Writing articles effectively {Section 1}

If you are going to spend your precious time writing articles to gain traffic to your web site they must appeal to both the search engines and your potential readers.Therefore this article will discuss the research you must do even before writing the article, then provide an outline on how to actually write it.

What to do before writing your article:

1. Choose a topic

Your goal is to write on a topic where you solve someone's(or your own) problem i.e.-7 reasons to use articles to market your web site -How to write an effective article -How to market your articles to boost your web trafficSometimes it's difficult to come up with a topic that youfeel inspired to write about. I usually write about someproblem I've come across while working with my web designbusiness. It could be a design problem or something relatedto it such as marketing or hosting. Then after havingsolved this problem I feel comfortable writing about it. Ialso feel good that this article will then help others thatmay have struggled with the same problem.If I still don't have a subject I feel passionate about, Iwill visit forums, read online newsletters or magazinesrelated to my field of interest. I may also talk to friendsin the same business. They often share some of the problemsthat they have encountered.

2. Keyword research

Another goal of article writing is to make your articlesearch engine friendly. This means including searchablekeywords that search engines will spider. Therefore researching appropriate keywords before weaving them intoyour article is crucial.Use the keyword suggestion tool at
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ to find whichwords or phrases are searched on most often. It willdisplay the top results for both overture and wordtracker.The numbers differ because overtures data is based on moresearches whereas wordtracker differentiates between singleand plural forms of the word or phrase.Include your researched keywords into your article beingcareful not to repeat them so often that it won't readsmoothly. You want to your article to appeal to yourreaders also.

3. Article length

Begin with just writing out yourarticle without worrying too much about the length. It'smore important to let all your ideas flow out of your mindfirst. If you think it's getting too long split it up intotwo or more articles. It's often easier to write a shortarticle of 500 words than one of 1000 words.Most article publishers prefer articles between 500 to 800words and will not accept articles any longer than that.Others prefer longer articles over 800 words so check withthe publisher before you submit your article forpublication.You can easily check how long your article is by placing itin MS Word. Then go to "tools" - "word count" to get a readout of the length.