For years, content marketers have touted the importance of including evergreen content in their marketing strategy: Moz has told us the true power of evergreen content, Hubspot and Buffer have given us ideas for creating evergreen content, and Marketo has taught us how to create evergreen content with lasting engagement.
It’s not surprising that this topic has found its way into marketing conversations for the last decade. Evergreen content is incredibly helpful due to its usefulness long after the publish date and its ability to transcend the latest “buzz” by providing long-lasting expertise that prospects can come back to again and again. According to Ahrefs, evergreen content is content about an evergreen topic that never goes out of date, whereas evergreen topics are those with consistent interest and search volume over time.
While undoubtedly popular in marketing circles, evergreen content can also give media outreach efforts a huge boost. Why? Just like brands, media outlets are hungry for content that keeps bringing readers back to their site long after the publish date. While this is good news for media outlets, it’s also good news for PR pros too. Some of the benefits of leveraging evergreen content in a PR program include:
1. Keeping media relations active between announcements
In an ideal world, every brand would have a steady drumbeat of news to highlight their many accomplishments (innovative new products, astounding leaders, positive growth, etc.), but this isn’t always the case. To keep media relations alive and journalists engaged without a news announcement dropping this week (or maybe even this month or quarter), you need to be able to offer expertise that a journalist’s readers will care about. This is where evergreen content comes in.
By looking past what they can offer, which is typical with news announcements, brands can take a deep look at what it is they know. Organizations are more in tune with their customer’s problems than anyone else, so they can easily identify topics that will maintain consistent interest over time to create compelling and helpful articles.
Supplying reporters with these insights also offers a great relationship-building opportunity. This is crucial in PR as it increases the probability of the reporter coming back to you for similar insights in the future or covering an announcement when that time comes.
2. Offering readers a break from the current news cycle
On a similar note, evergreen content doesn’t just give you something to share in between announcements, it also provides a break for readers who are inundated with world news. With millions of news articles publishing every day, circulation of repetitive topics can quickly get overwhelming and tiring for readers, resulting in news fatigue. This happens any time one event dominates the news cycle (take the coronavirus pandemic, for instance). But even outside of extreme circumstances, 38% of Americans will actively avoid the news, according to data from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Evergreen content offers a much needed break from the constant stream of news. Instead of fighting for attention with yet another announcement, your evergreen content can provide helpful how-to’s (How to start an IoT project) or definitional content (What is a zero-trust network?). By providing useful insights that stand the test of time, you can position yourself as the expert or thought leader, bringing customers to your business long after the news cycle has passed.
3. Boosting search engine optimization
While building relationships with reporters and offering non-news content is important, evergreen content can also have a big impact on SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
Google evaluates the content on websites by its expertise, authority and trustworthiness. As evergreen content brings in more views and proves more useful to readers over time, Google will award the website where the content is located (in this case, the outlet’s website) by placing it higher on Google’s search results page. This will also improve the website’s overall DA (domain authority). Created by Moz, DA is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and the number of total links, into a single DA score. This score can then be used when comparing websites or tracking the “ranking strength” of a website over time.
As the outlet’s DA improves, your website will also see an SEO boost from having high quality backlinks. According to Moz, backlinks are valuable for SEO because they represent a “vote of confidence” from one site to another. Essentially, backlinks to your website signal to search engines that others vouch for your content. If many sites link to the same website, search engines can infer that content is worth linking to.
While there are many PR tactics that can improve SEO, providing publications with thoughtful evergreen content is a great place to start.
4. Generating high-quality leads
Backlinks embedded in an article aren’t just helpful for SEO either. They also drive more traffic to your website. So the longer the article garners readers’ interest, the longer you will experience a steady trickle of web traffic. This is much different than web traffic activity of more time-sensitive articles.
News announcements, for example, might drive a large spike in site traffic the day the news is announced, but that traffic will quickly taper off as the news in the article becomes old. Similarly, utilizing newsjacking methods — injecting your ideas into a breaking news story, so you and your ideas get noticed — is great for a short-term spike in traction and traffic, but won’t lead to traffic in the long-term. That’s not to say newsjacking doesn’t have an important place in PR, it will just have different outcomes than evergreen content.
While all types of content can be great sources of lead generation, evergreen content continues to drive web traffic and, as a result, generate leads for the long-term. As long as the content remains relevant, there’s no reason why readers won’t continue to read it, visit your site, and hopefully convert.
Adding evergreen content to your own PR program
Evergreen content is a useful tactic for marketers, but PR professionals have a lot to gain through strategic placement of evergreen content too. From building relationships with reporters to offering readers helpful tips to turning those readers into loyal customers, evergreen content delivers many benefits. If you need help brainstorming creative ideas for your evergreen content or just want to discuss steps to getting started, the Voxus team is happy to help. Contact us here.