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Don't Write 500 Word Articles

by Raindance
24 replies
I was looking for a few articles to put on my new site. I haven't created content for it, and still have the opt-in report almost ready. So I was thinking I'll direct traffic from different methods to garner email addresses, and till then I'll use articles written by others. I was so disappointed when I actually started searching on ezinearticles. So far I haven't been able to find even a single 1000 word article in my niche; not even one. I even tried looking up the works of the so called "Diamond Authors", but those people aren't any different either. I wonder why would EZA given them that title when their writing isn't any better from the rest of the bunch.

I'd have made a compromise, and gone for a smaller article, but none of those articles had any energy in them. They were just bland essays. Yeah, that's what they were. Those articles were looking more like a school essay than something you'd find on a website. Nevertheless, if I could find a detailed article, I would have make do with the quality, but I'm just not able to find someone who would write over 1000 words for his own site.

A lesson for all of you in this is that if you write articles of skimpy length, you will have difficulties in those articles getting syndicated on other sites. If those people had written longer and more charming articles, not just would they have received a backlink (as I'd keep their resource box intact), but also very targeted traffic from my website.

Of course, my idea of using others' articles is just temporary and I will be using it till the time my own articles are ready.

Ali
#500 #articles #word #write
  • Profile picture of the author asiancasanova
    ezinearticles is a bad source for the best content.

    Go to digg.com to find content that people actually like.

    Or delicious.com
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    • Profile picture of the author Raindance
      Originally Posted by asiancasanova View Post

      ezinearticles is a bad source for the best content.

      Go to digg.com to find content that people actually like.

      Or delicious.com
      I tried digg. That place is crazy. Unfortunately, I was not able to find articles suitable for my niche.

      Originally Posted by joseph7384 View Post

      I'm confused by your statement, you mean to tell me that you would not leave the resource box intact if it did not meet your standards. It is bogus to not credit the auther for any reason at all.



      This would be copywrite infringement.
      I never mentioned leaving out their resource box. I was just saying, if I had chosen an article then I'd have, most definitely, not altered their resource box in anyway, and put it at the end of the article; just the way they like it. Also, I am not going to delete their articles from my site when I start posting my own content. They'll be there. I'll just stop looking for content written by others. That's it.

      Originally Posted by JaRyCu View Post

      Don't ever put an article from EZA no your site and use it as your main content. That won't do anything at all for you as far as rankings go.
      Thankfully, I did not learn it the hard way.

      And congratulations on your success. You said it right that research is crucial.

      Originally Posted by Joe Robinson View Post

      As you're seeing though, and a ton of comments on this forum back it up, most people on here aren't writing articles for syndication. They just want what they think is an excellent backlink from EZA itself.
      But I wasn't expecting this from every author over there. At least not from the "diamonds."
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  • Profile picture of the author TheArticlePros
    Don't ever put an article from EZA on your site and use it as your main content. That won't do anything at all for you as far as rankings go.

    I write content for myself and for tons of clients all night 7 nights a week, and I can tell you that writing a 1000 word article is not as hard as it seems.

    I built a site for myself on furry pets last week. I won't tell you which one, but it shocked me when I did the niche research on it. I wrote 1x1000 word article on it after researching it for about 30 minutes and posted. My site is currently #5 in Google for the keyword I chose, and that's up from #9 yesterday.

    The research is the crucial part. You need to start by identifying your angle. Is this a pro article and a con article? Is it a review, a story, or just the facts? It is a consumer warning or are you being a consumer advocate?

    Then outline your bullet points. I try to go for 5 bullets, plus an opening and closer paragraph. That's 7 paragraphs, so now I just need ~150 words per paragraph. 150 words = 5-6 sentences. That's easy to come up with. So in my niche, I talked about lifespan, grooming, care-taking, and a few other points.

    All-in-all, I spent maybe 75 minutes writing the article from beginning to end. The investment was well worth it, and I found enough information so I can pop out 3-4 more articles for the site on keyword variations to make it more profitable.

    I agree with you...don't write 500 word fluff. Write 1000 word articles. You'll do better every single time.

    -- j
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    • Profile picture of the author dennis09
      Originally Posted by JaRyCu View Post

      The research is the crucial part. You need to start by identifying your angle. Is this a pro article and a con article? Is it a review, a story, or just the facts? It is a consumer warning or are you being a consumer advocate?

      Then outline your bullet points. I try to go for 5 bullets, plus an opening and closer paragraph. That's 7 paragraphs, so now I just need ~150 words per paragraph. 150 words = 5-6 sentences. That's easy to come up with. So in my niche, I talked about lifespan, grooming, care-taking, and a few other points.

      All-in-all, I spent maybe 75 minutes writing the article from beginning to end. The investment was well worth it, and I found enough information so I can pop out 3-4 more articles for the site on keyword variations to make it more profitable.

      I agree with you...don't write 500 word fluff. Write 1000 word articles. You'll do better every single time.

      -- j
      HA! That's my exact article writing flow
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    • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
      Originally Posted by JaRyCu View Post

      Don't ever put an article from EZA on your site and use it as your main content. That won't do anything at all for you as far as rankings go.

      I write content for myself and for tons of clients all night 7 nights a week, and I can tell you that writing a 1000 word article is not as hard as it seems.

      I built a site for myself on furry pets last week. I won't tell you which one, but it shocked me when I did the niche research on it. I wrote 1x1000 word article on it after researching it for about 30 minutes and posted. My site is currently #5 in Google for the keyword I chose, and that's up from #9 yesterday.

      The research is the crucial part. You need to start by identifying your angle. Is this a pro article and a con article? Is it a review, a story, or just the facts? It is a consumer warning or are you being a consumer advocate?

      Then outline your bullet points. I try to go for 5 bullets, plus an opening and closer paragraph. That's 7 paragraphs, so now I just need ~150 words per paragraph. 150 words = 5-6 sentences. That's easy to come up with. So in my niche, I talked about lifespan, grooming, care-taking, and a few other points.

      All-in-all, I spent maybe 75 minutes writing the article from beginning to end. The investment was well worth it, and I found enough information so I can pop out 3-4 more articles for the site on keyword variations to make it more profitable.

      I agree with you...don't write 500 word fluff. Write 1000 word articles. You'll do better every single time.

      -- j
      I have an article directory of duplicated content off EZA and I outrank EZA on over 1,000 of the articles.

      Also... I'd like to mention, don't spend your time writing articles and looking at the word count, THAT is USELESS. 300 word pages have outranked those with 1,500... 800 could be better than 1,200... it just DEPENDS. I personally write for my visitors and not the search engines, and I get rewarded for it. I don't count words because it doesn't matter.. If I can make a point in 300 words or less, I will.

      I hate websites that say the same things over and over again or just use a thesaraus because they don't want to sound like a broken record. I'd much rather have content people enjoy reading, that makes a direct point instead of dragging something out.
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      • Profile picture of the author moneymaker1154
        I write often on Ezines and am at the Platinum level. I believe Ezines has a minimum of 500 words for an article so likely people will hit the 500 word point and end it. They are looking for backlinks by using Ezines as a means rather than giving much thought to other people that want to incorporate the articles into their sites. To be honest with you, I write pretty good articles and usually go to about 600+ words. I find myself stopping once I notice how many words I'm at but I agree writing 1000 words isn't tough. I had no idea that people who wanted to use the article content for their own sites would want 1000 or more word articles. Thanks for the info.
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        • Profile picture of the author mountainmover53
          Good point you've driven here. You would need more than 500 word article to be able to communicate a good article and if you could add more like 1000 would be more effective. To some around 300 as long as it's well written may drive the point.
          Thanks for the inputs guys. Learning a lot.
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      • Profile picture of the author deejones
        Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

        If I can make a point in 300 words or less, I will.
        You can definitely make a point in 300 or 400 words. But those types of articles don't tend to be all that engaging. People read them and then move on.

        With articles that are 1,000 words or more, you really have time to "spin a yarn" that hooks your readers and pulls them along to the end.

        I think long, engaging articles are a great way to build a following. If I read a long article that really engages me, I'll hunt down more articles by the same person. And if they have a blog, I often become a regular visitor.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joseph Robinson
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    As you're seeing though, and a ton of comments on this forum back it up, most people on here aren't writing articles for syndication. They just want what they think is an excellent backlink from EZA itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joseph Robinson
    Banned
    Joseph,

    I think what he is saying that he would not publish the article at all, and that they have now missed out on a legitimate publisher who plays by the rules using their work.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Raindance View Post

    I even tried looking up the works of the so called "Diamond Authors", but those people aren't any different either. I wonder why would EZA given them that title when their writing isn't any better from the rest of the bunch.
    No, I agree.

    Here's a paradox, though: people think, when they want to learn about "article marketing", that it makes sense to get advice from the people with tens of thousands of articles in Ezine Articles. (You can kind of see why people might think that?) Of course, what they don't appreciate is that those are people with a quantitative approach to "article marketing", or - to put it another way - they're not actually doing what you and I would call "article marketing" at all: they're article directory marketers, and you're not going to learn much of any value that way. The people with the largest numbers of articles are the ones who've been trying to use Ezine Article for its own backlinks and/or its own traffic. :rolleyes:

    (Sorry, I digress slightly, but it's a related point - and those are also people with 500-word articles. ).

    Originally Posted by Raindance View Post

    A lesson for all of you in this is that if you write articles of skimpy length, you will have difficulties in those articles getting syndicated on other sites.
    This ^^^ exactly.

    Sometimes length does matter.
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  • Profile picture of the author T086
    don't write with the first letter of every word capitalized you fool
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  • Profile picture of the author laurencewins
    I write what my clients ask for. Many want 500 words and so that's what I do (roughly) but some do ask for 1000 words and I occasionally get asked for variations or ebooks. I write what I am paid to write and I don't get complaints.
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  • Profile picture of the author JOSourcing
    Banned
    If you're looking for longer, higher quality content from others, you can always buy it. Otherwise, you're simply stuck with what's in front of you.
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    • Profile picture of the author bvbiz
      Originally Posted by JOSourcing View Post

      If you're looking for longer, higher quality content from others, you can always buy it. Otherwise, you're simply stuck with what's in front of you.
      Yes, there are cheap places to get unique articles for only a few bucks. Brad Callen has a site, I can't remember the name, but it is top notch. Google him.
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      • Profile picture of the author VanessaB
        Brad's site is iwriter.com
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  • Profile picture of the author bacardi
    I don't think the size counts so much as iAmNameLess mentioned. Some things don't require 1000 words, some things would be ideally pointed out in 250 words, and some things would be perfect with 2500 words or more.

    Think it comes down to the quality most. After all that is what people are going to be linking to I suppose if they enjoy it and it is helpful.
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  • Profile picture of the author rprost
    EZA actually recommend that articles be 400-700 words in length as this is best for syndication, at least that's what they say. I assume they have statistics to back it up.
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    • Profile picture of the author VanessaB
      OP,
      I rarely write articles UNDER 1,0000 words. BUT...

      I write from 'authority', ie, subjects I do have a very, very strong command of
      If I do not have that 'authority,' I outsource, and I accept guest blog posts, I syndicate and curate, or I curate PLR.

      --> Guest blog posting... When I write a guest post for another blog, still with usually no less than a 1,000 word count (and most of them approach the 2,000 word limit), I only give that kind of content to sites that already have traffic. And I do not settle for 'resource box links.'

      When I invest that kind of time into my articles, and any site other than my own is going to benefit from the 'authority' behind that content, I'm going to command that links that will get the clicks, (not the SEO, but the clicks)

      If my own site did not have a substantial amount of traffic, I would not expect anyone to write that kind of content for my site either.

      So if you want top quality authority content for your site you should:

      1. Outsource it to a writer who has authority in that market
      2. Get your traffic stats up with paid traffic, and invite guest posters
      3. Learn to curate- combine the articles you syndicate with PLR and some of your own writing...

      Good luck.

      -Dani
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  • Profile picture of the author Raindance
    I'm also sure most people who must have read this thread might have thought, "this guy's such a fool; why would he want to get penalized by Google for using duplicate content?"

    I also believe those are the same people who create those 500 word essays they call articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheEnlightenedBeing1
    In article writing, it's not the quantity or even the amount of words in the article, it's the quality that matters most!
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    • Profile picture of the author asiancasanova
      Originally Posted by TheEnlightenedBeing1 View Post

      In article writing, it's not the quantity or even the amount of words in the article, it's the quality that matters most!
      Hey, this guy gets it!
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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        Originally Posted by asiancasanova View Post

        Hey, this guy gets it!
        Agreed ... but hey, he's entitled to, as an enlightened being, you know?
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