About Cookies
  • Bookmark this page
Help\Posting Articles\Guidelines to Writing a Good Article

Guidelines to Writing a Good Article for Users and Search Engine Optimisation

The layout of your article will have a lot of impact on the readers so take the time to give your news the right look to get noticed. Breaking the information up into easy to read sections and putting lots of images in will help to make the article look interesting . Take a look at the two images below – they have exactly the same text in them – which would you be drawn to?

Content In Your Article

  • When you design your article all the major features of your site using the styles available in the Rich Content Editor sparingly.
  • See: http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/**** as an example of a page that uses correct headings to layout the page. Notice the use of links leading the reader deeper into the site. This also helps with SEO.
  • Your article content should contain keywords relating to your geographical location (postcode, village names) and your article content.

A well written Article will contain the following:

  • Well written content broken up with formatting (headings, lists, quotes etc)
  • Headings containing KEYWORDS (see below)
  • Links to deeper content deeper in your site using keywords as the link text

Formatting

  • Break your content up using formatting rather than styles. Using headings and lists gives your content more structure and therefore is easier to read. Place keywords in your content headings, take the following heading, 'What's On' and add a keyword or two. You could end up with 'What's on in Birmingham B14' which has much more meaning to search engines and humans alike.

Linking

Say goodbye to 'For more information click here'.

  • Rather than having numerous 'click here' links scattered through your content the text of a link should identify its target. This provides another great opportunity to add some keywords into your content.

12 Great Tips for Writing Articles For The Internet

We have sourced a list of 12 tips I think should be helpful when you are writing articles on the internet.

  1. Use lots of white space. People like to read in 'chunks' of information so have lots of space in your background.
  2. Use short paragraphs. Following on from tip 1 keep it short and let your visitor read little pieces of information at a time.
  3. Use the occasional exclamation mark (!) to get your readers attention. But please do not over use this as many people now appear to be doing.
  4. Ask a question so that your visitor will read on to find the answer. This keeps the reader’s attention focussed.
  5. Put a lot of thought and effort into your heading. If the heading does not get the visitors attention straight away then they will just move on and not even read your article. Try 'The 7 Secrets to Successfully breeding Cane Toads' rather than 'How to breed cane toads'.
  6. Use bullets to quickly outline a number of points that may be important in your article. Readers can scan through these.
  7. Use numbers if this is appropriate for writing an article. For example the way this article is laid out.
  8. Outline the benefits to your reader. They want to know what they can get out of reading the article so portray the benefits of what you are writing about.
  9. Do not waffle. This is never more important than on the internet. People get bored quickly and there are a million other articles they could be reading instead of yours. Get to the point quickly - in the very 1ST line!
  10. Target your article. Make it on one topic only and stick to the topic. Do not try to write about 2 or 3 things in the same article. Keep your focus on one topic to keep the interest of your reader.
  11. Conclude with a strong message. A message that summarises your article or gets your reader to take further action.
  12. Finally, be humble. People admire people who are humble. Do not talk down to your readers.

© Copyright David McKenzie

Keywords

What are Keywords?

Keywords are phrases you want your website to be found under. Often corporate climates force people to refer to things using special phrases. Keywords are not about what you call your stuff. Keywords are what you think Joe average surfer (or your prospective site visitors) may type in a search box.

Focusing a Keyword:

When people tell you to target the word "free" they are out of their minds. The single word is too general and has too much competition. I just did a search on Yahoo! for "free" and it returned 749,000,000 results. That is over 10% of the web trying to use free as a sales pitch.

I am not saying that free should not be on your page. I am saying that keywords should define the product or idea. Free alone just does not get this done.

Keyword Phrases:

If free isn't a keyword, then what is? Keywords are typically two to five word phrases you expect people to search for to find your website. What would you expect people to type in the browser to find your site? If you were looking for your product, what would you type? What type of problems does your product or service solve? Those answers are likely good keyword phrases.

Keyword Length:

A longer search phrase is also associated with better targeting and increased consumer desire. Some people say shorter keyword searchers are shoppers and longer keyword searchers are buyers. As you add various copy to pages you are more likely to appear in search results similar to your keywords which do not exactly match your more general keywords. Most good keyword phrases are generally 2 to 5 words.

Keyword Density:

Keyword density analyzers end up focusing people on something that is not overtly important. This causes some people to write content that looks like a robot wrote it. That type of content will not inspire people to link at it and will not convert well. Keep the keywords in where you can but ultimately the website is for people – so make the articles easy to read.

Finding Keywords:

The goal of keywords is to choose terms that will bring well targeted traffic to your article. There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

  • Words people would search for to find the information you are writing about
  • Problems your target readers may be trying to solve with your product or service (even if they do not know you exist)
  • Related search suggestions on top search engines (such as Teoma or Yahoo!)
  • Related term suggestion at smaller engines such as Gigablast and Vivisimo
  • Keyword suggestion tools (which are covered in the next section)

Only Use a Few Keyword Phrases per Page:

A note of caution is that you can not optimize a page for 20 different keywords. As you add more keywords to the mix, you lessen the keyword density and change the focus of the page. The page can start to sound robot created if you are optimized or too many terms. Remember that converting eyeballs is what matters. People are not likely to read or reply to a page that reads like rubbish.

Plural Keyword Versions:

Some search engines do use stemming, but usually the search results for singular and plural search phrases are different. It is recommended that you optimize for common versions of your popular keywords.

Capitalized Keywords:

Most major search engines are not case sensitive. Cars are the same thing as cars.

Hyphenated Keywords:

Most search engines treat hyphens as a space. E-mail is different than email. If a word is split in half by a hyphen then you should check to see which version is used more frequently and optimize for whatever versions are commonly searched for. If a hyphen is sometimes placed between two words then using either version (with or without a hyphen) will cause your page to rank better for both versions.

Common Keyword Problems:

There are a few common problems with keyword selection.

Some people use their catch phrases or slogans instead of focusing on what people actually search for.

Sometimes words have a more commonly used different meaning which elevates the estimated traffic and competition level without actually bringing more readers to your article. This especially holds true for acronyms (examples: pics, cams).

Some people use really generic words that are not very relevant and are extremely competitive. Optimizing your article for "local news" would be a good example of this. Lots of competition to attain traffic (260,000,000 results on google). Rather go for a place name “Leamington Spa News” (532,000 results)

Keyword Suggestion Tools:

There are a couple tools on the web which do a good job of helping you find which keywords get searched for and how frequently they are search for.

Now you might want to read: