A lot of people have been talking about how the internet is changing and about how these days, it’s all about video and graphics. A lot of people believe the humble text article is going the way of the dinosaur.

While it’s true that it may happen one day, rest assured that day isn’t just around the corner. Take the text out of the internet, and all you have is a collection of videos and pictures without context. Like it or not, a great deal of our communication happens via the written word, and just like TV shows and movies didn’t kill text, the fact that we’re now uploading video to the web isn’t going to kill it either.

Text is still the undisputed king of the Internet, and if you want to build an active and engaged audience on the web, the sooner you embrace that reality, the sooner you’ll start finding success.

So, what makes a good website?

Images and video certainly help, but they’re the icing on the cake. They enhance the text-based content you have, and in terms of text based content, you need two basic flavors: the timely, and the timeless. These are very different kinds of content, and you need to be able to produce both well.

Timeless content pieces are also called “Evergreen Articles.” These are longer pieces of anchor content on your site that serve as authoritative references for specific topics. These articles may start out as shorter, timely pieces about a trending topic, and over time, morph into Evergreen Articles as you keep updating and expanding them.

While it’s entirely possible that you’ll get other bloggers linking to a timely article you’ve written, in practice, you’ll find that most of your external link love comes from those longer authority articles, and if you do a deep dive into your site’s statistics, you’ll find that your readers tend to spend the bulk of their time on those pieces as well.

The timely pieces, though, those are the things that tend to initially attract reader interest and attention. Those are the articles that draw them in to begin with. These are typically shorter, snappy pieces on a currently trending topic that are offered with some kind of unique twist.

Whether that’s your quirky and engaging writing style, supporting photos with creative captioning, or something else, each timely piece you create has to have a unique angle and an innovative approach to lure people to your site to begin with.

Then, once they see all the other awesome content you have to offer, it’s the overall quality that will get them to stay!