Are you writing evergreen content?
If you’re writing an advisory which has a short life expectancy, for instance an article about a virus threat. Then it’s likely that the article will only be relevant for a month or two until the threat is gone. So you really only need to focus the article around the short term problem. The most prominent phrase or search performed for that advisory would be the problem/virus’s name.
But if you are writing an article about an evergreen problem, like testing backup systems then it’s worth spending some time making the article really relevant and worthwhile, both to the reader and to the long term SEO value for the website. An article about an evergreen issue will be just as relevant tomorrow as it will be in two years time.
A good content marketing strategy for evergreen content
So how do you make it relevant for the long term and also valuable as a SEO assets on your website. The simplest thing is to write an article that expands the why, what and how of the problem. WHAT is the issue, WHY is it important to address the issue and HOW can it be addressed to satisfy the reader’s needs.
While the simplest way to make it a SEO worthy article is to make sure it’s written to include the vocabulary of the people looking for a solution/information about that problem. This requires some research to make sure the nomenclature and phraseology used within the article matches that used by people searching for information and solutions. If the article includes these term then it will make it very easy for the webmaster to optimise the article for SEO purposes and enable the article to provide value to the business and readers for many years to come.
As a general rule of thumb we find is that an article should be crafted around at least 3-4 related keyword phrases found within the search phrases used by people looking up similar concepts. With emphasis towards those with higher search volume and lower competition in the SERP.
Theming is important. Write the article or series of articles around a theme connecting 3 or 4 search for terms is ideal. For instance an article about encouraging people to “test their backup restoration system” would be related to search terms like “backup test”, “backup testing”, “backup recovery testing”, “disaster recovery” and more importantly “disaster recovery testing“ etc. From these we can discern two distinct themes one related to “data backup” and the other to “disaster recovery” which are both related to backup recovery testing.
However be warned word phrases consisting of only 2 words make great category items and tag items and anchor text on the websites but they don’t make good theme items. As they are general ambiguous in their meaning. For instance “disaster recovery” applies to bushfires, flood, cropping as easily as it does to computer backups. Theme items require a minimum of 3 words. If you look at the phrases “disaster recovery” and “disaster recovery testing“ above you see that “disaster recovery” is quite ambiguous but “disaster recovery testing“ is more relevant to backup restoration. A four word phrase for example “IT disaster recovery testing“ is much less ambiguous and therefore a better keyword to include in an article if it has some search volume. The more concise the article the easier it is for the search engine to index and readers to understand.
Being able to include these search terms (keyword phrase) in prominent positions within the article also helps the SEO operation. Focus on using these terms in paragraph headings and image descriptions. This will make your webmaster very happy.
We ask our writer to provide at least 500 words, but longer is generally better. So we encourage 1000 – 1500 word for a well researched evergreen article. However this article is going to be shorter than 1500 words but of no less value than an article padded out to 1500 words. Articles under 350 words really probably won’t describe an evergreen concept to a sufficient level to provide real reader value unless the article incorporates at least one great image or infographic.
Here are features of a good content marketing strategy for evergreen content:
- write for the reader WHY, WHAT and HOW
- theme the article around 3-4 search terms (keyword phrases)
- use keyword phrases that are unambiguous (usually 3 word phrases or longer)
- place keywords in prominent positions within the article (paragraph headings and image descriptions)
- longer article are better (set a minimum target length of 500 words)
- include an image where possible ( for the reader)
Do the research and find out what people are searching for when looking up your evergreen issue and incorporate those terms in your article. Doing this and writing the article to solve the readers problem, you will create something that will last for years and help even more people because you will have more reader.