5 elements of a good evergreen text

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We continue the thread. Did you know that the flail was used to manually thresh grain as early as the 5th century AD? A phenomenal example of how the simplest solutions are also the best and most durable. Remember this, because it is an important note in the context of evergreen articles. What was so extraordinary about this tool?
Visually, nothing at all. It consisted of two sticks. The longer one to hold was called a dzierżak , and the short one - a beater. Both elements were connected with each other with a string or dried eel skin. A simple construction, but very effective in action.

And as a small digression... When I think about a flail, I immediately remember the scene from the cult "Samy swoim", in which, while threshing grain with his father, Witia glances at his young neighbor - Jadźka (Kargul).

Kazimierz Pawlak: Witia! Why are you so unpretentious, huh? He told me a hundred times that you should hate this Kargul tribe.

(aside) And inevitably she comes of age.
She's not for you!
Witia Pawlak: But dad, when I look at her so well, and dream about her at night, I hate her so much that it's scary.
Pawlak : Well, stop, on that side.
As you can see (based on the film "Sami swoi" among others) this simple and useful tool survived practically unchanged until the 20th century. For 15 centuries its purpose and design did not change.
If we were to translate this into modern language and SEO terminology, the flail would be the first search result for the phrase: "what to thresh grain by hand" or "what should I thresh grain with". It would be in the first position for 15 centuries and would have high search statistics throughout that time. A result that is hard to beat.

Now, of course, nobody remembers the flail any more, it has become obsolete, replaced by automatic threshing machines. In some form, it has survived in the language thanks to the saying "simple as the construction of a flail" (or simple as the construction of a flail), which means an uncomplicated and obvious principle of operation.

Have you noticed that, quite by accident, a conversation about a flail turned out to be a quite sensible introduction to evergreen texts?




5 elements that will help you build a good evergreen
Creating a good evergreen text is a bit like constructing a flail. While a classic flail consisted of three elements, in the case of an evergreen text there will be as many as five. If you implement these five elements correctly, then (I guarantee you) your evergreen texts will be visible in the search engine and will attract many customers to your company website or e-shop. You just have to... apply yourself to it.

What features should an effective evergreen text have? A good evergreen text should be…

1. Timeless
According to the dictionary of the Polish language, timeless means "never losing its meaning, value, always relevant". This definition 100% reflects the quintessence of a good evergreen text. At first glance, it seems architect email addresses quite simple to us. In reality, writing a text that will not lose its relevance in a year, two, or even five years may be a bit of a problem for many.

During job interviews, recruiters quite often ask candidates one question: "Where do you see yourself in five years?" In my opinion, this is a great question in the context of writing evergreen texts.

"Where do you see this text in five years? Will it still be relevant?"

While in the recruiters' questions the answer should indicate a desire for development and motivation to change your position, in the case of an evergreen article it is the other way around. In other words, your evergreen text with minor corrections and updates in 5 years should look quite similar to how it does now. But if you answer the recruiter the same, do not count on employment.

2. Adequate
Adequate means "in line with something" and in this case in line with the user's expectations. A good evergreen text must correspond almost 100% to the expectations of a potential user. The essence of what a good evergreen text should be is given to you on a platter by the same Google in the Webmasters Guide, where we read "Find out what users want (and give it to them)."
If users are intrigued by whether penguins have knees and whether there are places in Africa where it snows , it is worth considering whether it is not worth writing an appropriate article on this topic. The degree of adequacy determines whether a given text will have less or more clicks, whether it will be in the TOP 3 or whether it will fall on the second page of search results.



5 elements of a good evergreen text


3. Exhausting
An exhaustive article is one that "presents a topic comprehensively, in detail". This is a definition worth getting into your head. Remember - a good evergreen article is not an article that is long, but one that exhausts a given topic to a level that satisfies the user. An exhaustive article can be 10,000 characters with spaces, it can be 5,000, or it can be 1,000. I wrote such mini articles with 1,000 characters, which then jumped to the 3rd and 4th position of the Google search engine. These were usually FAQ-style questions that exhausted themselves after a few sentences. The article on the phrase "what rice for risotto" from the previous article about evergreen in its original version had 7 sentences and 4th position in the search engine. Then, together with the client, we expanded it to 3,000 characters, which improved its position enough to get into the answer box. Google does not reward the length of texts, it looks at their substantive content.

It is not important how long you write a given text, but how deeply you go into a given topic. Success will be providing something more and better than the competition. Sometimes it is very simple, because very few people appreciate the power that lies in a blog. Many people run a blog "for SEO", and the effect of such a strategy is not always comprehensive and interesting content. If others write articles "on the sly" and "for SEO", you offer the client more. They will appreciate it. Do not write what everyone else writes, because you will be like everyone else. I have exhaustively developed this topic in the article What should be the optimal length of an article on a company blog



4. Reader friendly
Friendly text is text that evokes positive impressions both in terms of its substantive content and its visual part. As you know, texts for the Internet are created completely differently than content intended for print. Internet users are more impatient than readers of traditional media. Usually, we do not read in front of the monitor, but scan the content. We pick out the most important elements and use them to evaluate the content of the article. I wrote more about this in the article How do your customers read a website. The visual aspect is crucial in evergreen content, so it is worth taking care of the content architecture, attractive photos and graphics, appropriate font, etc.

The friendliness of the text has another dimension – linguistic. A friendly text must be easy to understand . This is especially important when you write an article on a difficult topic, but addressed to your target group, who does not necessarily have to be knowledgeable about it. Do not use industry vocabulary or specialist language if you are not sure that those to whom you are writing it will understand it. (See also: Are your texts understandable? )



5. Search engine friendly
Good content and content architecture are not everything. For evergreen text to work for us for years, it must be well visible in search results. Your text must be understood and liked not only by users, but by bots. You must adapt the text so that search engine robots can properly index the article and assign it to the right category, and then display it to users for the key phrases you want.

Timeless, relevant, comprehensive and user and search engine friendly - these are the 5 elements that make up a good evergreen article. An evergreen text that has all these features will give you what you expect - strengthening the image of an expert, greater visibility on the web and traffic from the search engine.