Liz Stansfield, our Digital and Social Content Lead, shares how a recipe created back in 2018 has become the biggest hit for one of the UK’s most popular foodie media brands.

It might sound odd to be obsessed with a recipe for pizza dough. Especially when you haven’t even made it, nor eaten it, because you’re coeliac (an original 90s coeliac, no less) so allergic to gluten. But, a recipe for Quick Pizza Dough has been my – gluten-free – bread and butter since I first published it back in 2018.

Part of my role at 7C3 is to run all digital content for our biggest partner, Sainsbury’s magazine. Our website (sainsburysmagazine.co.uk) runs on longtail, evergreen content, which means it consistently generates high-quality traffic from organic search. This isn’t always the most exciting, glamorous world to reside in online, especially compared to the fast-moving world of trends and social media algorithms.

But longtail is the backbone of a good content marketing strategy. And our recipe for the previously mentioned Quick Pizza Dough is a shining example: commissioned as part of a multi-platform recipe feature way back in 2018, it’s our best-performing recipe of all time, sitting pretty at the top of Google search and bringing in thousands of page views a month. So, how do you make the most of longtail content opportunities? The proof is in the five-step pizza dough…

1.     Research your space

Work out the space you play in, and do your research. What are people searching for in this area that is going to do the distance? When we commissioned our pizza feature the recipes were focused on seasonal ingredients and trend-led ingredients. But we knew there was a longer-term opportunity here, so we also created this hero dough recipe knowing that there was search volume behind it, limited competition from others, and therefore an opportunity for a slice of the – pizza – pie.

2.     Review existing content

The whole point of evergreen content is it has longevity, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% perfect from the point of publishing. When you’re reviewing content already out in the wild, try and look at it objectively and from a user’s point of view – and don’t be precious. If the picture used isn’t quite as high quality as you thought when you first published: change it. If you’ve migrated content or had a redesign since publishing, the chances are some of your tags, or headlines or page breaks might be a bit ropey: amend them.

3.     Utilise your users

In addition to reviewing regularly, if a piece of content is getting a lot of traffic, utilise it! Add additional content and CTAs to keep users recirculating on your site for as long as possible, and always respond to any comments or queries to keep the page fresh. In the case of our famous pizza dough, we added a ‘relevant content’ widget to the bottom of the recipe to encourage users to find toppings for their dough, driving as many page views per user as possible.

4.     Check your search results

Longtail traffic relies on a good search ranking. So it’s important to keep an eye on these. There are loads of tools available for keyword tracking, but if you have resource and, say a handful of really key URLs that bring in the clicks, having one eye on them manually isn’t a bad shout. If you’re knocked down a peg or two in Google SERPs you’ll be all over it quicker than you can say DOUGH.

5.     Give it a boost

Even the top performing URLs sometimes need some love, and there are lots of levers you can pull to help maintain your rankings and traffic. Giving content prominent placements across a site can help, as can a strong internal linking strategy and some social media love. Some of your best content could also be hidden from a new audience if you don’t expose it via other channels – so bear this in mind when running content calendars for social or email marketing.

This piece could have been titled with any number of wonderful recipes from the Sainsbury’s magazine archive – you don’t want to get me started on our Ultimate Lamb Casserole or Filo Fish Pie – but the story remains the same: look after your older content. It might not be as fast paced, or as glamorous or have the ‘viral’ (hat tip to my online listicles of 2012) glory, but it matters.

Our team at 7C3 are experts at creating content marketing strategies that deliver audience and engagement across multiple platforms. Check in touch to find out more: hello@seven.co.uk.