize your content. With this tool, you can structure the content, get access to the NLP-ready keywords and images, know the ideal word count, and more to achieve top rankings in Google.
Ensure you follow the best practices for adding internal links. The links should appear naturally, and the anchor text should be relevant. In addition, find opportunities to add new internal links to the content.
Pro Tip: If your internal link directs to a page highlighting SEO tips, ensure that the anchor text is relevant. For instance, it can be SEO tips, best SEO tips, and others. It should provide a reliable cue about the page.
Mobile-first indexing is pivotal to providing a great user experience, which is a crucial Google ranking factor. So, ensure your pages are responsive and load speedily on various types of devices, including mobile.
Pro Tip: Leverage Mobile-Friendly Test, a web-based tool in GSC, to check your page experience on mobile. This can help you ensure a seamless user experience.
Ignore These Common Myths
In this section, we will discuss a couple of myths surrounding evergreen content and how publishers should acknowledge them to accomplish content goals.
This statement is wrong. Evergreen content can lose its effectiveness if publishers fail to update it. As we already discussed, publishers should keep adding and excluding several elements from it to maintain relevancy.
For instance, they should replace the old statistics with new ones. The end goal is to offer up-to-date and useful content to the audience.
That isn’t true. Despite getting consistent organic traffic, you should promote it on multiple platforms. Repurposing the content for various marketing channels can drive more traffic and conversions, thereby strengthening your marketing strategy.
Make sure you repurpose your content piece, making it relevant for your audience on social media posts, emails, and more.
Evergreen content is ideal to keep your audiences interested throughout their journey. It’s a content powerhouse that drives consistent organic traffic growth. But for that to happen, you should go through this guide and understand the concept of evergreen content, its significance, format types, and re-optimization techniques.
Leverage the information shared in this post to make the most of evergreen content.
