What makes a good article and why do so many get rated low?

For an article to be considered good at this point in time, it must be written for an actual reader, the era of trashy articles just to attract search engines is gone. Anyway, isn’t the biggest reason you are writing is to get a reader to actually read, get interested and click on your link at the bottom? And even if your motivation is to have readers click ads on the page, you still must write something they will stay with.

Here are a couple pointers about writing a good article;

Remember The Reader

The reader is the person you are wanting to follow down through the article, gaining interest and then clicking on your link for more of what you have to offer. Consider this, if all you do is write ‘about’ what you have to offer it’s really just an advertisement and the reader knows clearly what is going on, they are being pitched to. This can actually turn off the reader, even if they are interested in the subject, and so they may not make it to the bottom.

If you want a better chance at getting that click at the bottom, give the reader something they can use or get some value from. Pointers, tips, what to look for, an action they can take, anything of value. Many authors are worried that if they tell too much, people will then not need their services. This is actually not usually the case.

Do you realize that you can give out all of your ‘secret’ information and most people will not do anything with it. They will still need you, your product or your services. You can tell them what to do, and then be the one that assists them in actually doing it, or you do it for them. If you have provided a reader with something of value, even if they don’t use it, they will feel better about you and be more likely to want to deal with you.

When moderating articles we look at the basic content as one of the factors, does it provide something of value to the reader or is it just a weakly disguised ad. With our rating system the better articles will get more traffic, which is what you are after. Your article actually creates an impression of you, do you want to be known for selling or helping? People dislike being sold, and they love being helped – don’t you?

The Simple SEO Of It.

The other main important aspect of a good article, second to having it read well and have value, is search engine optimization. The term, also known as SEO, tends to scare off many writers as there is a lot of technical stuff attached to this topic. But you can keep it simple and still get good results.  Keywords are important in that the search engines use them to identify which articles are appropriate for what a person is searching for.

It’s a good idea to know which word or word phrases your potential readers would type into the search box. The search engines look for content that has that term in the title and a few times throughout the article. It is helpful to have the term used at least once each in the first two paragraphs, and then a few more times in the article.

Also, the search engines are getting pretty sophisticated, they know which words should be related to a particular keyword in a natural conversation of the topic. And this is usually easily accomplished when you have written an article for the reader, because those words will occur naturally. If you want a second or third keyword to stand out, just make sure they are included a few times in your article. 

Once upon a time, you could just stuff any old content with the keywords you wanted to be found by, but no more, the search engines are programmed to detect trash content. So, this is another reason to write to a real reader, it’s exactly what the search engines are now programmed to find when seeking appropriate content to fulfill a specific search.

These two simple factors will help a lot in getting your articles found, read and the resource links clicked! Also, here at Article-Content-King, you will find your well written, helpful articles will get higher ratings both in moderation as well as with readers, which will increase viewers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Article Marketing, Authors Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.