Guest writer Cooper Jitts from TALK Agency shares the importance of Evergreen content in today’s time and why its important for a hotel website to increase conversions.
In the world of SEO and growth marketing, trending content is like a spring flower. It blooms quickly, attracts a flurry of visitors, then wilts and disappears forever. On the flip side, evergreen content is a camellia. It grows strong and steady, blooming throughout the year while attracting a steady stream of new and returning visitors. Which would you rather see on your hotel website?
Since the start of the pandemic, trends have been taking centre stage. But these trends have been focussed on doom and gloom. Then there’s the fact these are trends. They won’t generate interest forever. In fact, most people have had enough of them already.
However, if you build a content strategy focusing on evergreen content, you’ll soon enjoy year-round interest that carries on working for you long after it has been published. Unlike trending content, evergreen content helps you establish your authority, boosts your organic reach and can launch you up the search rankings, saving you time and money, year on year.
Why Is Evergreen Content Important?
If you take business growth seriously, then you’ll already know smart marketing plays a huge role in your success. The more people you reach, the more likely you are to see those lead conversions rise. However, reaching the right people is more important than reaching the most people – and establishing yourself as an authority in your industry (hospitality industry) or niche will build trust in your brand. But to summarise, here are 5 reasons why you need evergreen content in your life.
1 – Rank Higher In The Search Engines
As evergreen content tends to be informative, educational, always relevant and timeless, it typically performs better in the SERPs. By filling it with useful information about your property and room types along with the local tourist attractions, site seeing and food joints etc. will add more value. In this way, you’re likely to get more visibility, and it will help you climb those search engine results pages. The more content and value your site would provide, the lower the bounce rate will be – another major ranking factor.
2 – Boost Site Visitors And Traffic
With 95% of all traffic going to websites on page one of Google and Bing, just 5% venture to page two and beyond. Evergreen content and clean visuals tend to rank higher, it helps in attracting new visitors and reaching out to a wider audience. Evergreen content will also usually have a much higher word count, making it easier to use keywords and latent semantic indexing naturally.
The more traffic you drive to your website – there are more chances of driving some commission-free direct bookings and increase profitability.
3 – Gain More Leads And Conversions
Every visitor to your site is a potential guest, meaning the more visitors you attract, the more guests you could drive. You could have the best conversion strategy known to man, but without leads it’s worthless. Increase efforts on lead generation with social media outreach, email campaigns, blogs etc.
4 – Builds Site Trust And Authority
By providing reliable and informative content, evergreen content is generally shared much more on social media than generic trending topics. The fact it offers so much value and info also helps you establish your hotel business or brand as an industry leader, someone to trust. Share travel stories of your guests, reward them for their posting reviews, sharing pictures and videos. Your happy customers could help you in building trust. Basically, the more trustworthy you come across as; the more likely you are to drive more guests.
5 – Works For You Long After It’s Published
Trends typically die a quick death, meaning most content is lost in the darkest corners of the SERPs. Why spend hours pulling together a post that will generate interest for a few weeks when you could create something that works months, years, even decades after it’s published? Ultimately, this drives consistent traffic to your site, helping reinforce all other aspects of business growth both in the short term and the long.
The Different Types Of Evergreen Content for accommodation providers:
So, we’ve briefly covered why evergreen content is important for businesses. Now let’s take a quick look at the different types of it you can create. You’ll probably be familiar with some of these, which is always a good thing as you’ll have a good idea of the direction to go.
(Can we link the below to our content assets? Like the Airbnb guide, other relevant blogs etc.)
- Checklists (If you are a VR owner or Airbnb Host)
- Common Mistakes
- Glossary of a Topic or Subject
- How-To Guides (Travel and Local info)
- Property Videos
- Stay Reviews
- Stay Resources & Ideas
- Step by Step Instructions
- Top Tips and Top Tens
- Ultimate Guide To
Now while these types of content won’t necessarily see you gain instant evergreen status, the ways in which they are structured and written can. As an example, if you’re into a holiday or leisure business, you could write a post about the top 10 surfing beaches to visit in Sydney. Or perhaps you sell garden tools, in which case you could do an ultimate guide to getting a perfect lawn.
Think of how to deliver all of your knowledge, tips and advice to your audience in an educational yet entertaining way. Avoid using ‘trend techniques’ and add as much verifiable value as you can. Guide them from start to finish naturally, and of course, be relatable.
How To Create Evergreen Content
1 – Streamline Your Subjects
Keeping your scope specific to the topic at hand is always better than going too broad with your info. Evergreen content is supposed to be useful and assist the reader with a specific subject matter. Going off-topic will likely drive them away. By zoning in on one or two important points, you can become an expert on the subject, gaining the reader’s trust along the way.
Always keep your audience in mind while developing content, know your guest profile and accordingly choose the Subject. Choose a catchy title and begin with a great engaging intro, incorporate relevant pictures and videos to make it effective.
2 – Use Relevant Keywords & Lsi’s
When creating content, you need to write for humans first, and search engines second. But that doesn’t mean one should be sacrificed for the other. Remember, ranking higher in search results is important but the content has been drafted for your guests to read. Weaving keywords and LSIs into content in a natural way can be hard – and the search engines know when your keyword spamming, using irrelevant links or being a clickbait creator. Yep. You don’t just need to know which keywords to target. You need to be able to use them naturally, building context and convincing the reader at the same time.
3 – Join The-Dots By Linking Content
Evergreen content works like mycelium. The forest floor is connected via a network of branching, thread-like fungi, each working to help the forest thrive. In return, the trees provide nutrition to the mycelium in a symbiotic relationship. This is the same for the content you create. Use your past and future content to provide context, back up what you say and drive your audience from one section to another. Do this and you’ll not only improve your ranking – but also your brand authority and trust scores.
Interlinking within web pages will keep the guests engaged – create a lot of content and build a structured architecture for your website. For e.g.: If you are providing spa services at your property and having a webpage dedicated to the same, then you may provide links to other sections of your website where the guests may experience services such as: yoga, aerobics and wellness.
About the Guest writer
This article has been written by Cooper Jitts. Cooper is the Founder and Director of Talk Agency, a digital marketing company that provides white-hot service to clients while keeping on top of emerging digital trends.