Since May of this year I’ve been doing more article writing since it’s part of the weekly blogging services I provide. Then when I recently started my micro niche websites, article writing became an even more important part of my backlink building. This is when much work is done to try to rank all my niche sites in Google’s Top Search Engine.
Well today as I was thinking about what to write for my next blog post, I figured it would be a good idea to critique my own past article writing and share with anyone interested on what are some of the changes I am making to achieve my current objectives. On the same breath I will also share some changes that I’ve recently implemented too.
Why is The Article Title or Headliner so very important
Besides the author’s bio provided at the resource box, the article title or headliner is the most important text in your article. Now just to put things into perspective here if I may compare an analogy with what experts giving Tips on Public Speaking say “…. the first 10 words are more important than the next 10 minutes…” Similarly people giving article writing tips say “…the first 10 words (the title) are more important than the next 300 words (the body)…”
I strongly believe this to be very true and I can just show you one particular article I wrote in Ezinearticles dated May 8, 2009 and the same article re-written on June 12, 2009:
the one on May 8, 2009:
the one on Jun 12, 2009:
Clearly you can see that the first title looks much better, more inviting and asks a question which is one of the recommended article writing tips. Because there is such a big gap of readers’ views it does make perfect sense to spend that extra effort to write a more enticing article headliner don’t you think? Also if you noticed the first one, 112 readers clicked the author bio’s link compared to just 6 for the second. Well what can I say but first impressions last!
Write Short Articles
Ever since May 2009, I have changed my article writing style to write short articles and have the contents list the numbered points or tips I’m presenting e.g. “Discover 5 Article Tips To Make Your Writing Quick and Easy”. This is perhaps the simplest form of writing an article, at least how I’m finding it. I prefer to write short articles because:
- it’s easy to write and it’s easy for the reader to understand just what you are writing
- it takes a shorter time to write – Ezinearticle accepts 250 words minimum articles so it suits me fine.
- if I write too long I could use the extra points to write another new article with similar topic thereby maintaining the 250 minimum I like to keep at. I get to publish 2 instead of 1 article in this way.
What’s your Objective in Article Writing?
Different writers have different purpose or objective whenever they write articles and publish them at article directories. That determines the kind of topic you can write about. This is especially true if you have lots of websites with diverse niches in your business. For example for my micro niche adsense websites which I focus entirely on products, I never write articles on products as that would be too boring. Instead I write about things that interest me like Internet Home Business which is a lot easier with many broad categories that I can focus on. Fortunately the article directories I submit to do not care much if the content is totally different from the resource box in terms of niches and topics.
My main objective of my article writing today is solely for backlink building for my niche sites and not for any traffic generation strategy. The traffic comes when the keywords I’m ranking for them achieved Google’s Page 1. So far together with Angela’s Backlink Building Program, it has yielded me the results I want.
A new way of getting contents to write your articles
If like me, you have been writing for a while there is one quick and easy way to get contents to write – yes re-write them 
just like the example I showed you above. Sometimes when I read some of my earlier articles, I couldn’t believed I had written them so poorly. But it’s understandable, we like to think that over time, we learned how to write better, more enticing articles.
A new way of getting new free backlinks from your old articles
I am quite sure for most of us, we have purchased many different domains over a period of time; created many websites and some of them may be inactive. You probably like to terminate them at the next domain renewal. Well if you have written and published articles with links on your resource box pointing to such domains, you are about to get free backlinks. Just go to the particular article directory and edit the links to point to your other websites. I have just got some of them this way over the last one week. I won’t be surprised if some of you didn’t realize that, being caught up in the frenzy of ‘too much to do in so little time’ syndrome.
Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site
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October 25, 2009 at 10:27 am
Great tips. I never thought about the fact that I could redirect my old backlinks to the sites that I want to rank for now.
October 25, 2009 at 10:42 am
@ marcus@make money online: Yep, it can be that simple and it takes less time for EZA to approve the modification than it takes to approve a fresh one too. Thanks for the visit.
October 25, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Thanks for this Peter. I have lots of old articles on Ezinearticles which I am going to check for expired links.
Mal Keenan
October 25, 2009 at 6:16 pm
@ Mal Keenan: No problem I'm quite sure you have many old articles in EZA and why waste the backlinks?
October 25, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Sir, this is really very nice article. First I want to say that for writing article for Ezine its time consuming for us. But for getting free backlink Ezine article submission is really very great. If we follow your tips on writing article we can really write article for Ezine also.
October 25, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Sir I have not listen from you since a long time. You know Sir my traffic is going increase. I almost getting now 350 daily visitor. I am now so busy for building backlink for my blog and it is really very interesting for me.
October 26, 2009 at 1:56 am
For some reason I am under the impression that your articles should be at least 300 words or Google might not pick them up because they are too short. Do you have any knowledge of that? If 250 words are acceptable, I am going to be very happy!
October 26, 2009 at 8:35 am
@ work at home: The key is to write your articles quick. I take about 20 min to write a new one and 10 min for a rewrite.
October 26, 2009 at 8:37 am
@ work at home: I'm happy to hear that Chandan. Congratulations. Backlink building is very important but try to focus on quality links.
October 26, 2009 at 8:39 am
@ petraweiss: I know that Ezinearticles and GoArticles accept 250 words as I do submit to them all the time. It's not true about Google not picking them up for short posts. If it were true EZA won't have a minimum no of words at 250.
October 26, 2009 at 10:36 am
Hey Peter,
The idea of re-writing articles to create new articles hits home for me. I have a ton of PLR articles that I've been wanting to rewrite for some time but just haven't gotten around to it. That's a great way to create new, fresh articles and something I'm going to start doing soon. I haven't done any article writing for some time now, other than blog posts.
October 26, 2009 at 11:21 am
@ Alan Mater: Yes I forgot to mention PLR is another great source to use. Thanks for mentioning. To me rewriting your own past articles is better because if you write for traffic generation, you can select the articles with the most views to rewrite. That way the new ones will also do as well with your readers. It's almost a sure way of getting more views.
October 26, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Ahh yes, that's an excellent idea. I'll have to try that out for sure.
October 27, 2009 at 1:28 am
The idea of rewriting articles is a great way to generate fresh contents. I never ran out of topics to write because I read blogs overtime and get subscriptions from them. If I like a particular article, I study it and make another article out from it. With this new knowledge and ideas are coming every now and then. This is an amazing post.
October 27, 2009 at 6:30 am
Some excellent tips there, thankyou for sharing them.
I think the best one for me is the article writing '5 things you didn't know about…' etc
I hate writing articles as it doesn't come naturally, but you can easily bang 250 words out spread between 5 sub headings
October 27, 2009 at 9:23 am
@ Jewelry Making Supplies: Well we are always looking for new ways to get fresh content so this is probably the easiest one to use.
October 27, 2009 at 9:25 am
@ Memory-Box: You're welcome and glad you like this post. Yes if you write in point form it is a lot easier to write your article.
October 27, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Hi Peter,
“Well if you have written and published articles with links on your resource box pointing to such domains”
You can also use the ninja plugin to create ninja links before writing articles and then use them when you publish them in the article directories, this way you only need to go to your dashboard and re-direct all those links to any other site that you like.
Its faster than going to every article directory to change those links.
Luis
October 28, 2009 at 7:29 am
Having fresh content is very vital on every blog, but there are some times that we ran out of topics to write, so reading other blogs and subscribing to their feeds helps us to generate fresh contents out from their articles.
Just a few twists and new articles will emerge.
October 28, 2009 at 10:47 am
@ Marketing Business Review: Sounds like a good way Luis, but I guess it may not work if people used a variation of their posts when they submit to different article directories. Is that right as I'm not familiar with ninja plugin.
October 29, 2009 at 4:04 am
Thanks for as usual for providing a worthy stuff for blogger. Some points are very important like about Article heading.
October 29, 2009 at 4:08 am
I think you have said right sir, content be a main and important port of any site or blog. If you content would be worthy and impressive so that will prove beneficial for every site.
October 29, 2009 at 10:58 am
Interesting post. It really gives me a complete heads up! Thanks for sharing! Rochester Wedding Planning
October 29, 2009 at 6:11 pm
@ Trace23: Thanks. Glad you liked it.
October 29, 2009 at 6:12 pm
@ Lax transportation: You're quite welcome!
October 30, 2009 at 3:40 am
Sir I am glad to inform you that my blog PR increase from 1 to 3. I am so happy sir.
October 30, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Hi Peter,
There is no problem when they change the articles, the ninja plugin can create links like lets say http://www.yourdomain.com/your product and this link will redirect to what ever you like, so you only need to use this link anywhere in the net, and whenever you want to change the redirection you can do it from your control panel in your WP blog and automatically all your links containing the link above will redirect to the new site you chose.
This way you never waste any effort in spreading your links, if you choose to quit with certain affiliate program you can look for another similar affiliate program and still use all the old links already spreaded in the net.
Btw, Peter, I have not buought yet the micro niche product because they did not paid me on Oct 15, it suppose to be today or at the later on Monday.
You will soon get your pay day, lol.
Luis
October 30, 2009 at 6:55 pm
@ Marketing Business Review: Thanks for your explanation. Thanks in advance for the MNF that you plan to buy soon. You'll love it too.
October 31, 2009 at 8:14 am
Hi sir my blog PR increase from1 to 3 yesterday with the google PR updates. Whats about your site?
November 1, 2009 at 1:16 am
Hi,
I read this article have a great idea on this post.Kindly give me best guidance as I have my interview for SEO and Article Writing tomorrow.?
November 2, 2009 at 6:51 am
I am thinking about using an article writing service to help advertise my businesses. I am going to submit them to article publishing companies online. I am not a very good writer so it won't do me a lot of good to try to write them myself.
November 2, 2009 at 9:47 am
@home buying tips: Yes outsourcing is good as it frees a lot of your precious time to do other important work.
November 4, 2009 at 6:29 am
Which article writing software is worth the money to spend for submissions to article directories online?
November 19, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Nice tips for writing the finished one articles without making any stupid mistakes… these will be helpful in making best articles with less mistakes and will surely drive many's attention..!!
December 3, 2009 at 8:41 am
They are useful if you want bulk content, but only quality content written by humans will keep consumers coming back to your sites. Plus, the search engines are getting smart and can detect good content verses bad content.
December 3, 2009 at 2:41 pm
They are useful if you want bulk content, but only quality content written by humans will keep consumers coming back to your sites. Plus, the search engines are getting smart and can detect good content verses bad content.