A Guide For Creating Content That Stands The Test Of Time

With so many businesses turning to content marketing, creating great content has never been more important. Actually, great isn’t enough anymore. If you really want to stand out, you need to go above and beyond to deliver an excellent content.

Since you already have to invest so much time into it, why not lowering the volume and increase the quality?

If you decide to go down this route, your best bet is to concentrate on a content that can stand the test of time. Content that attracts links and brings in organic traffic months, and even years after it has been published.

Sounds like something you might be interested in?

I thought so. Prepare your breathing masks, we’re diving deep!

How To Create Content That Stands The Test Of Time

Start With Quality Research

Roll up your sleeves and do the dirty work. Creating evergreen content requires considerable resource investments and as such should be a part of your long-term marketing efforts.

And if you’re creating a marketing strategy that isn’t based on a proper research, well, good luck to you sir.

We divided the research into a few different parts so it is easier to follow what you should concentrate on.

Target Audience Analysis

The importance of conducting a proper target audience analysis shouldn’t require any additional explanation.

If this isn’t a good enough reason for you, look at it this way.

Are you really willing to commit to creating, editing, publishing and promoting a piece of content of over 4 000 words with a random topic that sounded interesting to you?

Another thing we need to deal with right away. If you are willing to put in the work and have a trace of creativity within you, you can deliver a superb piece on almost any topic in your niche.

However, that still doesn’t mean it is going to attract your target audience. A quality piece that is decently promoted will find an audience, but it will not bring you that much value if it isn’t the right audience.

And since we are talking about content that should bring you steady traffic over a longer period of time, it would be a waste if only a small fraction of that traffic is actually interested in your product/service.

That is why you need to do a proper target audience research and focus on challenges and pain points that your target audience is dealing with.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the logical second step. Your audience analysis showed you which topics you should focus on, now it is time to see what you can realistically rank for.

The goal of this step is to help you zero-in on the keyword around which you will create your content. The main things to look for are:

• monthly volume search
• average number (and quality) of backlinks of content ranked in the first 5-10 search results

Let’s say your research showed that your target audience has a lot of trouble with keyword research. If your first move is assigning tasks for creating “A Definitive Guide To Keyword Research”, you already failed.

Why? Metrics hold the answer.

First, monthly volume search for the keyword research keyword 🙂

As you can see on the far right, Ahrefs shows that around 40K people around the world are searching for a content related to keyword research every month. There is no doubt this is something worth ranking for.

However, number 79 on the left is the first sign of trouble. This is a keyword difficulty metric. If you look at it closely, it says that you need backlinks from ~329 websites to rank in the top 10 search result for this keyword.

The further inspection gives more alarming information.

Look at how many different domains are linking towards these posts. You don’t want to step a foot onto this battlefield.

In cases such as this one, it is best to let the big guys duke it out and search for other short and long-tail keywords you can realistically rank for that also have a decent monthly search volume.

Of course, this doesn’t mean those keywords are “untouchable” but you have to be aware that you will need a huge resource investment to join the race. Already having a site that has a decent authority built on less competitive keywords is a big plus if you plan to attack highly competitive keywords.

Pick The Suitable Topic and Content Type

As this is a long-term play, you need to choose your subject area very carefully. With that in mind, stay away from the topic that can quickly go out of style.

Topics like:

1. “51 Android 5.0 Apps That Will Turn You Into A Multitasking Machine”
2. “Ultimate Guide To Photoshop CS 4”

should be avoided because they aren’t actual anymore (like the #2 example) or because they can quickly become irrelevant (like the  #1 example).

Let’s throw in a couple of new examples:

1. “The Definite Guide To Using Holidays To Raise Your Brand Awareness”
2. “How To Use Holidays To Raise Brand Awareness In 2017”

While both topics can work if properly updated, as soon as you use a year in the headline, you’re basically putting an expiration date on your post.

Long things short:

• aim for topics that are likely to stay relevant for more than a year
• try to focus on topics you can easily update (so they stay relevant)

Since we are talking about the content that brings significant value, it shouldn’t surprise you that 500-word posts are not going to cut it here.

Instead, you should focus on:

• in-depth guides on a particular subject (3-10k words)
• long resource lists (50+; or more than anything currently available on the topic you’re covering)
• case studies
• research/results (just remember in how many articles this year you had to use a statistic or cite a research from 2, 3 years ago because you weren’t able to find anything that is more up to date)

Regular blog posts and infographics are the safest way to go about this. Video tutorials can work too if you have the resources to develop it and you choose the appropriate topic.

All of this should help you to zero-in on the right topic.

Create Superb Content

All of the planning we did so far means nothing if your execution isn’t on the same level. there are a few guidelines you should follow to ensure you are making high-quality content.

The first thing is what is known as 10x content.

If you check out everything on that lists, it is pretty safe to say you’re looking at a quality piece of content.

Since we are doing this ourselves for a while now, here are some insider tips:

1. Focus on areas you have some experience with. When you’re talking about something you know, there is much more chance you will sound like an expert because you won’t just repeat the words you read somewhere else. Not to mention that you will actually be able to cover the topic in-depth.
2. Include tips from personal experience. Even if it is something that seems insignificant to you, it may end up being helpful to someone that isn’t well versed in the field. The exception to this rule is if your content is aimed at the experts in the industry.
3. Create great visuals. People are getting sick of stock photos. Create custom featured images, screenshots and pictures throughout your document. Use graphs or videos to display different statistical data and comparison tables. Make it easy for your visitors to consume your content. Also, whenever suitable, annotate your visuals.
4. Structure is important. Remember that we are talking about long-form content here. Big chunks of text with poor spacing will not help with your bounce rate. Also, creating a table of content is almost unavoidable. The chances are that your visitors won’t be interested in every paragraph in your 5k+ word article. Make it easy for them to find the part they are looking for.
5. Bring additional value with lead magnets. This type of content is perfect for including a couple of lead magnets. Since your goal is to gain some organic traffic, why not use the chance to pull some of the prospects into your marketing funnel.
6. Use a content marketing calendar. Creating long, high-quality content on a consistent basis needs a plan. You need to have a writer, graphic designer, editor and a social media guy at your disposal. You need something to coordinate these resources and the content marketing calendar plays a crucial role.

Don’t Shy Away From Heavy Promotion

There is still some work that needs to be done before you can sit down and relax.

This fabulous piece of content you just published needs to rank highly enough to be valuable and bring in consistent traffic. The first page is what you need to aim for, top 4 spots are what you hope for.

There is a lot of different things you can do to spread the word about your content:

• share it on your social media channels
• submit it to content sharing sites like Medium and StumbleUpon
• share it on related niche forums and Facebook groups
• direct traffic towards it by doing some Quora and Reddit marketing
• tag tools you are mentioning in the post when you’re sharing the article on Twitter

Whenever it is appropriate, you should also outreach to influencers and publications in your niche that may be interested to comment and share your post on their social channels.

The goal of everything stated so far is to raise awareness about the content and increase its exposure. The last step in the promotion process is to actually start building links towards it. Blog commenting, guest posting, resource link building are all great ways to start increasing the ranking for your selected keywords.

A big plus is that almost no one will refuse to link to such a valuable piece of information which will make your blogger outreach process less painful.

Success Requires Both Planning and Patience

If you did everything right, early promotion efforts will result in a decent immediate exposure. However, if you want to see maximum results, the initial grind of link building is unavoidable.

That is why you have to be patient. Also, you have to be aware that not every piece you create will be a huge success. Rand from Moz in his post about 10x content says that only 1 in 5 or even 1 in 10 is a huge hit.

Work hard, track and analyze your results, learn from your mistakes and act accordingly.

Practice to perfection.

Want to read the latest posts on social media? Then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn!

About the Author:

Dario is a marketing campaign manager and an editor at Point Visible, a content marketing agency.