Last year I wrote a post for Moz about a piece of evergreen content I’d created and maintained for just over a year. Another 12 months have passed since I launched the page on my website, so I thought I’d share some more stats with you lovely Mozzers.

Image by Peter Harrison

The aim of this experiment was to create one piece of useful content, targeted at my chosen audience, to see how it performed organically over a long period without any promotion. So the content has been updated regularly now for over two years.

The Experiment

I write fiction. I have a personal website that I use to publish some of my work. When I launched the site, I realised no one would ever find or read my stories as no one had ever heard of me. So I decided to generate some useful content that my audience (other writers – because they like writing, they also like reading) might find useful.

After undertaking some research, I started by compiling a list of short story competitions. The page went live in April 2012. I update the page regularly, on average once a week. The date the content was last updated is stated clearly at the top of the page, so visitors can see it’s maintained, current and constantly being improved. Many aspiring fiction writers now use the list regularly.

I haven’t done any link building or outreach and have only undertaken minimal social sharing, writing the odd tweet or sharing on Google+ @ the competition administrators who have asked to be included in the list. Any links generated (with the exception of links from Moz through writing these blog posts), social interaction and comments are from users that have found the site naturally through increased search-engine rankings, via other people sharing the content on social media and from referral traffic from websites that have linked to the list naturally.

To avoid repetition, you can learn a lot more about the concept, research, creation and maintenance of this content in my previous post.

So, let’s get straight to the interesting bit – the stats.

Results

The results for the past year have been good, but my website was affected by seasonal trends, Hummingbird and Panda, creating some interesting statistics.

As a note, at the time of writing, my website has 39 pages, three more than when I wrote last year’s post.

Traffic

This first graph shows traffic to the entire site from all mediums since launch in October 2011:

Traffic from all mediums to entire site from October 2011 to July 2014

As you can see, Hummingbird appeared to have a negative impact on traffic. This looks worse than it is as it’s combined with a seasonal drop. You can see this trend as direct traffic decreased from August 2013 towards Christmas. Still, there was a definite drop in organic traffic from August 20 ^th, when Hummingbird is said to have been released.

Traffic from all mediums showing organic decrease in August 2013

In May 2014, the Panda 4.0 update had a positive impact on traffic. This trend continued into June and July 2014. Organic rankings went up and the page started to rank well for more generic terms, like ‘short story competitions’ (this makes me wonder if some of the contextual elements of Hummingbird were addressed as part of this update). There was a noticeable jump in traffic on 20 ^th May 2014, as you can see below:

Traffic from all mediums showing organic increase in May 2014

Below is a graph showing year on year data from May through to mid-August 2014. July 2014 saw the highest traffic levels my website has received to date. August is on target to have slightly lower visit levels than July (around 500 less) which I'd expect as the seasonal downturn kicks in.

Traffic from all mediums year on year comparison May to mid-August 2014

The next graph shows the visits from all mediums to the short story competition page from its launch in 2012:

Traffic from all mediums to short story competition page from April 2012 to July 2014

In June 2013, the short story competition list had accounted for 67% of all the visits landing on my website (total entries to all pages were 77,374 – page entries to the competition page were 51,861). Between June 2013 and May 2014, the page had accounted for 56% of all visits (total entries to all pages were 99,760 – page entries to the competition page were 56,606). Overall entries were up, but the percentage was down. This is because I developed a page about short story magazines, a page about book and novel competitions and I also launched a short story competition. All these pages have started to perform well. However, the short story competitions list is still the best performing page on the website, gaining the most visits and interaction.

If the recent increase in traffic from the Panda update remains consistent, the page should continue to perform well until the end of the year, despite the seasonal downturn in traffic towards Christmas.

Amount of Search Terms

Last year, between June 2012 and May 2013, 10,728 search phrases were used to find the page through organic search. During the same period this year, 7,141 phrases were used, however the (not provided) figure is up from 15,604 to 26,449 and (not set) is up from 8,420 to 12,776, so I’d assume the actual number of search terms is significantlyhigher than 7,141.

Most popular search terms used to find the short story competition page

There are a lot of longtail searches bringing visits to the page. As the lists have become longer due to featuring more competitions, the visits from searches pertaining to specific competitions have increased. I also keep a history of discontinued competitions on the page. This is useful and informative for the user and means the page ranks for searches regarding some websites that have disappeared.

Due to the regular updates, the page contains an increasingly high word count that will be contributing to this. At the time of writing this post, there were 19,074 words of copy on the page, of which user comments account for 6,914. This compares to 11,632 in the previous year, with 3,463 being user comments. At the time of writing this post, there are 139 comments on the page compared with 66 last year.

It’s worth noting that I received an unbelievable amount of spam during the last 12 months, so at the beginning of May 2014 a captcha was added to the comments form across the entire site. This reduced my emails by around 600 per day and made me a happier man.

Social Shares

When I wrote the post last year, the total amount of social shares were 127. Now, the total amount of shares is up to 631:

Details generated using Shared Count

Writers share the page on Facebook and Twitter, and competition administrators will often share the page when I list them. I noticed a spike in Facebook shares this year, when the lists were shared by a popular writing group, resulting in around 100 interactions.

Facebook Referral Spike February 2014

Links

Here are details of the links that have been attracted:

Data taken from Majestic SEO

Last year, Majestic SEO reported that there were 13 referring domains and 27 external backlinks.

Results from Moz’s Open Site Explorer

Last year Open Site Explorer reported the DA being 25, the PA being 32 and total links being 27.

Admittedly, the best quality link is from Moz, through writing the previous post, so wasn't naturally attracted. But that is the only instance I can think of where a link hasn't been attracted naturally by the content. There are some other good quality links in the profile now, including .ac.uk links (from UK universities that offer creative writing courses) and lots of highly relevant links from lower DA websites. You can’t get a more natural link profile as it hasn't been manipulated in any way.

Does This Type of Content Help Conversions?

Yes.

My site is not particularly sales focused as it’s essentially a hobby. Still, I advertise my books on there and have seen Amazon sales increase. I now make multiple sales every month.

I've launched a writing services page, offering proofreading and advice for new writers. I've also started to run a humorous short story competition. Both pages are generating revenue. Admittedly, not loads, but still into thousands of UK £s (previously hundreds) over a year. By the time I've given out prizes to the competition winners, profits will be minimal, but hey, it’s a hobby. The point is, the evergreen content has created an audience that is increasing positive interaction with the site, leading to conversions.

It’s worth noting that I added Google AdSense onto the site in May 2014. I haven’t placed the ads prominently as I don’t want the site to look spammy, but they’re generating clicks and a small amount of revenue. AdSense was added at the end of May, after the Panda 4.0 update and initial rise in organic traffic.

Amount of Referrals Other Sites Receive

Below you can see the amount of referral visits my page generates to other websites:

Referral traffic received from my competition page between January 2013 and May 2014

One of the writing competitions I list was kind enough to share this data with me. They were first listed on my site in January 2013. As you can see, the amount of referrals has decreased from the summer of 2014. There are a few contributing factors here:

• The traffic to my site reduced in the latter half of 2013
• Many more competitions have been added to the lists giving users far more choice, meaning they are less likely to click on all the links
• The competition in question is not running in 2014, although they do intend to run again in 2015
• As users learn about the different competitions, they are more likely to go directly to the competition’s website than using my list to get there

The relevant traffic my website provides to writing competitions makes being listed appealing. The administrators of the competition in this example tell me that the traffic I provide them with converts well into competition entries.

Summary

Evergreen content works.

Although traffic has been up and down for a variety of reasons, the page continues to perform well and brings quality traffic to my site that converts into revenue. It's the right type of content for my website's audience.

I am now becoming regarded as a thought leader and receive an increasing number of emails from writers living all over the world, asking for advice on many different aspects of writing and publishing fiction. I guess I’m beginning to be regarded as a trusted brand. I always reply to queries, engaging with my users. They appreciate that and it helps conversions.

This type of content generates natural link attraction, resulting in a strong, Penguin-proof link profile. You provide useful content people want to read, engage with and link to. Google rewards you for doing so. You rank and perform well because you deserve to rank and perform well.

You don’t have to outreach and link build. You can attract links naturally. Instead of thinking ‘link building’, think ‘link attraction’. You are more likely to start any brainstorming and content planning sessions in the right way, coming up with better ideas and more successful content.

How do you do it?

• Think about your audience – research and find out what they want
• Give it to them, preferably for free alongside what you want them to buy
• Interact with them – be helpful and friendly
• If users suggest improvements, thank them and make changes

It’s simple really. You don’t have to come up with some amazing and complicated interactive graphic or tool that takes a year to develop and then doesn't work properly in IE7. You can create simple content that’s useful. If it’s what your users want, they will interact with it. They will remember your website. When they want something you offer, they are much more likely to come to you and convert into a customer.

How to get buy-in of this concept from your client or boss

I've seen businesses spend a lot of money on content. Two areas often lead to failure during this process:

1. Failing to research and interact with the audience the content is aimed at, finding out what they actually want prior to building it.
2. Failure to continually update and promote the content once it's live, keeping it current and talked about - If you don't love and care for it, why shouldanyone else?

The business case here is simple. Carefully planning and generating one piece of content and spending small amounts of time updating it is far more cost effective than sinking loads of man-hours into producing multiple pieces of content.

Over time, a single piece of content that is cared for can be tweaked and improved to offer more and more value to your audience. As the content becomes more widely known, user interaction will increase. They might even suggest other pieces of content they'd like you to build, doing your market research for you. That's what happened to me. Users said they wanted lists of short story magazines and novel competitions. I produced them. They liked it. Now these pieces of content are performing well.

All this work leads to increased exposure for your brand and results in more sales. People might not buy instantly. But when they want something you offer, if they are familiar with your brand and found the content you provided for free useful and interesting, they are much more likely to come back and buy from you than one of your competitors. 

Sometimes it can take a while to see results. Don't just give up after three months if the results aren't suddenly escalating. If you keep making improvements, results do come, often slowly. After launch, it took four months for the content in this example to start performing. It's taken two years to get it where it is today, with some big dips along the way. After the Hummingbird update, I could have given up. I didn't. As you can see, perseverance worked. The results were worth waiting for.

Just remember, properly planning and promoting one piece of content that your audience come to rely on can lead to more long-term success than spreading yourself too thin by producing many pieces of content that you can't keep updated.

For the purposes of this experiment, I don't actively promote my content - I want to see what links and interaction occur naturally, via the content's organic performance. If you were to actively promote the content you produce, placing it in front of the right audiences and thought leaders, you could see results far more quickly.

Next year

I will continue maintaining this content over the next 12 months and will share more statistics in 2015. 

If anyone has any ideas about what I could do to make this experiment more useful / interesting over the next year, please let me know. I'll consider all suggestions.

I look forward to reading your comments.