If you follow a decent marketing strategy, you probably know that staying relevant is key to cultivating success on a long-term basis. That’s why every single deliverable, whether it’s a flyer, webpage, or ad copy, should be constantly improved and updated.
However, if your content is evergreen, you wouldn't have to worry about keeping it relevant, as it will always be on demand and will drive engagement for a long time with no extra efforts.
What Is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen content is SEO content that never “goes out of style”. Simply put, it’s content that will always be searched for. Evergreen content is not tied to any short-term phenomenon or seasonal event. On the contrary, evergreen content is something you would like to read about today, tomorrow or in couple years, and it will still deliver the same value to a reader five years from now as the day it was posted. Luckily, the healthcare industry is full of evergreen topics. People will always have health-related issues, and, most importantly, will always browse for information about them online.
Why Is Evergreen Content So Important For Proper SEO?
Search engine software robots (spiders) are constantly crawling through billions of websites on the Internet in order to identify the keywords that match a user’s search query as precisely as possible. Analyzing webpage traffic is a part of the crawling process and it affects the page rankings directly. In fact, if the content is outdated, search engine spiders will rank it lower than newer content that is more relevant.
So, for example, if your radiology practice posts a blog about X-ray and CT scan differences, properly formatted, this evergreen content will likely continue to generate engagement even a couple years after it was posted. While it’s still important to post some “hot button” content from time to time to be on trend, most of your healthcare website content should be evergreen and focus on topics that are timeless.
What Evergreen Content Is Not:
In order to figure out what types of content can be classified as evergreen content, it's important to understand what posts wouldn’t be considered timeless:
- Posts that highlight or describe any type of current event
- Numerical reports and statistics
- Holiday or seasonal content
- News reports
Keep in mind that topical (not evergreen) content is not a taboo, it’s just something that should be only posted in order to attract immediate attention for a short-term perspective.
Evergreen Content Examples For Healthcare:
As I mentioned above, the healthcare industry is an easy one for evergreen content. Whatever your practice specializes in, you can always write about different health conditions you are treating, methods and procedures you are using, as well as pieces of prevention advice you would give to your patients. To have a better understanding, take a look at some of our client's evergreen content examples we've created:
“How to” instructions
Instructions will never get obsolete, as this is what people are mostly searching for. How to do or use something is one of the most common questions of all times, particularly in regards to healthcare.
Example: How To Tell If You Have Diverticulitis: Signs & Symptoms
Lists
Lists on a timeless topic are always going to be popular because they are actually very informative and easy to skim through. Lists work the best when a user doesn’t have time to read through loads of text and just wants to grasp a few quick points.
Example: 9 Questions to Ask Your Pulmonologist at Your First Appointment
Answers to patients’ FAQs
Almost all patients who come to your healthcare business will have questions, and a lot of them will be pretty similar. You can consider your patients as the statistical sample of the entire population. Posting the answers to the most frequently asked questions from your patients will not only address your patients’ questions but potentially serve the entire internet population.
Example: What are the benefits of arm lift surgery?
Services and procedures explained
Although there are always new innovations in healthcare regarding technology and even the types of diseases diagnosed, for the most part, it’s safe to say that many of the procedures in existence today will be around for a very long time. Because of this, content that you post now about your procedures and how they work will be relevant to patients not just today, but several years from now as well.
Example: CT Scans: The Life-Saving Scan For Smokers
Health conditions explained
Probably the most healthcare-related evergreen content of all time is content about health conditions. Even though treatment options might develop over time or technology for diagnosing may change, the conditions explored will always stay the same, which makes them perfectly timeless and forever relevant content.
Example: Meet Silent Reflux: The Little-Known Cousin Of Acid Reflux
Don’t Know What Content To Come Up With? Not A Problem.
Writing any type of content requires time, thorough knowledge of the topic, and optimization efforts. Most of the time, neither you or your physicians have additional time to spend writing and posting high-quality content. Thankfully, we do! Our healthcare marketing agency creates evergreen content on a daily basis, it’s one of our favorite parts of the job. So if you ever need someone who will provide your readers with information that they can rely on, you know who your guy (agency) is.
