Machine SEO: July 2019

Monday, July 29, 2019

Empathetic Consulting: 3 Things to Remember When Working With Other Teams

Friday, July 26, 2019

9 Tips to Integrate Organic, Paid, and Content - Whiteboard Friday

Thursday, July 25, 2019

The ABCs of Video Content: How to Build a Video Marketing Strategy

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

The Ultimate Guide to SEO Meta Tags

Posted by katemorris

Editor's note: This post first appeared in April of 2017, but because SEO (and Google) changes so quickly, we figured it was time for a refresh!

Meta tags represent the beginning of most SEO training, for better or for worse. I contemplated exactly how to introduce this topic because we always hear about the bad side of meta tags — namely, the keywords meta tag. One of the first things dissected in any site review is the misuse of meta tags, mainly because they're at the top of every page in the header and are therefore the first thing seen. But we don't want to get too negative; meta tags are some of the best tools in a search marketer's repertoire.

There are meta tags beyond just description and keywords, though those two are picked on the most. I've broken down the most-used (in my experience) by the good, the bad, and the indifferent. You'll notice that the list gets longer as we get to the bad ones. I didn't get to cover all of the meta tags possible to add, but there's a comprehensive meta tag resource you should check out if you're interested in everything that's out there.

It's important to note that in 2019, you meta tags still matter, but not all of them can help you. It's my experience, and I think anyone in SEO would agree, that if you want to rank high in search, your meta tags need to accompany high-quality content that focuses on user satisfaction.

My main piece of advice: stick to the core minimum. Don't add meta tags you don't need — they just take up code space. The less code you have, the better. Think of your page code as a set of step-by-step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser. Extraneous meta tags are the annoying "Go straight for 200 feet" line items in driving directions that simply tell you to stay on the same road you're already on!

The good meta tags

These are the meta tags that should be on every page, no matter what. Notice that this is a small list; these are the only ones that are required, so if you can work with just these, please do.

Meta content type – This tag is necessary to declare your character set for the page and should be present on every page. Leaving this out could impact how your page renders in the browser. A few options are listed below, but your web designer should know what's best for your site.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Title – While the title tag doesn’t start with "meta," it is in the header and contains information that's very important to SEO. You should always have a unique title tag on every page that describes the page. Check out this post for more information on title tags.
Meta description – The infamous meta description tag is used for one major purpose: to describe the page to searchers as they read through the SERPs. This tag doesn't influence ranking, but it's very important regardless. It's the ad copy that will determine if users click on your result. Keep it within 160 characters, and write it to catch the user's attention. Sell the page — get them to click on the result. Here's a great article on meta descriptions that goes into more detail.
Viewport – In this mobile world, you should be specifying the viewport. If you don’t, you run the risk of having a poor mobile experience — the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool will tell you more about it. The standard tag is:

<meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

The indifferent meta tags

Different sites will need to use these in specific circumstances, but if you can go without, please do.

Social meta tags – I'm leaving these out. OpenGraph and Twitter data are important to sharing but are not required per se.
Robots – One huge misconception is that you have to have a robots meta tag. Let's make this clear: In terms of indexing and link following, if you don't specify a meta robots tag, they read that as index,follow. It's only if you want to change one of those two commands that you need to add meta robots. Therefore, if you want to noindex but follow the links on the page, you would add the following tag with only the noindex, as the follow is implied. Only change what you want to be different from the norm.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

Specific bots (Googlebot) – These tags are used to give a specific bot instructions like noodp (forcing them not to use your DMOZ listing information, RIP) and noydir (same, but instead the Yahoo Directory listing information). Generally, the search engines are really good at this kind of thing on their own, but if you think you need it, feel free. There have been some cases I've seen where it's necessary, but if you must, consider using the overall robots tag listed above.
Language – The only reason to use this tag is if you're moving internationally and need to declare the main language used on the page. Check out this meta languages resource for a full list of languages you can declare.
Geo – The last I heard, these meta tags are supported by Bing but not Google (you can target to country inside Search Console). There are three kinds: placename, position (latitude and longitude), and region.

<META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT="latitude; longitude">
<META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Place Name">
<META NAME="geo.region" CONTENT="Country Subdivision Code">

Keywords – Yes, I put this on the "indifferent" list. While no good SEO is going to recommend spending any time on this tag, there's some very small possibility it could help you somewhere. Please leave it out if you're building a site, but if it's automated, there's no reason to remove it.
Refresh – This is the poor man's redirect and should not be used, if at all possible. You should always use a server-side 301 redirect. I know that sometimes things need to happen now, but Google is NOT a fan.
Site verification – Your site is verified with Google and Bing, right? Who has the verification meta tags on their homepage? These are sometimes necessary because you can't get the other forms of site verification loaded, but if at all possible try to verify another way. Google allows you to verify by DNS, external file, or by linking your Google Analytics account. Bing still only allows by XML file or meta tag, so go with the file if you can.

The bad meta tags

Nothing bad will happen to your site if you use these — let me just make that clear. They're a waste of space though; even Google says so (and that was 12 years ago now!). If you're ready and willing, it might be time for some spring cleaning of your <head> area.

Author/web author – This tag is used to name the author of the page. It's just not necessary on the page.
Revisit after – This meta tag is a command to the robots to return to a page after a specific period of time. It's not followed by any major search engine.
Rating – This tag is used to denote the maturity rating of content. I wrote a post about how to tag a page with adult images using a very confusing system that has since been updated (see the post's comments). It seems as if the best way to note bad images is to place them on a separate directory from other images on your site and alert Google.
Expiration/date – "Expiration" is used to note when the page expires, and "date" is the date the page was made. Are any of your pages going to expire? Just remove them if they are (but please don't keep updating content, even contests — make it an annual contest instead!). And for "date," make an XML sitemap and keep it up to date. It's much more useful.
Copyright – That Google article debates this with me a bit, but look at the footer of your site. I would guess it says "Copyright 20xx" in some form. Why say it twice?
Abstract – This tag is sometimes used to place an abstract of the content and used mainly by educational pursuits.
Distribution – The "distribution" value is supposedly used to control who can access the document, typically set to "global." It's inherently implied that if the page is open (not password-protected, like on an intranet) that it's meant for the world. Go with it, and leave the tag off the page.
Generator – This is used to note what program created the page. Like "author," it's useless.
Cache-control – This tag is set in hopes of controlling when and how often a page is cached in the browser. It's best to do this in the HTTP header.
Resource type – This is used to name the type of resource the page is, like "document." Save yourself time, as the DTD declaration does it for you.

There are so many meta tags out there, I’d love to hear about any you think need to be added or even removed! Shout out in the comments with suggestions or questions.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Source: Moz Blog

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

How to Boost Content Linkability Without Wasting Your Marketing Budget

Monday, July 22, 2019

Spying On Google: 5 Ways to Use Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights

Friday, July 19, 2019

Aren't 301s, 302s, and Canonicals All Basically the Same? - Best of Whiteboard Friday

Thursday, July 18, 2019

MozCon 2019: Everything You Need to Know About Day Three

Posted by KameronJenkins

If the last day of MozCon felt like it went too fast or if you forgot everything that happened today (we wouldn't judge — there were so many insights), don't fret. We captured all of day three's takeaways so you could relive the magic of day three.

Don't forget to check out all the photos with Roger from the photobooth! They're available here in the MozCon Facebook group. Plus: You asked and we delivered: the 2019 MozCon speaker walk-on playlist is now live and available here for your streaming pleasure.

Cindy Krum— Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future

If you were hit with an instant wave of nostalgia after hearing Cindy's walk out music, then you are in good company and you probably were not disappointed in the slightest by Cindy’s talk on Fraggles.

First learning of the day: Fraggles. Fragment + Handles. A piece of information and an anchor that scrolls directly to the information on the page @Suzzicks #MozCon
— Warrior Forum (@warriorforum) July 17, 2019

“Fraggles” are fragments + handles. A fragment is a piece of info on a page. A handle is something like a bookmark, jump link, or named anchor — they help people navigate through long pages to get what they’re looking for faster.
Ranking pages is an inefficient way to answer questions. One page can answer innumerable questions, so Google’s now can pull a single answer from multiple parts of your page, skipping sections they don’t think are as useful for a particular answer.
The implications for voice are huge! It means you don’t have to listen to your voice device spout off a page’s worth of text before your question is answered.
Google wants to index more than just websites. They want to organize the world’s information, not websites. Fraggles are a demonstration of that.

Luke Carthy — Killer Ecommerce CRO and UX Wins Using A SEO Crawler

Luke Carthy did warn us in his talk description that we should all flex our notetaking muscles for all the takeaways we would furiously jot down — and he wasn’t wrong.

“Traffic doesn’t always mean sales, and sales doesn’t always mean traffic.” @MrLukeCarthy #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 17, 2019

Traffic doesn’t always mean sales and sales don’t always mean traffic!
Custom extraction is a great tool for finding missed CRO opportunities. For example, Luke found huge opportunity on Best Buy’s website — thousands of people’s site searches were leading them to an unoptimized “no results found” page.
You can also use custom extraction to find what product recommendations you or your customers are using at scale! Did you know that 35% of what customers buy on Amazon and 75 percent of what people watch on Netflix are the results of these recommendations?
For example, are you showing near-exact products or are you showing complementary products? (hint: try the latter and you’ll likely increase your sales!)
Custom extraction from Screaming Frog allows you to scrape any data from the HTML of the web pages while crawling them.

Andy Crestodina — Content, Rankings, and Lead Generation: A Breakdown of the 1% Content Strategy

Next up, Andy of Orbit Media took the stage with a comprehensive breakdown of the most effective tactics for turning content into a high-powered content strategy. He also brought the fire with this sound advice that we can apply in both our work life and personal life.

If you write an amazing, high-traffic blog post, the people visiting it don't have commercial intent. People landing on a sales page have 50x higher intent. #mozcon @crestodina
— Mike Arnesen (@Mike_Arnesen) July 17, 2019

Blog visitors often don’t have commercial intent. One of the greatest ways to leverage blog posts for leads is by using the equity we generate from links to our helpful posts and passing that onto our product and service pages.
If you want links and shares, invest in original research! Not sure what to research? Look for unanswered questions or unproven statements in your industry and provide the data.
Original research may take longer than a standard post, but it’s much more effective! When you think about it this way, do you really have time to put out more, mediocre posts?
Give what you want to get. Want links? Link to people. Want comments? Comment on others people's work.
To optimize content for social engagement, it should feature real people, their faces, and their quotes.
Collaborating with other content creators on your content not only gives it built-in amplification, but it also leads to great connections and is just generally more fun.

Rob Ousbey — Running Your Own SEO Tests: Why It Matters & How to Do It Right

Google’s algorithms have changed a heck of a lot in recent years — what’s an SEO to do? Follow Rob’s advice — both fashion and SEO — who says that the answer lies in testing.

in head terms, it's about user engagement metrics. However, links are more correllated with long tail searches. @RobOusbey #Mozcon
— Matthew Decuir (@MattBasically) July 17, 2019

“This is the way we’ve always done it” isn’t sufficient justification for SEO tactics in today’s search landscape.
In the earlier days of the algorithm, it was much easier to demote spam than it was to promote what’s truly good.
Rob and his team had a theory that Google was beginning to rely more heavily on user experience and satisfaction than some of the more traditional ranking factors like links.
Through SEO A/B testing, they found that:
- Google relies less heavily on link signals when it comes to the top half of the results on page 1.
- Google relies more heavily on user experience for head terms (terms with high search volume), likely because they have more user data to draw from.
In the process of A/B testing, they also found that the same test often produces different results on different sites. The best way to succeed in today’s SEO landscape is to cultivate a culture of testing!

Greg Gifford — Dark Helmet's Guide to Local Domination with Google Posts and Q&A

If you’re a movie buff, you probably really appreciated Greg’s talk — he schooled us all in movie references and brought the fire with his insights on Google Posts and Q&A

Google Posts allows you to drive conversions without driving people to your site - convert on zero-click searches! @GregGifford #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 17, 2019

The man behind #shoesofmozcon taught us that Google is the new home page for local businesses, so we should be leveraging the tools Google has given us to make our Google My Business profiles great. For example…

Google Posts

Images should be 1200x900 on google posts
Images are cropped slightly higher than the center and it’s not consistent every time
The image size of the thumbnail is different on desktop than it is on mobile
Use Greg’s free tool at bit.ly/posts-image-guide to make sizing your Google Post images easier
You can also upload videos. The file size limit is 100mb and/or 30 seconds
Add a call-to-action button to make your Posts worth it! Just know that the button often means you get less real estate for text in your Posts
Don’t share social fluff. Attract with an offer that makes you stand out
Make sure you use UTM tracking so you can understand how your Posts are performing in Google Analytics. Otherwise, it’ll be attributed as direct traffic.

Google Q&A

Anyone can ask and answer questions — why not the business owner! Control the conversation and treat this feature like it's your new FAQ page.
This feature works on an upvote system. The answer with the most upvotes will show first.
Don’t include a URL or phone number in these because it’ll get filtered out.
A lot of these questions are potential customers! Out of 640 car dealerships’ Q&As Greg evaluated, 40 percent were leads! Of that 40 percent, only 2 questions were answered by the dealership.

Emily Triplett Lentz — How to Audit for Inclusive Content

Emily of Help Scout walked dropped major knowledge on the importance of spotting and eliminating biases that frequently find their way into online copy. She also hung out backstage after her talk to cheer on her fellow speakers. #GOAT. #notallheroeswearcapes.

"My desire for a specific word choice doesn't negate someone else's need for safety" -- @emilytlentz #MozCon pic.twitter.com/sXF2CjXVzo
— Yosef Silver (@ysilver) July 17, 2019

As content creators, we’d all do well to keep ableism in mind: discrimination in favor of able-bodied people. However, we’re often guilty of this without even knowing it.
One example of ableism that often makes its way into our copy is comparing dire or subideal situations with the physical state of another human (ex: “crippling”).
While we should work on making our casual conversation more inclusive too, this is particularly important for brands.
Create a list of ableist words, crawl your site for them, and then replace them. However, you’ll likely find that there is no one-size-fits-all replacement for these words. We often use words like “crazy” as filler words. By removing or replacing with a more appropriate word, we make our content better and more descriptive in the process.
At the end of the day, brands should remember that their desire for freedom of word choice isn’t more important than people’s right not to feel excluded and hurt. When there’s really no downside to more inclusive content, why wouldn’t we do it?

Visit http://content.helpscout.net/mozcon-2019 to learn how to audit your site for inclusive content!

Joelle Irvine — Image & Visual Search Optimization Opportunities

Curious about image optimization and visual search? Joelle has the goods for you — and was blowing people's minds with her tips for visual optimization and how to leverage Google Lens, Pinterest, and AR for visual search.

“Visual search is easier when you don’t know what you’re looking for, when you’re looking to match a particular style, and when your search way is too long or complicated.” @joelleirvine #MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 17, 2019

Visual search is not the same thing as searching for images. We’re talking about the process of using an image to search for other content.
Visual search like Google Lens makes it easier to search when you don’t know what you’re looking for.
Pinterest has made a lot of progress in this area. They have a hybrid search that allows you to find complimentary items to the one you searched. It’s like finding a rug that matches a chair you like rather than finding more of the same type of chair.
62 percent of millennials surveyed said they would like to be able to search by visual, so while this is mostly being used by clothing retailers and home decor right now, visual search is only going to get better, so think about the ways you can leverage it for your brand!

Joy Hawkins — Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic

Proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results — just ask Joy of Sterling Sky, who gets real about fake listings while walking through the findings of a recent study.

Local results not only vary by city, but even within the same zip codes, there can be drastically different local results. @JoyanneHawkins #mozcon pic.twitter.com/8g6acxUDAq
— Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) July 17, 2019

Here are the seven areas in which the local algorithm diverges from the organic algorithm:

Proximity (AKA: how close is the biz to the searcher?)
- Proximity is the #1 local ranking factor, but the #27 ranking factor on organic.
- Studies show that having a business that’s close in proximity to the searcher is more beneficial for ranking in the local pack than in traditional organic results.
Rank tracking
- Because there is so much variance by latitude/longitude, as well as hourly variances, Joy recommends not sending your local business clients ranking reports.
- Use rank tracking internally, but send clients the leads/sales. This causes less confusion and gets them focused on the main goal.
- Visit bit.ly/mozcon3 for insights on how to track leads from GMB
GMB landing pages (AKA: the website URL you link to from your GMB account)
- Joy tested linking to the home page (which had more authority/prominence) vs. linking to the local landing page (which had more relevance) and found that traffic went way up when linking to the home page.
- Before you go switching all your GMB links though, test this for yourself!
Reviews
- Joy wanted to know how much reviews actually impacted ranking, and what it was exactly about reviews that would help or hurt.
- She decided to see what would happen to rankings when reviews were removed. This happened to a business who was review gating (a violation of Google’s guidelines) but Joy found that reviews flagged for violations aren’t actually removed, they’re hidden, explaining why “removed” reviews don’t negatively impact local rankings.
Possum filter
- Organic results can get filtered because of duplicate content, whereas local results can get filtered because they’re too close to another business in the same category. This is called the Possum filter.
Keywords in a business name
- This is against Google’s guidelines but it works sadly
- For example, Joy tested adding the word “salad bar” to a listing that didn’t even have a salad bar and their local rankings for that keyword shot up.
- Although it works, don’t do it! Google can remove your listing for this type of violation, and they’ve been removing more listings for this reason lately.
Fake listings
- New listings can rank even if they have no website, authority, citations, etc. simply because they keyword stuffed their business name. These types of rankings can happen overnight, whereas it can take a year or more to achieve certain organic rankings.
- Spend time reporting spam listings in your clients’ niches because it can improve your clients’ local rankings.

Britney Muller — Featured Snippets: Essentials to Know & How to Target

Closing out day three of MozCon was our very own Britney, Sr. SEO scientist extraordinaire, on everyone’s favorite SEO topic: Featured snippets!

Why are we so concerned about traffic? What about branding/messaging/share of voice? You can't NOT target a keyword just because it has a Featured Snippet @BritneyMuller #MozCon
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 17, 2019

We’re seeing more featured snippets than ever before, and they’re not likely going away. It’s time to start capitalizing on this SERP feature so we can start earning brand awareness and traffic for our clients!

Here’s how:

Know what keywords trigger featured snippets that you rank on page 1 for
Know the searcher’s intent
Provide succinct answers
Add summaries to popular posts
Identify commonly asked questions
Leverage Google’s NLP API
Monitor featured snippets
If all else fails, leverage ranking third party sites. Maybe your own site has low authority and isn’t ranking well, but try publishing on Linkedin or Medium instead to get the snippet!

There’s lots of debate over whether featured snippets send you more traffic or take it away due to zero-click results, but consider the benefits featured snippets can bring even without the click. Whether featured snippets bring you traffic, increased brand visibility in the SERPs, or both, they’re an opportunity worth chasing.

Aaaand, that's a wrap!

Thanks for joining us at this year's MozCon! And a HUGE thank you to everyone (Mozzers, partners, and crew) who helped make this year's MozCon possible — we couldn't have done it without all of you.

What was your favorite moment of the entire conference? Tell us below in the comments! And don't forget to grab the speaker slides here!

Source: Moz Blog

The Real Impact of Mobile-First Indexing & The Importance of Fraggles

MozCon 2019: Day Two Learnings

MozCon 2019: The Top Takeaways From Day One

How to Target Featured Snippet Opportunities — Best of Whiteboard Friday

The Ultimate Guide To Creating Evergreen Content For Your Blog

The post The Ultimate Guide To Creating Evergreen Content For Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

This post is based on episode 136 of the ProBlogger podcast.

Back in 2007 I was asked a question:

“If you could only write one type of content on your blogs forever, what would it be?”

My answer then is the same as my answer now: evergreen content.

What is Evergreen Content, and Why is it Important?

Evergreen content is content that stays fresh for your readers. It doesn’t become dated, and is just as relevant years after you wrote it.

Now while a lot of blogs are very successful without writing evergreen content, I’ve definitely found it a great basis for my own blog’s success.

And I’m not the only blogger who thinks this. Here’s what Tim Ferriss said in a podcast episode back in 2015:

If you’re building an audience, the most labor efficient way to build an audience over time is to have evergreen content. I write long pieces that will be more valuable from an SEO real estate standpoint two years from the day I write it compared to the week it launches, if that makes sense.

Were you to look at my back catalog and the stats—I’m on WordPress VIP—or Google Analytics, you would see that my most popular post that each get hundreds of thousands of visits per month were written several years ago. That’s very much by design, I’m not upset by that because I fully expect that some of the articles I write this year, for instance my post on Practical Thoughts on Suicide which is a very intense post, I expect that will continue to gather steam and be spread around and shared and a year from now will be right in the Top 10 rankings which is very important to me.

So why write evergreen content? Because it’s a great way to:

Help people: Evergreen content is a great investment because it serves your readers as much in the future as when you write it. The piece of content you publish today can potentially have a positive impact on people in ten years’ time. That’s a pretty amazing thing.
Get ongoing traffic: In terms of traffic, evergreen content should cover a topic that will be searched for again and again. If you can choose a topic that’s a growing trend – something you think will be the next big thing in your niche – it can work out even better.
Interlink your posts: Evergreen content is the type of content you can refer back to in future posts. Many of the examples I’ll give you later from Digital Photography School and ProBlogger are cornerstone pieces of content I continue to drive traffic to from my ongoing posts.
Engage new readers: You can link to evergreen content from your navigation menu or sidebar. On ProBlogger, Make Money Blogging is piece of evergreen content that’s been live for years. I update it from time to time, and I continue to drive traffic to it from blog posts as well as from our navigation.
Share repeatedly: Evergreen content can be shared again and again on social media. If I review a new camera, I can probably promote it on social media for a couple of months before it becomes less relevant. But with a blog post that won’t become dated, I could keep sharing it for ten years.
Repurpose: Once you have evergreen content in one format, you can repurpose it into another. For example, some of my podcast episodes started out as pieces I’d already published on the blog. If you have a piece of evergreen content that’s performing well, ask yourself what other mediums you could repurpose it into.
Gather backlinks: Evergreen content also tends to be the type of content other bloggers will want to link to, which can help you both direct traffic from that blog’s readers and boost your search engine rankings.

Examples of “Now” Content vs “Evergreen” Content

Now Content: Get Excited About the New Adobe Lightroom CC

Back in 2015 we published a post on Digital Photography School about Adobe’s new version of Lightroom – Lightroom CC. This is what I’d call “now” content. It was massive news in our community, as Lightroom is the most popular post-processing tool our readers use.

That post did really well for us. In the first week after it went life we had 12,000 page views. But then traffic tailed off. When I looked at the stats a year later, the post had just a handful of views – perhaps a thousand page views in that year. And most of those were in the second and third week after the post went live.

If your blog has mainly “now” content, you’ll probably see similar trends. You might be able to keep traffic coming in for a little while by re-sharing your post on social media a few times. But ultimately this type of content doesn’t attract much ongoing traffic.

Evergreen content looks very different.

Evergreen Content: ISO Settings in Digital Photography

This post was an introduction to a photography concept called ISO. If you’ve got a film camera at home, you’ll remember that film used to have an ISO of a certain number. So this post explains what ISO means – and in particular what it means for digital photography today.

The day that post when live, DPS was a smaller blog. The post got 100 page views in the first week and then it tapered off to 40 or 50 visitors a day over the second and third week – a similar pattern to the traffic for the Lightroom post.

But then things began to grow.

A year after the post was published it was getting 200 to 300 post views per day.

Two years after it was published it was getting 700 page views per day.

Three years after it was published it was getting 1,000 page views per day.

Since then it’s been getting 1,000–1,500 views per day, although it can be as high as 10,000 views on days when I reshare it on Facebook.

Although I wrote that post in 2007, it continues to be valuable from my readers. It gets traffic primarily from search engines, but also from social media when I (or our readers) share it. It’s also a post other people link to when they want to explain what ISO is, which continues to help it grow.

The Adobe Lightroom post and the ISO post both took no more than a couple of hours to write. But investing time and effort into the ISO post (the evergreen content) was worth much more than investing it into the Lightroom post (the “now” content).

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with writing about today’s issues knowing those posts will date. We have posts like that on both DPS and ProBlogger. But we focus our attention mostly on evergreen content.

What if it Seems Like Evergreen Content Won’t Work for You?

At this point you might be thinking, “Evergreen content doesn’t really work for my niche”. I want to address that a bit.

Evergreen content can take various forms. The examples I’ve shared include:

“How to” posts that give readers instructions on how to accomplish something.
Definition posts that define a key term or principle related to your topic.
Inspirational content such as the image collections and Jon Morrow’s story.
Advice posts that make a recommendation or tell readers what they should do.
Swipe files or templates, which are posts designed to be used again and again.

There are also different mediums you can use. Evergreen content can be text, audio or video. You’re not limited to blog posts.

For example, many of my podcast episodes are as relevant today as when I recorded them. And my YouTube video on Secrets of Making Money Online (which I published at the end of 2010) is still getting views today.

Coming Up With Ideas for Evergreen Content

So how do you find evergreen content ideas for your blog? Here are a few things to consider:

#1: What Questions Do You Get Asked Today That You’ve Been Asked for Years?

Are there any questions related to your topic that just don’t go away? With ProBlogger, a couple of these are “Can you really make money blogging?” and “How do you make money blogging?” Some of the best posts on ProBlogger just answer those types of questions.

#2: What Key Challenges Do People Have?

What challenges, obstacles or problems do people have related to your topic? On Problogger, one of these challenges is productivity. Readers want to know how to fit it all in and get it all done.

#3: What Are Your Readers Searching For?

You can also look at what people are searching for when they’re on your site, and what they’re searching for elsewhere about your topic. Google Trends is a good tool for looking into this.

#4: What “Cornerstones” Do People Need to Know?

Back in 2007 I wrote a series of posts on Digital Photography School about aperture, shutter speed and ISO. I consider these three concepts to be cornerstone pieces of content. If you want to take a well-exposed photograph, you need to learn these three things.

Are there cornerstone things you constantly refer to on your blog? You might never have written a whole post about them because they seem so basic. But they can make great evergreen content, which you can then link back to any time you mention those concepts.

#5: What Could You Create That People Will Keep Coming Back To?

Is there something you could create that people would keep coming back to again and again? A good example is Carla and Emma’s post Paleo Salted Choc Caramel Slice Recipe. It’s such an amazing slice (I’ve tasted it) that I bet people constantly come back to again and again.

Another way to create something people will keep returning to is to create a swipe file. Brian Clark wrote Ten Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work back in 2008 or 2009, and that post has become iconic. People constantly refer to it, and I constantly go back to it.

#6: What Key Stories Could You Use from Your Life or Your Industry?

What key stories have there been in your life or your industry that continue to have relevance today?

I think most of us have moments in our lives that have been turning points for us. Think about one of those key moments in your own life, and write a story about it for your blog.

What if Your Content Dates Quickly?

As I mentioned before, some blogs are all about “now” content. Perhaps they’re news blogs, a politics blog you run during election season, or a blog that’s all about new gadgets. That’s okay. But look out for opportunities to write some evergreen content as well to mix things up a little.

The mix of evergreen vs now content will vary from blog to blog. Over on Digital Photography School, around 90 to 95% of what we publish is evergreen. We could write a lot more about new cameras coming out and new techniques for certain styles of post-processing, and we do a few of those types of things. But we generally leave that to other blogs.

On ProBlogger we have a bit more “now” content because techniques do change. In the past we’ve covered some emerging trends such as Snapchat and Facebook Live. Those posts are still reasonably evergreen, but maybe not so evergreen as some of the posts we do on Digital Photography School.

Updating Your Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is really a spectrum. Some pieces of content you write might still apply a hundred years from now. Others might be relevant for six months or so.

Of course, you can always update your content to make it more evergreen. If you published a post a few years ago that has become dated, you can go back and make changes.

A good example of this is my Make Money Blogging post. It’s about 2,900 words long, and I wrote it back in 2007 or 2008. Over the years I’ve updated and changed it. (You can see when it was last updated at the top of the post.) Probably very little of that original post now remains. I still consider it to be an evergreen piece of content because it’s still the same topic and the same URL. And it continues to rank well in Google.

If you’ve got a post that’s doing well in Google, or one that gets a lot of traffic for another blog, make updating it a high priority.

Even on blogs that focus on now content such as MacRumors, it’s still possible to have evergreen content.

Most of the posts on MacRumors could become obsolete the next day if a rumor is disproved or a new product comes out.

But they do have some evergreen content, such as their buyer’s guide to all Apple products. It gives you the latest information on each product, and they constantly update it. But it’s still an evergreen page because it fulfils a continual need from their readers: “Which product should I buy, and when?”

Another example of a post like this is Lifehacker’s post The Essential Mac Apps for 2018. If you look at that post you’ll see some of the comments are from 2013. It’s been live for a long time, but it’s updated regularly.

On Digital Photography School we have similar posts that list our most popular Digital SLRs, our most popular lenses, and our most popular compact cameras. I update these posts three or four times a year to show the current trends in those particular things.

One final example is from my wife Vanessa’s blog, Style and Shenanigans. She wrote a post called Where to Shop in Bali after we took a holiday there. It’s ranked pretty well in Google, and she updates it each time we go back to Bali.

Getting Traffic to Your Evergreen Content

Once you’ve written an evergreen piece of content, think how you’ll get readers to it. You want to aim for a steady stream of traffic over time.

Some things that will help are to:

#1: Optimise your post for SEO. You can find some great tips on that in this podcast episode with Jim Stewart: What New (and Old) Bloggers Need to Know about SEO.

#2: Highlight the post on your blog. If it’s an important piece of content, you’ll want to link to it from key places like your navigation areas such as your menu or sidebar.

#3: Link to the post from older posts on your blog. Go back through your archives and see if there are other relevant pieces of content you could link to your new evergreen content from. A trickle of traffic from ten different posts adds up over time.

#4: Re-share that content on social media. One simple thing I do pretty much every day is to go back and look at what I published on this day during previous years. If those posts are still relevant, I’ll reshare them.

#5: Look for opportunities to link back to the post. As you write new pieces of content, look out for opportunities to link back to your evergreen content. This doesn’t just apply to posts for your own blog. If you’re guest posting on someone else’s blog, don’t just link to your front page in your bio. Link to a piece of evergreen content.

#6: Consider contacting influencers who might be interested. If there’s a social media influencer in your niche who might like and share that piece of content, send it their way. (For more on building relationships with influencers, check out How to Approach Influencers in Your Niche: Twelve Crucial Tips.)

What’s the Point of Your Evergreen Content?

Finally, if you’re going to get a stream of steady traffic to your evergreen content then you’ll want to make the most of it. You don’t want visitors to read the content and then bounce straight off your site again.

To leverage that piece of content, you could:

Create an email opt-in encouraging people to sign up for your email list.
Prompt people to read a second piece of content – some further reading.
Encourage them to follow you on social media.

It’s all about making sure your evergreen content is as “sticky” as possible. (For more on that, listen to Episode 35 of the podcast: How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog.)

Evergreen content is one of the best investments you’ll ever make in terms of creating content for your blog. Of course, not every piece of content needs to be evergreen, and not every piece of evergreen content you create is going to work. But the more evergreen content you create over time the better.

Earlier in this post we took a look at ten pieces of content that have done really well for me on Digital Photography School and ProBlogger. Some of those pieces of content have had millions of views. But none of them have made up more than 1% or 2% of my overall traffic.

The reality is that most of the hundreds of millions of page views I’ve had over the years have come from all the little pieces of evergreen content.

Evergreen content isn’t just about big posts that might go viral. It’s about all those little posts that might attract an extra ten, twenty, thirty visitors to your blog each month. They all add up over time.

Every piece of content you create is an investment that continues to increase the amount of overall traffic to your blog.

This week, make it your goal to create some evergreen content and identify other topics you might want to write about that are evergreen in nature. Schedule it in over the coming weeks and months, and you’ll soon see the difference evergreen content can make.

Image credit: Austin D