My SEO secret: Evergreen lists
A blog is the utility player in a successful website. Here are just a few of the major roles a good blog plays:
- It boosts search engine optimization.
- It builds relationships with customers and prospects.
- It pairs nicely with your social media marketing program.
- It establishes your authority.
Those are some of the benefits of a successful blog; now let’s look at two points that help make a successful blog post:
- List posts are always popular.
- Evergreen content gives any post a significantly longer lifespan.
Whenever you can combine two proven winners into one post, you have the potential to create a monstrously successful blog post. Usually when we discuss the creation of list posts we don’t talk about them as evergreen content. But when done right, they can be extremely powerful additions to your website.
By far, the single most popular post on my website is The 50 (plus) Best 2017 Small Business, Tech, Marketing Conferences: Attend and Grab Your Competitive Edge! I first published this post two years ago and it listed the best 2015 conferences. The list includes locations, dates, and links to the various conference websites.
Several times each year, I review the conferences, looking for dates and locations for the following year. As I find these I update the list. Occasionally, a new conference comes to my attention and I add it to the list. I update the existing blog rather than create a new post; it’s an easy way to keep all the search engine authority the original post has built up over the years. It takes a significant amount of time for a post to start generating strong, consistent traffic, so you need to see this as a long-term play.
Can you think of some “updateable” lists you can post that will be popular with your audience? Spend some time brainstorming ideas and then start knocking them off; the more you create, the more likely you are to hit a homerun. You might also publish some lists that complement your core subject area but are still of interest to the people you want to reach.
It’s important that you keep these lists updated; that’s the only way that search engines will begin to see them as authoritative.
Let me finish this by telling you about another major bonus of evergreen and updated list posts – not one do they produce traffic, they are easy to create and maintain. You’ll develop a routine for updating your lists and find that you can keep them current with just a few minutes of work every couple of months.
Powerful and easy – that’s a combination you can’t beat.