When it comes to content marketing and SEO, there's a lot of emphasis on providing search engines with plenty of fresh content, and rightfully so. However, the other side of the content marketing coin is evergreen content.
While it's most common to have current content as part of your marketing strategy to gain immediate attention, there are several benefits to evergreen content that make it worthwhile to incorporate. Let’s break down exactly why evergreen content is a valuable part of your marketing arsenal when it comes to ranking in search engines and getting high-quality traffic.
Boosts search traffic
Evergreen content is virtually timeless and is likely to rank well in search engines for an extended time. Well-written, comprehensive guides and how-tos can help you keep a steady stream of incoming organic traffic. This helps reduce your reliance on paid search marketing, making your business more sustainable and marketing more affordable. Not to mention more efficient – occasionally refreshing an evergreen piece requires less time and work than writing new content while maintaining a strong presence in search results.
Creates long-term audience engagement
Evergreen content provides an opportunity for you to build your brand's authority and reputation. High-quality evergreen content that is useful to people within your target audience has a good chance of earning consistent traction and being shared by people who are enthusiastic about your niche. It helps promote:
- Customer loyalty
- Consistent value-adds
Evergreen topics serve as useful prompts for content marketers because they offer a relatively easy source of organic traffic. Taking your evergreen content and branching out with related topics that point back to the original are a great way to continue driving consumers back to a specific page, and thereby, your website.
For example, if you have an evergreen piece on best practices for social media marketing, you can create other related pieces that drive traffic back to the original piece, such as marketing trends for each individual platform or how to leverage insights from your company’s social media engagement. Marketing tools like advertising technology and social media are always evolving and can be hard to keep up with, but you can use that information to continuously relate back to existing content.
Positions you as an authority and thought leader
By strategically publishing evergreen content, you can build incoming links to your website and increase your domain authority. This helps increase your site's ranking in the search engines and can make it easier for people to find other content in your domain.
Evergreen content builds your reputation with human readers, too. If customers, suppliers, and others in your industry regularly see your brand name attached to informative and high-quality content, you'll become seen as an expert or thought leader in that industry. This helps build trust and is invaluable when it comes time for people to make purchasing decisions.
Increases your SEO
Evergreen content that gets shared regularly can have a much longer shelf-life than current news or other trending content. Because evergreen content tends to cover a subject in depth and in a dateless way, people are more likely to backlink to it knowing that it will still be useful to someone who comes to their page in a few months, or even a year's, time.
The steady trickle of incoming links and social media shares from people who find your post long after it is published helps new audiences find your content, and each link can help to solidify a good position for your website among the search engines.
Earns better ROI for your content
While it's useful to have a steady content publishing schedule, writing high-quality content takes time and effort, and not every business has the time or manpower to produce a constant stream of content. If you're looking to improve your content marketing efforts, focusing on a few pieces of evergreen content can be a better way to spend your time than trying to produce a high volume of time-sensitive pieces. It's an effective way to stretch a limited content marketing budget.
Conclusion
Whatever industry you're in, evergreen content can help boost your reputation, build your domain's authority, and keep your brand fresh in the mind of your target audience. It offers a long-lasting impact that you’ll ideally see the benefits of for years to come.
