Evergreen Content for Websites, Breaking Content for Blogs

How can you generate more leads from your real estate website? One thing goes without saying: without great real estate website content, your lead generation strategies will not be successful. It's a fact, so instead of fighting it, just fix it with valuable evergreen content.

What is evergreen content? As with trees, it's content that's green (relevant) year-round forever. It's not content that is specific to a date or dated event unless it's in a form that discusses a regularly scheduled event. Even then, the content should stick to what's relevant every time the event happens.

Think about the value of internet content over time. You write an article, let's say about title insurance, and someone reads it years later. If it's still valid and informative, it's going to be just as valuable to your site and lead generation at that time. Your blog is where you can create more time-sensitive content, such as announcements of zoning changes, special events, etc.

Activity #1: Review Your Site for Evergreen Value

Go through the pages in the navigation structure on your website. From top level through sub-level pages, look at your text content for relevance today, especially if it was created more than a year ago. You're identifying pages/articles that need to be updated to keep them relevant no matter when they're viewed. This could mean anything from changing a sentence or two, through removing/adding content to a complete rewrite.

Tip #1: Know What Evergreen Content Includes

There are certain types of content that almost never lose value over time. You will have visitors years from now with many of the same questions as today's visitors. This includes:

• Anything instructional about basic real estate concepts.
• Information about negotiating purchase prices.
• Information about title insurance.
• Repair negotiations information.
• Area terrain and climate data and maps.
• Major buildings, businesses, cultural centers, etc.
• Buyer general education.
• Seller general education.
• Transaction process information.
• General homeowner insurance information.

These types of content will be of interest to visitors at all times.

Activity #2: Correct the Issues Found

Whatever you find that needs work in the previous step, correct it now. You do not want to work on lead generation for these pages until you've made the content evergreen and valuable. Once that's done, you can create lead generation calls-to-action that are keyed to the content.

Tip #2: Make Them Landing Pages

Think of these new evergreen pages as landing pages for specific marketing strategies you will be using. You will want to send visitors to these pages from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Activity #3: Adjust Strategy for Social Sites

While nothing ever really disappears from the Internet, when it comes to the social sites, your posts begin moving into the invisible void not long after they're placed. By their very nature, the social sites invite and subsist on regular new posts and comments. You'll need to re-market your evergreen landing pages over and over again over time to keep them in front of prospects.

Tip #3: Build a Content Calendar

You can use special software, an online service, or a simple calendar to do this--your choice. What you want to do is to build a calendar to remind you to promote pages again and again over time. It's really not that difficult, as you can use a calendar such as Google Calendar to create recurring entries spaced out over time. To save you time, place the URL link to the page in the calendar item so that you can copy it out when the calendar reminds you to go to the social sites to promote the page again.

None of this is rocket science, but thinking evergreen for real estate website content can rocket your site to lead generation success.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.