Building Traction with Evergreen Content

One of the main techniques to increase traffic on a blog or website is to produce more and more evergreen content. It is true that a lot of bloggers and web developers have started to focus on viral content or news posts. This is good when you want more traffic in less time. However, this has it’s own flaws too such as intense competition, difficulty in being different than others, no specialization, nothing unique, and most of all, short term effect.

If you want a long term organic growth in your audience, you should try to build it by using more evergreen content on your website.  Quality evergreen content is becoming critical to marketing businesses on the web.

Understanding Evergreen Content

What exactly is Evergreen Content? Just like a tree that stays leafy all year round, an evergreen content is useful for anytime and does not get obsolete or outdated after sometime. For example, the elections of 2015 can be an outdated topic after certain time but the leadership theories can be a topic that can always be used/consulted when required. Evergreen content brings traffic slowly but for long term whereas the simple content brings high traffic for short term.

Types of Evergreen Content

There’s a whole range of content that qualifies as evergreen. However, instead of listing everything out there, let us share the types of evergreen content that bloggers, publishers and marketers alike have experienced most success with.

Detailed roundups

A roundup refers to the compilation of resources that are revealed as a single resource. It’s relatively easy to craft roundups, but you’d need to do some groundwork in the initial stage. First, you’d need to source quotes from experts to include in the roundup. Secondly, the the title of the roundup needs to align with the keyword you want to rank for in search engines. Roundups work because they’re not only a viable way to publish long form content, they’re widely shared by industry experts.

High quality infographics

If you think infographics are dead, think again! They’re still one of the most easily digestible form of content and also a fantastic way to generate backlinks. Infographics that stand as evergreen content are typically based on ongoing trends, and show detailed statistics on particular subject matters. When you create an infographic around industry case studies or trending stories, you are able to utilize what may seem like complex jargon and convert it into a visual that’s easily understandable. For example, if you’re from the auto industry, you can produce an infographic that lists that compares the flagship engines of different car brands.

Opinion-based articles

It’s also widely known that evergreen content with point-of-views tend to perform better. Opinion-based articles, therefore, are widely recommended to website owners aiming to build sustainable traffic. When you incorporate a perspective that’s truly yours, you successfully different yourself from others who’re coming from a general perspective. Your opinion could be the thing that makes people keep coming back to your website. Additionally, a strong point of view encourages people to keep commenting and sharing. It helps develop an emotional connection that may not otherwise be present.

Lengthy how-to guides

There’s probably a few how-to guides on your website as we speak, but the length could be putting visitors off. Also, your how-to may not be detailed enough. Make sure to improve the length, and incorporate visual cues that make it easy for the reader to understand what’s happening (that includes quotes, images, GIFs, etc.). Alongside, try publishing how-tos on a consistent basis to ensure there’s always something to be picked up by Google. Some website owners will also include a TOC (table of contents) so that people can go to the part they wish they explore. Or break down the guide into different sections using introductions that serve as previews for every sub-topic.

How to Create Evergreen Content

Here’s a list of steps that’d enable you to craft evergreen content the right way:

Research your topic

All the ways to evergreen content begin with a keyword or topic research tool. With BuzzSumo or another similar option, you can discover good excellent examples of such content in any industry or domain.

Ideally, you’d want to search for pieces that have a large number of shares and comments, and then use the topics covered in those pieces to write your evergreen article. Age of the content piece is also a factor. The older the content and the higher the number of shares, the more evergreen it is likely to be.

It can also help to pick citable ideas. No matter what the subject matter is, make sure to include original stats and examples in your article. Here are some additional things you can do:

  • Examine and include shareworthy highlights and examples
  • Add your own spin on the topic
  • Be accustomed to what is frequently share

Once this step is done, you can move onto the actual part where you map out the assets of your evergreen content.

Pick a length

If you want the piece to rank well, see who else is doing well for similar searches. This is recommended because your evergreen content needs to better than anything else ranking ins search engines. The way forward from here is less repurposing, original research, more digging, and more writing. Just as everyone else who’ll be sharing your content, Google wants to rank original and data-driven piece.

Also, don’t just be focused on your content’s length. Instead, work on what you fill it with. The actual content itself too needs to deliver value. With that said, evergreen content does end up being of a bigger length than standard pieces because of all the examples, stats, case studies, and interviews they include. And that’s more than perfect, because evergreen content does need to make readers stick, with as much valuable information as possible.

Of course, you need to be easy on the tone. The best performing evergreen content pieces are the ones where everyday people find it easy to digest the information being delivered. Hence, don’t assume prior knowledge, and write like you’re writing for grade 5 students.

Dress it up

Lastly, make sure to dress up your content with a lot of visuals. Because we’re now living in the visual age, you’re unlikely to come across any evergreen piece that doesn’t include visuals. To make sure you stand out, take screenshots, cite videos, and so on.

However, there may be instances where you need to write text-heavy tutorials, and there’s no screenshot to be made. Even then, you can improve the visual footprint of your content by:

  • Using stock images: Sites like Pixabay and Burst by Shopify will allow you to download and use copyright free imagery. With these, you’d be able to better engage the audience.
  • Searching open image repositories, download vectors and replace existing visuals if they are of low quality or fail to deliver value.
  • Hiring a graphic designer from Fiverr to create representations and visuals for your content. Of course, you can do it yourself if you have the skills.

How many visuals need to be present in a blog post? The answer really depends on your preferences and the type of post you’re planning to write. Tutorials, for instance, need to have a visual for each step. In contrast, blog content on everyday topics can get away with as low as 3-5 visuals.

Bonus Tips

Here is how you can squeeze the maximum out of Evergreen Content.

1. Don’t get too specific

When preparing any content, keep in mind that you must not stay very specific. Try bringing it more to a general term which is likely to be searched by more number of people. Being specific will only bring specific audience to your website.

2. Publish more

Just like news websites post more and more content on regular basis, you should also post your Evergreen content on regular basis. Stay consistent even if it does not bring any return initially. Eventually, it will be beneficial.

3. Use keywords in Content

When writing an article, focus on keywords and use them the right way. If you use the keywords properly, traffic would automatically be directed to your website and that can help you build some engagement. A list of keywords can always be found through the search engines. You can also get some SEO (Search engine optimization) plugins which could help you find and use keywords in a much effective manner.

4. Go Side by Side

One of the best tips here is to go side by side. Publish Evergreen content along with the regular content also. You can always adjust the ratios accordingly as to which type of content should be more and which one should be fewer. By using both types of contents, you are basically targeting a diverse audience. Keep in mind that this tip requires excessive work and intense struggle in the start.

Conclusion

Many people consider building traction with Evergreen Content as a difficult thing but in reality, all you need to do is to follow some simple tips. Once you start with an effective Evergreen Content blog or website, you can expect the traffic numbers to go high in a matter of few months or even days. And of course you can always get help from great pros like the SPWritingTeam for example.  Best of luck!