What Should You Focus On: Evergreen Content Or Traffic?

I know the question is a bit misleading because the content of a website can also be a form of marketing. What I mean here is the question: Should you invest time to write quality content for your website or you would it be better to promote your website (leave comments on other sites, build profiles on Twitter and Facebook, look for new contacts and write guest posts for other blogs?

It is not so easy to give the answer. Not too long ago, social media marketing and backlink creation were very popular (and still are but less effective). Everyone wanted to be represented in the social networks and know that their profiles are well stocked with photos, videos or content. Recently, you can see more and more Internet marketers who are limited to one or two networks but they publish articles on their blogs several times a week.

As a fan of Pat Flynn and his podcasts, a particular episode has remained in my mind. Pat interviews Fraser Cain in Episode 40  about his Space News page which generates more than 5 million page views per month (yes, exactly  5 million, unbelievable, right?). The site has had not only a very simple, ‘out of the box’ design of the Thesis Theme {Affiliate Link}, no, this website is also focused on a niche where the problems of mankind are not even be solved (yes, we marketers always tell anyone that in the niches of health, love and money there are the best options out there). Why is his niche site then so popular and so powerful?

Actually the answer is quite simple:

Fraser and his team write every day several articles. The site gets new content every day and of course is also often visited by Google and gets through Google and other search engines a lot of visitors. Once the visitors get to the page and find answers to their questions, in Google’s eyes the value of the website increases – and thus the search engines send more traffic to this site. It’s actually a nice cycle because good content  is not only to be shared by the users in the social networks (social media marketing is not that much necessary for the owner of the site) but it is also taken up by search engines.

In the end, the creation of content is a very good marketing strategy – if the content is really good. Not only is this a good marketing strategy – Content marketing is a good investment in your own business – after all,  the content of the site remains and  does not get ‘fizzled’ like links that we collect through blog comments and other activities.

One important point we must pay attention to: our content must be so- called ‘evergreen’.  Content is only an investment if it is valid after weeks, months or even years and does not serve just the latest trend. The distance of the Earth to the Milky Way remains the same – today and in 100 years, unless the scientists gain new insights. And people will always have exactly this question and encounter Fraser’s website.

What does that mean for us as an affiliate or information marketer?

Focus on the content of your website!

Even if this type of marketing does not pay off immediately,  if you can write very good to exceptional content daily or several times a week (always preserving the validity), you will get a lot more traffic in the long-run. In addition, at some point you will have so much content that even without publishing daily your visitor stream won’t stop.

Here are a few tips to find out what Evergreen Content in your niche can be:

1. Answer the 50 most important questions that people have in your niche on your website! Unfortunately, I do not remember, where I read  that and I can pay no one tribute for this statement. These questions should be ‘general’ – e.g., is an article with the topic ‘What is Affiliate Marketing’ better than an article about ‘online marketing trends 2013′? In  2014, hardly a visitor will read an article about ‘online marketing trends 2013′.
2. You can use social media and forums to find out what your visitors are looking for – and answer these questions on your blog. In this way, if you answer the question in the forum then you can link your readers to your blog and hit “two birds with one stone”. The user will get to you and you leave a comment with your link.
3. ‘Content is King’ is still the phrase. We cannot hear this anymore but in the end it is the best and most sustainable strategy for our blogs.
4. On many pages you can see  the so-called ‘Get Started Guides’ or FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) areas where you can get “served”.  Visit your favorite websites in your niche and have a look at the ‘popular articles’ – often to be found in the sidebar . You can get ideas what articles are popular for your visitors and you can invite comments which hopefully belong to your ‘Evergreen’ content.
5. Look at the comments under the articles: Many users ask directly in the comments if something is unclear or if they would like to read more about a specific topic.
6. Put together a list of pages and save it in your RSS Reader. Here you can see what is published in your niche and again you will get ideas for new posts and articles. See also what topics are discussed again and again and thus your ‘evergreen’ repertoire fills up quickly.
7. Use tools for your Keyword research such as Market Samurai {Affiliate Link} – there are also plenty of ideas when you generate keyphrases on a topic.

Do you have more ideas on how you can discover what your readers are interested? Then please leave a comment, I am happy to include them in our list.

Filed in: Internet Marketing
Tagged with: content • content marketing @en • traffic