What do blog posts, social media content, videos, and web copy have in common? If done well, they have the potential to boost your brand’s visibility and accelerate your growth exponentially. But with so many popular topics to talk about and an audience who’s likely looking at your products or services as a way to solve its problems, where do you start with content marketing?
It’s simpler than you think: the answer is evergreen content. We’ll explore what this is, its benefits, and some tried-and-tested ways to leverage your content to build trust and authority for your brand.
Understanding Evergreen Content
The name itself probably gives it away—when we talk about evergreen content we refer to anything from website content to white papers that have the power to remain relevant, interesting, and informative for a very long time.
Think of it as content that answers your customers’ most common and pressing questions, clarifies their doubts, and educates them on what your brand does, as well as on your industry as a whole. Unlike standard content, evergreen content never loses its appeal and keeps attracting traffic even years after it was initially published.
Examples of Evergreen Content
Below is a list of the most popular types of evergreen content—you can use them individually or mix them up to diversify your offering!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
As humans, we like to find simple and quick ways to make sense of the world around us. This is probably why so many of us head straight to the FAQ section of a website when we have questions
Whether it be to find out more about what the company actually does and how it can address our pain points, or simply because we need to find some more detailed information that the main website doesn’t provide, a frequently asked question (FAQ) section is a super-useful type of evergreen content that you should consider.
Guides
Another fantastic way to reap the benefits of evergreen content is through a digital guide. Think of guides as ways to explore topics in more depth – without, of course, going too overboard with the length.
Remember, evergreen content is more effective when it is fairly snappy and easy to digest, which is why it shouldn’t be excessively long. When creating your guide, make sure you give it an enticing title that truly makes it sound like you are the authority to talk about that subject.
Many brands opt for things like “Definitive Guide” or “Ultimate Guide”, and a lot of them offer them as lead magnets in exchange for people’s emails when they visit their websites. Depending on the topic, putting together a guide might involve roping in different types of professionals, perhaps from sales, marketing, and R&D, which means that good teamwork is essential.
Checklists
Want to create something similar to a guide, but a bit more condensed and even more digestible? Another great option for evergreen content is to create a checklist. These are comprehensive lists that explore an overarching topic and can also be easily repurposed and shared both on your website and on your social media.
Checklists also make for very user-friendly tools to use during a presentation, webinar, or conference, as they don’t overwhelm the viewer with too much text and offer you the possibility to expand on specific points as you go.
Case Studies
Want to showcase how your products or services have helped your customers achieve amazing things? Then, a case study is the way to go. Also known as success stories, these are essentially narratives of how your customers had a problem, how you came up with the solution, and what benefits they gained from working with you.
Besides being a great type of evergreen content, case studies also demonstrate to your audience that you are a true expert and leader in your industry, thus doubling as effective social proof.
Glossary
Unlike guides and checklists, glossaries aren’t usually that long or in-depth—they are short and sweet definitions of specific words or expressions that are relevant to your company or industry, and that your customers might want to know more about.
Glossaries can be quick and effective ways to answer questions such as “what is customer retention?” without going into too much detail.
Top Benefits of Evergreen Content
Now that you know more about evergreen content and the main evergreen content types, it’s time to look at some of the most significant benefits that you can gain through this content marketing strategy.
It Helps You Stay Relevant
One of the main advantages of evergreen content is how it stays relevant and current for a long, long time. In turn, this allows your brand to be seen as a constant leader in your industry, without becoming obsolete in a matter of months.
It Boosts Your SEO and Drives Traffic
The importance of SEO in content marketing should never be overlooked. Evergreen content is fantastic for SEO, as it can help you boost your search rankings while driving organic traffic at the same time. Of course, to really capitalize on this you will want to keep tabs on your competitors, and update your content accordingly.
Search engines aren’t the only source of traffic evergreen content can help with, either. By posting links to your social media, you can encourage people to share your content far and wide.
It Builds Trust and Authority
Whether you want to become the new leader in solutions for landline call forwarding or natural skincare, producing a range of evergreen content can help you build more trust and authority with your target audience. When potential customers click through to your site, they’ll instantly have access to a wealth of knowledge that you’ve provided – positioning you as a real expert who cares about sharing what you know.
Build Trust and Authority: Steps to Create Evergreen Content
Now, the bit you’ve probably been waiting for: our best tips on how to put together informative, educational, and always-relevant evergreen content. Let’s dive in!
1) Find Common Topics and Pain Points—and Solve Them
First of all, you’ll want to find out what your target audience searches for when it comes across your brand. What specific challenge are they trying to solve? Which products or solutions are they interested in? Is there anything in particular that they seem to struggle to understand and would love clarification on?
Armed with this information, you can now put together a list of themes and topics to focus on. Look at each topic from multiple angles, too. If you sell prospecting software, for instance, you might want to write a simple introduction for people looking to understand the basics, as well as an in-depth guide on how to get the most out of all your advanced features.
2) Run a Thorough Keyword Search
Next, it’s time to undertake a detailed keyword search. This will allow you to spot the highest-ranking, most relevant, and most popular keywords and phrases that your audience uses.
Generally speaking, you’ll want to look at these three elements:
- Keyword difficulty: This measures how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword, based on algorithms and competition.
- Keyword search volume: This indicates how many times that keyword is searched for within a set timeframe, and it directly correlates to the keyword’s popularity.
- Keyword relevance: This tells you whether the keyword applies to your business and industry, and whether it has good potential for you.
To start with, select keywords with moderate difficulty and high search volume that are relevant to your business objectives.
3) Optimize Your Content for SEO
Earlier, we mentioned that evergreen content can help you boost your SEO rankings, but to be great for SEO, it needs to be optimized properly first—you simply can’t expect it to do all the work for you. So, be sure to take care of these elements when putting together an evergreen piece:
- Keywords: Incorporate the most relevant keywords throughout the content, but avoid keyword stuffing, or you’ll achieve the opposite effect.
- Titles: Include compelling, yet clear and informative, page titles that immediately tell your audience what the piece is going to be about, and what value they can gain from it.
- Links: Consider adding a few links to some of your other content, such as pages from your website as well as your social media profiles. If you’re going to include links to statistics or studies, make sure to update them regularly to maintain relevance.
- Metadata: From meta descriptions to alt text, ensure that all this information is included in your evergreen content, as it will help boost your SEO while also enhancing accessibility and click-through rates.
4) Mind Your Language
Language is another key feature of evergreen content. When you’re putting together a piece of content that you aim to keep relevant for years to come, you simply can’t include wording such as ‘this year’, ‘recently’, ‘last month’, and so on.
Timestamped language will instantly make the piece look and feel like it’s strictly tied to a specific moment. Try to keep things timeless and fresh by avoiding language that might make the reader think that the piece was written to be exclusively consumed at a specific point in time.
5) Hit Refresh
Yes, evergreen content is evergreen for a reason: it’s written in a way that allows it to remain current for a very long time. Having said that, it’s still a good idea to give it a refresh every once in a while.
Give your evergreen content regular audits, such as every year or every six months. When doing so, assess whether your content is still current and, if not, try to identify ways to make it relevant again. You could, for instance, update things like industry trends, or add any new developments, sections, and topics.
If your content includes links, it’s vital that you check if they are still working months later. If not, replace them with more recent ones that provide fresh information.
6) Pick an Evergreen Content Format
As we’ve seen earlier, there are lots of different types of evergreen content. Make sure to choose those that work best for your brand. For example, you could create:
- Tutorials and how-to guides that provide step-by-step instructions on how to make the most of your products or services.
- Listicles are a concise and user-friendly way to tackle a topic by breaking it down into specific segments. They’re also easy to update on a regular basis, and well suited to social media sharing.
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are a great way to address the queries that you receive a lot, such as how you deal with your exchanges and returns, or what your call avoidance policy is, and enable your audience to find the answers in a quick and simple way.
- Guides. These can deal with individual topics in a lot of depth, or act as beginner introductions to a timeless topic.
- Case studies, success stories, and interviews can showcase tangible proof of how your products or services are used in the real world, by real people, achieving real results.
7) Incorporate Visuals
Visuals are a great feature of any content type—including evergreen content. They improve readability, user-friendliness, and engagement, and make content easier to share across platforms and channels.
When you’re incorporating things like images, videos, charts, graphs, and infographics, ensure they’re also not timestamped or likely to date quickly. For instance, if you’re looking through an article about call center best practices and one of the images has all the staff wearing face masks, you might think it’s set in a very particular time period. Choose timeless imagery and avoid chasing trends, and you’ll avoid this risk.
Keep Your Content Fresh: Key Takeaways
Out of all the content marketing techniques out there, evergreen content is undoubtedly one of the most effective. As we have discussed in this guide, timeless content can include different content types, such as blog posts, guides, and FAQs.
Its benefits are many—from growth in traffic to better trust and loyalty within your audience. So, what are you waiting for? Follow our tips and start creating evergreen content today!
