To get your prospects or your regular customers continuously engaged with your website, you need to have authoritative content. When it comes to content, the quality of your content plays a critical role for businesses to attract their customers.
Authoritative is the letter “A” in the E-A-T of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. E means expertise. A is authoritative, and T is trustworthiness. Having authoritative content helps build your company’s reputation while attracting more website traffic, increasing the number of visitors who may become customers.
What is Authoritative Content?
Authoritative content helps to drive more organic search traffic to your website and facilitates gaining trust. When visitors read your content and learn more about you, your company, products, or services, they will feel they are developing a relationship with you. They learn to trust you.
Authoritative content is credible, informative, valuable, and builds a positive brand reputation. Authoritative content helps to build trust in your company.
Examples of Authoritative Content
One of the best-known examples of authoritative content is white papers or case studies. When it comes to writing blogs or articles, one of the types of content that will always generate leads is informational blog posts that “authoritatively” answer “evergreen questions.”
Evergreen content never dies. . . literally. There is so much “content” out there. Creating evergreen content requires additional time and money, but it is worth the investment if you want to rank higher in search engines, drive traffic for years, and help your audience find exactly what they need.
What Kind of Case Studies that Could be Evergreen?
Original research and data-driven case studies are evergreen gold. Case studies that help show off your expertise by promoting real-world results attract new prospects. Below are some ideas to get started:
Your research: Investing in your research is hard, but that is why it is on top of this list. Primary research is unique, exclusive, and, therefore, extremely powerful.
Deep Dive Success Case Study. In this example, you get to show off your expertise and tell a story. Everyone loves a good story. As Seth Godin says, “People don’t buy goods and services, they buy relations, stories, and magic.” Neil Patel has written about writing a “perfect case study” that attracts high paying clients. It’s well worth the read.
What went wrong case study. We all know that even lessons in failure are an effective teacher. Even Bill Gates says, It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” Sharing failure also shows authenticity, which builds trust. Being human, a real, relatable person who has experienced failure or admits to failure, evokes many more than successes.
What are other kinds of evergreen content?
Other kinds of evergreen content that are authoritative would be how-to’s. Breaking down a widespread issue into bite-sized steps, you educate your visitors and provide genuine value. The real key is to solve a real problem with a total solution.
For evergreen how to’ content, you need to ask yourself, what am I saving my reader from, and how will I make their lives easier? Below are a couple of examples.
The most popular one is How To’s for Beginners. Our expertise is widely appreciated, and we take it for granted. There are others out there that would love to know HOW we do it, step by step.
How to for advanced users. This one is a bit easier because we share common expertise and language with our target audience. Think about it. But the challenge is making it relatable and genuinely unique.
Evergreen Storytelling
It is possible that you could write compelling stories. Remember, being authoritative means being genuinely helpful.
Chris Lema, VP of Products and Innovation of Liquid Web, a prolific writer, is a storyteller. He writes authentically from his blog. He shares his experience and genuine thoughts on being a business leader, running and managing teams, using WordPress products, dealing with different types of customers, being a speaker, and even shares his life. When you read his writings, you know it’s coming from his heart. When you hear him speak, He’s been there. He’s made mistakes. He’s had his successes. He’s right there with you.
That is storytelling. Chris Lema’s topics are evergreen and authoritative.
Developing and writing authoritative content requires time and investment. But it pays off with organic traffic and loyal customers. If you need assistance with your content strategy, don’t hesitate to contact us or fill out our survey.