Google recently announced the launch of a new feature that places search results for “in-depth” articles of more than 2,000 words prominently on its Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It’s the logical next step of Google’s campaign to improve the overall quality of search results. Previous updates such as Panda had punished low-quality and off-topic content. Featuring in-depth articles highly on a results page serves as the reward for people such as SEO copywriting services which produce high-quality and relevant content.

In terms of SEO, the addition of in-depth articles has the potential to be a game-changer. With these articles receiving such a prominent place on Google’s SERP, it makes sense to put significant emphasis on creating this sort of content. Whether you plan on using outside article writing services like eVisible or creating the content yourself, it’s important to know the basics of how to create the right copy and specifically why evergreen content is so important for these in-depth articles.

What is Evergreen Content?

Much like its name implies, evergreen content are articles and blog posts that are always “fresh” and never get old. This means the content isn’t related to news stories that will change over time or become irrelevant. The ideal bit of evergreen content gives readers information that will as useful to them years later as it is when it is first published.

Why is this so important? By making this content relevant over a long period of time, you will be able to see the benefits of traffic and site rankings from it for months or even years to come. Finding the right topics is often one of the most important elements in creating great evergreen content.

You can use many of the same tools that you would use for your SEO research when planning your evergreen content. Keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner will give you an idea of the types of keywords that are being searched for over long stretches of time. You can augment this research by tracking your older posts using Google Analytics to see which topics perform the best or use Google Trend to identify hot topics that may be relevant over the long haul.

Best Topics for Evergreen Content

As you read articles on the Internet, you’ll notice certain types of articles come up again and again. This is because their formats lend themselves naturally to evergreen content. When you are looking at creating in-depth articles for SEO purposes, consider some of these story ideas:

• “Best” Lists (“Best Restaurants in New York”)
• Top 5 or Top 10 Lists ( “Top 10 Tourist Attractions in London”)
• “How To” Articles (“How to Fix a Leaky Faucet”)
• Beginner’s Guides (“Beginner’s Guide to SEO”)
• Funny/Worst Compilations (“Worst Band Names”)

Writing Your Evergreen Content

The first thing to do when writing your evergreen content is to understand your audience. If it’s a technical audience, you can use more complicated and advanced terms. From there, do your research and use that as the basis for the outline to your article. With more than 2,000 words to write, it’s easy for in-depth articles to lose focus without an outline.

More than anything else, you need to make sure that your content is truly evergreen and that it’s is uniquely valuable. If it’s information that people can get somewhere else, it won’t be as valuable. Even if it’s on a topic that’s been written about before, put your own spin on it. This will increase the chances that it is shared by readers, increasing overall clicks while also sending valuable social signals to Google about the quality of the piece.

It’s easy to make the assumption that the search engine optimization strategy for Enterprise SEO — when you are working with a large corporation’s website — would be the same as SEO work for a startup or smaller company. But while many of the same principles remain, there are several major differences between standard SEO and search engine marketing at an Enterprise level.

Many of these issues come from the challenges of doing SEO work as part of a large business. As P.J. Fusco wrote about for Search Engine Watch, departmental barriers often make it difficult for someone doing Enterprise SEO (https://searchenginewatch.com/article/2236950/Enterprise-SEO-in-2013) to produce acceptable results from their SEO campaigns. When someone does search engine optimization consulting for small businesses, they have few approvals to get and can alter their SEO strategies quickly to react to changing search engine algorithms and other factors.

This isn’t the case when you are doing SEO consulting services or working in-house at an Enterprise-level business. The layers of management and departments means that you need “buy-in” from many people to implement an SEO campaign or to make changes to an existing campaign. This can be a major problem — especially if some of the people you need to work with are unfamiliar with the concepts of professional search engine marketing.

So how can you overcome these obstacles? One good tip was recently shared by Ray Comstock in Search Engine Watch (https://searchenginewatch.com/article/2234928/Defining-an-Enterprise-SEO-Strategy). Comstock recommends that you break your campaign up into two parts — a “foundational” stage where you are doing the keyword research and other background along with the early implementation and a “continuous” phase that includes the steps needed to keep your campaign moving through the long haul. This can include link acquisition, social media marketing services and more. Content writing services are a major part throughout all phases.

Another way to reduce headaches in Enterprise SEO is to conduct training with the key personnel who will be involved ahead of time. Chances are that you are the expert in online marketing services within your company, so you need to educate other people on what you know. Everyone understands the importance of ranking highly but they might not grasp the steps that need to happen to improve your search engine ranking. Getting people inside and outside of your circle educated on the different elements of Enterprise SEO will allow you to all speak the same language and improve communications as you move forward with your campaign.

When you are in the middle of a search engine optimization campaign, it’s easy to lose focus on the big picture because you so concerned with managing every minute aspect of your optimization. It’s great to be focused on details; this focus helps you stay on top of your rankings and make changes as needed. But it’s just as easy to get so concerned with the smallest features that you forget about the reason you are doing optimization in the first place — driving business to your site through an improved search engine ranking.

Over the years, eVisible has learned some valuable lessons about how to maintain the proper focus while undertaking a search engine optimization campaign. Here are three things to keep in mind as your campaign progresses but before you get overwhelmed with every little detail:

ROI, ROI and More ROI

The reason that businesses undertake an SEO campaign in the first place is to increase their visibility and get more customers and sales. After all, if you aren’t making money, why do SEO in the first place? As you progress through your campaign, make sure that you and your online marketing services provider stay focused on the tactics that will give you the greatest impact to your bottom line for the least amount of money.

Don’t Just Focus on Content

Content is an important aspect of search engine optimization. But if it’s the only thing that you are doing as part of your online marketing, you are missing out on a lot of potentially valuable tactics. Improving your site’s architecture will make it easier for search engine spiders to find your pages and for you to receive inbound links. In addition, working with a viral marketing agency to improve your social media platform or start an ad campaign can increase your visibility along with boosting your SEO rankings.

Be Flexible with Your Campaign

Developing a solid game plan is critical to having success with your SEO campaign and achieving higher search engine rankings. However, you need to look at it as a starting point rather than a script from which you can never deviate. The world of online rankings is extremely fluid and you need to be able to adjust on a regular basis as well. Major search engines tweak their ranking algorithms hundreds of times each year and you need to be open to change as well. Your provider of SEO services should be able to stay on top of any movements in the ways that search engines rank sites and make recommendations for updates to your tactics.