Writing Better Articles
Posted on October 16, 2007
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Blogging is essentially about writing short articles on interesting topics and publishing them for their readers to enjoy.
Part of promoting your blog also involves writing articles to submit to article directories and ezines in order to drive traffic to your blog as well as increase the number of naturally obtained back-links for potentially boosting your page rank with the search engines. That is assuming they haven’t changed the rules once again.
So it helps to be able to write a well formed as well as interesting article so that you’ll attract more people to your blog. Here’s some tips on improving your article writing skills:
Start with a strong title
This is the most important part of your article, because people see that first and will either want to read on, or click away depending upon whether the title grabs them by the throat and screams “Read me!”, or one that does not! A title that has impact or asks a question is usually best as people are attracted to either shock tactics, such as “Shock Report! Elvis Presley Found Alive and Well and Living in…” or curiosity, such as “How to Successfully Get Elected as Mayor…”.
Next comes a strong summary
This should be of two or three short sentences, outlining what the article will be about.
Once a person has decided to look at your article after seeing the title, you now need to hold their attention by telling them what they will be reading about. So make sure you make it interesting. It’s no good shocking them with a scandalous title and then fading out like a damp squib with a lacklustre summary. If your title has grabbed them by telling them Elvis is alive, you had better back that up with something like “In a report just released on CNN news literally minutes ago…” and give them some hard facts. Then tell them that they can read the full breaking story right here.
Then comes the body of your article
This can be subdivided into three main parts - the introduction, the body and the conclusion. Always stick to this format. If you go onto the ezinearticles.com website and read some of the top articles, you’ll notice they all follow that format. All successful articles do.
The introduction should outline what the article will be about. A word of warning here… Never, never, never begin your article with the words: “This article is about…” It’ll cost you dearly and may even get your article rejected! It certainly will should you wish to submit it for sale at Constant Content.
The body should contain several short paragraphs outlining each aspect of the story, with a lead in and lead out from the previous paragraph to the next.
The conclusion
This should sum up every thing your article was about in two or three short sentences.
Finally, you should complete your Resource Box
This is the place where you are allowed to include a link back to your blog or website. It’s important that you make sure that you describe a little about yourself and your blog or site and make it as interesting as possible, because you want the reader to feel almost obliged to click your link to see more of what you and your blog are all about.
Your article is now complete!
Obviously, everyone’s writing skills and methods are slightly different, which is why there are no hints as to what to actually write about - as everyone will have their own way of putting forward the information.
Another tip is to always spell check and then proof read your article before you submit it, just to ensure there are no typos and everything makes sense.
By following these few, simple steps, you can create and submit articles that will be read by more people and drive more traffic to your blog or website.
Here’s to your success!
Terry Didcott
Author and Creator of Blogging Web 2.0
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Keep Promoting!
Posted on October 14, 2007
Filed Under Promotion | Leave a Comment
Blogging is about telling the world what you’re writing about.
You go to all the trouble to sit down and compose your next killer article then publish it on your blog.
Then what?
Well, for many bloggers, that’s just about it. Nothing else really matters because they’ve done exactly what they set out to do - write their article and publish it on their blog. If anyone happens upon their blog, then great! Someone’s read their article, which is better than no one at all.
For bloggers with rather more ambition than that, this simply isn’t good enough and more must be done to improve the viewer figures.
You owe it to yourself, even if you have no intention of making money from your blog, to attract as many people as possible to come and read your articles. Why? Because you went to all that trouble to write your articles and make them as interesting and informative as you possibly could. That’s reason enough to want lots of people to read them, even if it’s just to prove to the world that you’re a great writer because great writer’s should be exposed to as large and as wide an audience as possible, or it’s a talent wasted!
However, if you do intend to make money from your blog, then you really must work hard to attract that large audience. It won’t come to you of its own accord, you must tell the world you exist and give that audience a reason to come and see what you’re writing about.
There are many ways of doing this online and we are blessed with a fabulous array of promotion tools in the many social networking platforms in which to promote our blogs for absolutely free. Previous posts here have highlighted the popular sites, so I don’t need to repeat them here.
Suffice it to say that the tools are there to work with.
It’s up to the individual blogger to pick up and use those tools to the best of their ability in order to bring your audience to your blog!
Here’s to your success!
Terry Didcott
Author and Creator of Blogging Web 2.0
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Article Particles
Posted on October 9, 2007
Filed Under Blogging | Leave a Comment
Blogging is without doubt one of the finest ways of launching yourself and your online business into cyberspace. With a little work and patience a blog can spread the word about who you are and what you do very successfully.
Blogging is, in itself a form of article marketing on a condensed, yet incredibly more prolific platform than the traditional methods. There is no doubt that submitting full length articles to ezines and article directories is one of the best free methods of boosting the profile of your website or blog. But submitting short articles to your blog and then promoting it through social networking is one of the best free ways of generating traffic to that blog.
While article marketing is hugely beneficial to creating traffic and boosting the ranking of a site or blog, the blog itself is it’s own self-perpetuating source of new, fresh and very regularly updated content, which, when promoted properly is even better at drawing traffic.
Blogs are a collection of article particles (hence the title of this post) or more accurately mini articles, as well as full blown, full length articles which makes the content of a blog all the more interesting a read to an information and entertainment hungry audience.
Variety is most definitely the spice of life and well written and carefully content managed blogs certainly give the reader that.
So by all means, continue to use the services of the article directories and ezines to promote your blog, as the more promotional methods you use, the more exposure you’ll get. But don’t forget the awesome pulling power of a really great blog, whatever it’s page rank or rating. Because most genuine readers don’t care what Google thinks about your blog.
They want to read it because they like it!
Terry Didcott
Author and Creator of Blogging Web 2.0
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PLR Addendum
Posted on September 26, 2007
Filed Under PLR | 1 Comment
In an earlier article, I talked about the potential dangers to bloggers and website owners of using PLR articles to pad out the content on your site or blog. The search engines dislike PLR because it creates a lot of duplicate content on the web as a whole, so they will punish blogs and websites that publish a lot of it.
But what about using PLR off-site for promotional gain?
Again, the search engines hate duplicate content wherever it mighty be. So if you choose to use a PLR article to promote your blog or website via article marketing means, then you’ll still be causing yourself a potential cyber-headache when the search engine screws are tightened.
And they are getting tighter all the time.
Recently I had one of my ezine accounts suspended because I had inadvertently posted an un-altered PLR article to their database. I had to remove it and apologise profusely for my stupidity before they reinstated my account. So it’s not just the search engines that are getting strict about duplicity.
Bottom line here is that if you intend using PLR articles for article marketing, then make sure you alter each one (and run it past Copyscape) before you submit it. The old days of blitzing an article to a ton of article directories are numbered. That’s obvious as these directories and ezines themselves are being penalised by the search engines for publishing duplicate content. So they’ll pass on that slap on the wrist to the author to cover their backsides.
PS: Don’t think you can get away with posting a duplicate article here either! We’ll check any submissions against Copyscape ourselves before approving any article. Just so you are clear on that point!
Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0
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A Warning About PLR
Posted on September 25, 2007
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A lot of blogging enthusiasts and internet marketers like to use PLR articles in their media because it saves a lot of writing and is a quick and easy way to get relevant content published on your site or blog.
PLR might seem like a gift from heaven, especially when you get hold of some for free. There are plenty of places you can download a whole bunch of PLR articles for use on your site or blog. Just Google “free PLR” and you’ll find pages of it! While you might be happily copying and pasting tons of this content into your own space on the web, imagining how much the search engines will love you for adding all this relevant content, it can have a nasty surprise in store.
Beware. The content of PLR is NOT unique!
That might sound like stating the obvious, but how many of you have used PLR articles exactly like that without giving it a second thought? Well, you should. If you want to see how un-original your PLR content really is, try submitting it to Copyscape.
Your eyes may well pop out of your head at the dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of copies of your same article out there on different sites!
If you have a lot of PLR content on your site or blog, you might want to go back and start changing it around as much as you can, then check it against Copyscape again to make sure it shows up as original content.
Why should you?
Well, if you don’t, the search engines (Google in particular) will punish you by lowering your coveted Page Rank if it finds enough of it on your site. That in itself is reason enough to always ensure you have original content on your blog or website.
The bottom line is this: If you want the search engines (and your readers) to love your website or blog, then write your articles yourself. Sure it’s more work, but think about it.
People come to read your blog because they like your creative and entertaining writing style, not someone else’s!
Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0
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