Article Writing Strategies?

Longer than 600 words works best for me.

BUT...it has to be longer because it shares more information and it has to be interesting.

If it's longer only because it was pumped full of extra words then the value of the entire article is lost. No one will bother reading to the end.

800-1000 is best for me.

500 works but you have to know what you're doing. Most people churning out short articles don't know how to use them.

With a team writing articles, I imagine you are trying different lengths. I'm interested in getting your feedback. :-)

I was trained by many sources all saying to keep it within 500 words. I know I tend to not read a lot of truly long articles myself, but I'm certainly open to learning and will be watching this thread.

As a reader, I get bored when reading 800~1000 articles. Shorter for me are always better. But ofcourse, it depends on the article quality.

500 words at least works best for me, of course the quality itself is actually what matters.

Every time there's been a discussion here on this subject, over the last 3 years, it's impressed me (a lot) how often all the Warriors I judge and know to be truly successful, high-earning article marketers have reported that they're routinely writing 900-1,200-word articles. As I am myself, now.

I consistently get far more traffic and backlinks out of a 1,000-word article than I ever did out of two 500-word ones (even though the latter arrangement obviously provides twice as many resource-boxes).

My own "article-writing strategies" are here.

And my article-publishing strategies are here and (more or less) in this post. "That stuff", together with avoiding at all cost "spinning" and "auto-submission" software, are what's produced for me an increasingly good living and an asset-based business based on developing residual income from work already done.

Nothing helps me to rank well as much as syndication to relevant sites. And almost nobody's syndicating short articles. So, sometimes, it appears, "length matters" ...

I would suggest a 250-500 word quality article. Make it easy to read, perhaps an outline or subjects/bullet point type format. Offering "5 essential tips" is better than writing 1000 words with scattered messages.

To me its the content that counts 300 words works good if the content helps the reader find what they are looking for.

400-550 range has worked for me quite well.

I use several specific frameworks to get the job done quickly:

1. 3 Secrets of, 3 mistakes, 3 reasons why, 3 ways to etc.

This is a quick way to write articles and people enjoy them quite a bit. Especially on Ezinearticles, and I sold some on Constant-content as well.

2. Why? What? How? What if?

You can use this in a newsletter, and commercial content (e.g. on paid membership sites). It works like this.

1. You decide on a given technique, topic, you will talk about.

2. In the first section you will talk about why the technique is important. You will also talk about what happens if the reader doesn't apply it.

Eg. "You are to discover a very important strategy you can use to quickly and easily create website content. You will benefit from this technique because it increases the reader's interest in what you offer, therefore increasing the chances of making a sale.

On the other hand, if you don't use a similar framework, you may not reach all personality types with your content. This means, certain readers will be turned off and you will find it that much harder to sell your products to them."


3. In the next section you will talk about what the technique is, exactly ( you sort of define it)

Eg. "This technique is based on the 'Why, What, How, What if' questions. Most people ask one of these questions, depending on their personality types. So the technique teaches you how to incorporate it into your content."

4. Then you will describe how to use the technique (which is what I have been doing all this time )

5. Finally, you will answer the what if? question- simply put, you will give a couple of scenarios where the technique applies, and address any practical aspects.

E.g. "If you are ever stuck, and have to create a valuable email newsletter quickly, this is a perfect strategy to use. You can also apply it on a larger scale, for instance to layout each chapter of your ebook."

(Credit: I learn this from Wyatt Woodsmall and Eben Pagan)

3. How to....

This is one of the most common ways to write an article that people like to read. Simply teach them how they can do something they are interested in!

So yeah, I basically write 400-550 articles using one of those frameworks.

That's the main thing I wanted to know, if you knew somehow that it was actually damaging to your own site to use them.

And I guess you're right- I can't prove that it was UAW's backlinks that boosted my pages in the SERPs... My evidence is that since I started using it compared to when I didn't, my rankings for those pages have improved much faster. Logically I assume UAW is helping, but there is a chance it has nothing to do with it.

Only time will tell if those rankings will stay that way long-term...

When I read your post, I just wondered if you had some info on why it should be avoided at all costs, such as getting de-listed or whatever.

Thanks for the clarification.

as far as number of words, when I outsource, I keep it no less than 500 words at all costs.

When I write myself about a topic I know, I usually write 800 words in about 30 minutes.

I've always hated people spinning article at %30 uniqueness and they ususally blast 1000 article directories or so. even if it worked in 2002, it doesn't work anymore.

I have a batch of 20 article directories or so and that's it. I do some spinning but I demand 95% uniqueness to my outsourcers if I spin.

It's quite easy with TBS. I ask to spin on sentence level and tehn on a word level.

I hate people throwing an article on TBS and hit the "ALL synonyms" button. It's just poor marketing skills.

I really like what anthony lex said " think the whole notion of what is better between long or short articles is a very outdated way to compose articles. What should be of most concern is the quality of the article itself, the length of the article will naturally take care of itself after that."

When I write an article, I know it's going to be quality. When I outsource, it's not that easy. I searched for good writers and when I found one, I just keep it. I've paid $10 an article from an article writer that had a PHD. He wrote great articles, very well written and interesting.

Article marketing will always work, that's for sure but people just need to be careful with it. Just like PLR. Some PLR products are great. but a lot of them are junk.

I guess one way to know if your article is good for publishing is to have someone in your family read it. if it's junk, they'll tell you. if it's good and they think it's too short, they'll tell you.

Emmanuel

I think the only correct answer to this evergreen question is that it depends on what your purpose is. What are you hoping to accomplish with an article. For building authority and syndication, longer is clearly better. Alexa has written at length about this and many others (myself included) can back up her assertions.

But if you just want the backlink juice and are not out to impress readers, 1,000 words is overkill. Again, different purpose = different answer.

And then let's say you write an article to impress a reader and get them to click your resource box link and visit your site. You'll find a 300-word article rarely has enough meat to do the job. 500 words or more is usually called for here. Again, different purpose = different answer.

Figure out WHY you're writing and submitting articles. Get it clear in your own mind what you hope to accomplish by writing and submitting a given article. Let that guide you.

John

400 word articles works best for me. The shorter the article with good quality content will drive more traffic to your resource box. Skip writing conclusion, this drives more traffic to your site. About rankings, here are my 3 posts that will give you details on how I do seo...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post4505465

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post4521785

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post4522099

I am also an article writer before and my employer used to ask me to write 300-500 words per article. Thou I was enjoying my job but sometimes writing too long articles makes me bored especially when I have less ideas about the article that I wrote. Even if the article is informative, if it's too long the harder for the reader to retain in their mind the total info. Writing long article is good for it will be informative to the readers. But a concise and short article can be more useful for the reader to absorb the information quickly.
But it really depends on the content of the article that I am writing, at times, when I am in the mood to write long articles, I can manage to provide 800 - 1500 word article. In addition, I also will consider the attention span of the reader.

It depends on the website actually. When I personally write then I never care about the length. I concentrate on the quality of the content and how well it relates to my website readers. But I have been recently employing a lot of article writers for my new network of websites. I tell them to make it 400-500 words for those websites. That is also working well but the bounce rate is a bit higher and so maybe not as engaging as my own writing. It actually depends on the website. For SERP, anything above 300 works out fine but then whether the visitors would return back or not depends on how engaging the article contents are.

Thank you for the different inputs guys....

Shorter articles like 500 words or less with of course good quality works best for me.
Content should be direct to the point.

Mid-range seems to work best for me. The short 200 word articles don't seem to be all that effective unless you're just doing a quick update for your community and the lengthier epic posts (2,000 words) often overwhelms people so they never take action - open up the dialog to people and then let them fill in the rest or point over to resources (like affiliate products).

I usually write around 400-500 words for my articles. I spin the articles and submit it to different article directories. For me, it's quite ok, I don't know if you have to write around 800-1000 words per article because sometimes I don't have idea how to write, that's why I stick to 400-500 words.

700 - 800 is a good sweet spot.

But realistically its all about the subject, how popular it is, and how good your article is.

Always think, 'curiosity killed the cat' when you are writing you article. Meaning always use curiosity to draw them in and get them to click the link.

It would be good to stick to the 500 to 600 average per article. I see better quality when I give writers advance topics to write about. That gives them enough time to plot their articles so that it can be written well.

If the article is interesting. I don't think lenge is important.
But for SEO, Longer is good.

For me 300 to 500 words article results best...

but it must be 100% unique and without any language mistake !

400 to 500 words works nicely for me, getting to the point in the first paragraph and not keeping all the best bits for last will get your readers reading to the end. I also agree with 2011, 100% unique, relevant and good spelling and grammar.

No offense intended, but if people are getting bored after reading 300-400 words, you need to improve either your subject selection or your writing...

This sort of confuses me...Do you mean writing content for you own sites or just writing text articles?

"Content" isn't limited to just text. For me, when writing content for my own sites I try to add more than just plain text and add multimedia things like images, graphs and embedded videos.

For example, if you are writing a page of content for your site about The Rolling Stones, you can embed a number of YouTube videos about the Stones on the page, then some history and commentary.

Same thing for something like "dog training"...You can often find good, relevant videos on YouTube and embed them along with your own tips.

This technique works even better with "how to" type content, mixing text and video is a great way to create superb website content. Collating text and the best videos on the subject is something I've started to do...I don't simply transcribe the video, but rather comment on them and add some additional ideas, suggestions, etc.

It's really amazing the stuff you'll find on Youtube that you have permission to use on your pages. However, this isn't the kind of content that lends itself to submitting to article directories.