6 crucial article writing tips

Crucial aspects in writing article – don’t forget!

Articles have a lot to do with the success or failure of a website. They are known to be the driving force in driving traffic to a site.

Since started hubs writing 3 months ago, I have been reading quite a lot of newsletters from numerous internet marketing websites. The following are some of the tips I have learned about content writing and which I would like to share, especially with those new in online writing.

(1)        Write attention-grabbing headline

Headline is the title of an article.  It must be powerful enough to capture the attention of potential readers.  Majority of people scan through headlines to look for interesting articles.  Therefore, whether or not your article will be read, depends very much on the effectiveness of the headline.

For the art of writing great headlines, please refer to Copyblogger’s Magnetic Headlines series.

(2)        Use subheads

Subheads are mini headlines. Instead of a big chunk of text, break the content into few sections, separated by mini headlines or subheads.  This makes easy reading.

(3)        Research keywords

Keywords play an important role in an article. They can be split into:-

(a)   Short tail keywords –  These are general keyword, usually just one or two words such as cats, fortune cats, soup recipes, etc

(b)   Long tail keywords –  The definition of long tail by Ian Lurie, President of Portent Interactive is as follows:-

"Specific, niche search phrases, usually more than 2 words in length, that offer a low competition, low search volume and high searcher intent."

(c)    Keyword gem – a new term created by Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings.  In response to above definition, Jill thinks that true long tail phrase should usually be “more than 3 words in length because most 3-word search queries do not have low search volume.”

“………Keyword gems are those that a lot of people use in the search engines, but they don't have as much competition as the much more general keyword. This differs from long tail keywords, which aren't used much in the search engines.”

(Eg Japanese fortune cats, Chinese soup recipes, etc)

No doubt long tail keywords result in low search volume but if you target lots  of such long tail key phrases, you can get highly targeted traffic.  Also, visitors from long tail key phrases tend to convert better to sales and ad clicks.

There are many free online keyword research tools such as Google Adwords, WordPot, WordStream, WordTracker to facilitate keyword research.

Having chosen the target search terms, you should incorporate the keywords naturally into your pages.  Optimum keyword density is 1 to 3 percent.  Avoid keyword stuffing that will cause your webpage to be penalized.  There are free keyword density analyzers on the internet to help you calculate the keyword density in your webpage.

   (4)  Optimize your images

Pay attention to the format and quality.  The format of the image does matter and .jpg and .png perform best.  Make sure the images are free from common defects.

Include an ALT tag which is a short description of an image to let search engines know what is the image’s content.  It is displayed if, for some reasons, the image is not available due to broken link, unavailable photo hosting, etc.

In addition, think of a keyword-rich descriptive file name for the image.

(5) Provide rich content

Theoretically, the more content you have, the more readers you can attract. However, please bear in mind quality is more important than quantity. Also, instead of focusing on being search-engine friendly, content should also be reader-friendly as well.

Skillful use of concrete details can make an article more persuasive, more memorable, and more effective. Relevant facts, figures and statistics add authority and credibility to the content.

Consider the following:-

Japanese maneki neko is the name for Japanese fortune cat.

versus

Japanese fortune cat is known as maneki neko. It is usually adorned with a decorative bib, collar and bell, with one paw raised and often holding a koban (coin) in the other paw.

(6) Use Content and SEO hand-in-hand

Content has a role in a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Web content and SEO need to go hand in hand. No matter how well an article is written, it still needs marketing to drive more traffic to your website. On the other hand, SEO strategies cannot help a site much if there is no quality content.

Website traffic means the number of visitors to your site. Your website’s success depends on traffic!

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