Unlock Explosive SEO Growth with the Evergreen Video and YouTube Shorts Powerhouse

Has your SEO been struggling? With the rollout of AI overviews, we're now in the "SEO Everywhere" phase and simply creating blog content or videos alone is no longer enough. Gone are the days when a website with just textual content is enough. 

You need a strategic content system that dominates both YouTube AND Google search to maximize brand exposure and traffic. 

This post reveals the exact blueprint to unlock explosive growth with an Evergreen Video and YouTube Shorts Powerhouse.

A strategy that leverages long-form videos and short-form videos also known as YouTube Shorts to maximize your reach and impact, while minimizing your time to produce both.

The New SEO Reality

SEO has always evolved and changed as long as I have been in digital marketing (20 years plus). I recall years ago when Google Search Console data was unlimited, not just 3 months of data. Or how about when there was never a "local pack?" Then came the local 7-pack of local results, then a 3-pack which is the standard now. Or when there were ads at the top, side, and bottom of Google search results. Change is constant.

The reality is, that Google is a public company and the pressure to grow earnings for shareholders is increasingly harder.

The runway for Google to maximize profit from its search results pages has gotten shorter. As a result, Google needs to keep more of its traffic on its properties.

Now, in a search results page, we see:

As a result, Google is keeping 60% of the traffic on its pages and properties.

However, SEO is NOT dead, but it does require a new content strategy that aligns to Google's changes. SEO everywhere is the new mantra, and maximizing brand impressions across channels is now a key performance goal, not just clicks and traffic. 

Video Content is Becoming Dominant

Because Google makes the rules regarding SEO, we have to play by its rules. The content strategy I lay out is focused on leveraging your textual website content into long-form and short-form videos, which aligns to Google's increasing emphasis on video. 

If you've been slow to adopt video, now is the time to embrace that.

Look no further than today's teens and how much video they consume across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. 

Below is a chart from Google Trends showing that post-pandemic, the search for Video Content as a topic post-pandemic has skyrocketed off the charts (independent of age demographics)!

Now look at the chart below - same as the graph above, but I added "Content Marketing" as a topic to compare. Video content as a searched-for topic is approaching the same level of interest as content marketing. Video marketing is becoming content marketing.

Video content has never been more critical to your SEO and content marketing strategy. 

Look no further than a Google Search Results page to understand the emphasis Google has put on video exposure.

Why The Increased Emphasis on Video Content?

I mentioned earlier that the runway for Google to maximize profit from its search results pages is running out, but what's not running out is selling ads on videos.

The more video content Google has, the more ads it can sell. And thus, showing videos in search results pages only increases the views. 

Below is a standard Google search results page - Google has one organic link and lists three videos of which, two are evergreen videos, and one is a YouTube Shorts (all those are from our website...you see where I'm going with this?)

Google is showing both evergreen and Shorts videos in search results. 

The videos in the above screenshot are all linked back to YouTube.

Not that long ago, if you embedded a YouTube video on a page within your website, Google showed the page that had that video embedded in the search results and it would link back to your website, as the screenshot below shows.

But no more. Google wants to keep that traffic on its properties and now sends the traffic back to YouTube from videos in search results. So, we need to evolve our tactics and play their game. 

Connected TVs Continue to Grow

More and more TVs have access to YouTube and the internet to consume more video content. People on connected TVs aren't reading blog posts. 

But how can we maximize our exposure on Google and YouTube now?

Stay with me here...

The New SEO Strategy

The strategy and process I outline below is a potent combination that’s efficient yet exponentially increases your SEO and brand exposure with video content in Google search.

Introducing the dynamic duo of evergreen YouTube videos and YouTube Shorts. Together, they create a powerful synergy that will leave your competitors behind. Like fine wine, Evergreen videos age beautifully, building views steadily over time and providing a long-lasting foundation for your brand's success. 

What is an Evergreen Video?

Evergreen long-form videos cover topics that remain relevant and engaging over time, ensuring a steady stream of traffic and engagement over months and years. Evergreen videos have a different algorithm compared to YouTube Shorts, and we can exploit this difference to gain more views.

Below is an example of an evergreen video which is about this blog topic you're reading now. In this case, my video drove the creation of this blog post. In the past, my blog posts drove the creation of my video content. But we're in a video-first Google world now.

Prefer to watch a vide on this topic:

What is a YouTube Shorts Video?

YouTube Shorts are the rising stars of video marketing. These captivating short-form videos deliver an instant burst of views, igniting your brand's presence. Shorts can be up to three minutes long, whereas evergreen videos have no limits on time. 

Shorts are quick, engaging, and easily digestible, typically under a minute (although they can go up to 3 minutes), providing a perfect snack for today's fast-paced, on-the-go digital consumers - remember, people check their phones up to 200 times a day, so short-form videos help satiate new appetites. 

To maximize your production and minimize the effort to develop a list of video topics, your existing website pages, and blog posts are likely perfect for creating evergreen videos. 

TIP: If you haven't done a lot of video content before, it's easy enough to copy and paste your textual content into your favorite AI program and ask it to convert the content into a YouTube video script, and from there, you create your video.

As I showed above, Google is no longer linking videos shown in search results that are embedded on your website back to the website. However, you should still embed the videos in your pages. One, it's good for your readers - not everyone wants to read, and giving site visitors choices for different ways to consume your content is always beneficial. 

Second, embedding a video on a page is a 2-way boost to SEO. First, it benefits the video SEO by providing context, it captures more views than just living on YouTube, and then it gives your page an SEO boost by sending engagement signals keeping people on your website longer. In the table bellloow, we can see time on site was 22% higher for pages with embedded videos than those without.

Then, to leverage the work you invested in producing the evergreen video, cut that video into segments that are less than three-minute-long. 

Ideally, break them up based on the main points in each video to create a series. In some cases, those Shorts videos are well below the 3-minute max time limit for Shorts.

Below is a sample list of some of my YouTube Shorts. This was part of a 12-part short video series that I broke up from a single evergreen video. So, from one blog post, I created an evergreen video that spawned 12 smaller videos which I dripped out over time as YouTube Shorts. 

The Results Speak for Themselves

Here's another example of a Google search results page showing three out of four videos from a Shorts series dominating a Google search results page. I created these short-form videos from a long-form evergreen video - all I did was break it up. That's three out of four spots owned by my brand. 

What About Views and Subscriber Differences Between Evergreen and Shorts?

Evergreen videos and Shorts behave very differently in terms of metrics. 

Shorts excel at generating views quickly, but the increase in views mostly dies off after an initial pop. Below is a graph showing the quick rise in views for one YouTube Shorts video, then it levels off gaining very few views after that point. Notice it also did not capture any subscribers. 

In comparison, the video statistics below show the original evergreen video over a similar time frame. The evergreen video gained views much more slowly, but unlike the Shorts video, the evergreen video grew subscribers.  

From that evergreen video, we created 8 YouTube Shorts. Here's are the stats comparing the evergreen video to the 8-part Shorts videos with the same content after 2 weeks and then 6 months. 

The YouTube Shorts after an initial pop of views did not continue gaining views and only captured a few subscribers to the channel. 

In comparison, the YouTube evergreen video after 14 days had a small fraction of views compared to the Shorts series, but after six months it had easily surpassed the views of the Shorts, attracting far more subscribers. 

But together, YouTube evergreen videos and Shorst create a formidable presence in Google search results, occupying more real estate and increasing your brand's visibility and subscribers. 

Repurpose Your Video Across Many Channels

Since you have the raw evergreen video and the YouTube Shorts version, republish that content across all your important social channels. 

For Shorts, push those out to Instagram as Reels, for the evergreen videos, create a Facebook post, create a LinkedIn post, create a Google Business Profile post, and link back to your evergreen YouTube video. 

Summary

To summarize, turn your textual content into long-form evergreen videos, embed those videos on the relevant page on your website, and then break that video up into digestible chunks for YouTube Shorts.

And then, take all this content and repurpose it to all the other channels your customers hang out on - Instagram Reels, Facebook video posts, TikTok, and more. So, there you have it - from one blog post or page to dozens of content pieces you can spread out through the SEO and social media ecosystem. 

There's an old saying in digital marketing, content is king, and distribution is queen. Today that could not be truer, except the content in that expression has shifted to video. 

Let me know in the comments if you have questions or feedback on this strategy - I would love to hear from you!