Last updated on June 6th, 2020 at 06:00 am
As a new blogger, you’ll be writing articles on a regular basis. That’s why I wanted to share 7 characteristics of a good article to help ensure that you’re making the most of your efforts.
What Makes A Great Article?
As soon as you decide to become a content create (blogger) you’ll need to learn how to write an article for both the search engines and people.
It’s totally different than what you were taught in school. Yes, grammar will still play a huge part in your posts, that’s why I always recommend Grammarly to help you with proofreading.
If you weren’t good at writing in school, it’s okay. You don’t have to be a great writer, you just need to learn how to be consistent and write content that will actually help you grow your blog.
But first, let’s take a look at what writing content for your blog means.
What Is Good Content?
Before we get into writing great articles, let’s take a look at the definition of good content. It is nothing more than providing valuable, helpful content that inspires people to take action.
Your content should be relevant and consistent to attract a defined audience. Over time your audience will learn to trust you and get to know you because of the personal stories you share in your writing.
It can stressful when you sit down to think about the type of content that people want to read. Don’t stress too much, you don’t have to be a great writer to start and succeed with a blog.
In fact, you can keep it simple and just follow these tips to write articles that will attract your people as your blog grows.
7 Characteristics of A Good Article for New Bloggers
Everyone blogger is different on how they write their blog posts. Some people have a layout that helps them write faster. While others like me just grab a cup of coffee and write first thing in the morning.
I’m going to share some of the techniques that I’ve used to write over 300 articles on this blog. Hopefully, these tips will show you how easy it can be to write amazing articles that both people and Google love.
Focused Around a Keyword or Topic
One of the most important things that every blogger will tell you is that your article needs to be focused around a keyword or topic. It took me a while to realize how important it was to find the right keywords for my articles.
If you’re NOT taking the time to find low competitive keywords, there’s a good chance you’re wasting a lot of time.
Let me tell you a little story: When I first started this blog, I wrote a lot about WordPress because that’s what I knew. At the time, I was working from home as a WordPress freelancer.
So I thought that if I shared WordPress tips and tutorials, I would be able to create residual income from sharing products that I recommend.
Well, I wrote over 100 blog posts and two years later, none of those articles are ranking on Google.
Why?
Well because my blog is only 2 years old and at the time of this writing only has a DA (domain authority) score of 32. All the blogs that are ranking for those keywords are over 5 years old and have a DA score of 49 or higher.
My blog is still considered a baby according to all those blogs. There’s no way that I’ll ever be able to get traffic for those articles I wrote.
Now that I’ve been using this keyword tool, I’ve finally been able to write some good articles that Google loves and has increased my traffic and actually make me money.
Are you paying attention to the keywords and topics your blog posts are written around?
Use Images to Increase Visual Appeal
Images can be the difference between people wanting to read your blog posts or bouncing away quickly. As bloggers, we’re told that Google loves long-form content.
This means that a lot of us are writing content that is between 1800 – 3000 words long. If someone lands on your blog posts and it has nothing but content, there’s a good chance that they’ll move on.
Images help break up your content and make it easier to read. No one wants to land on a blog post that doesn’t have eye-catching images.
There are tons of places to get free images for your blog posts. If you do use free images, make sure that you’re not violating any copyright laws.
I personally use Deposit Photos for my blog. I’ve managed to get the $49 for 100 images from AppSumo that comes around once or twice a year.
Make It Relevant and Helpful to Your Audience
If you want to create a loyal following and eventually earn money with your blog, it’s important to keep your content relevant. As your blog grows, you’ll start attracting people who love what you’re about.
They choose to follow you or read your blog because they love your content.
Let’s say that you have a blog in the Health Niche. You’ve published over 20 articles that are relevant to the health niche.
One day you decide to write a blog post on what your dog ate for dinner. This would confuse your audience and Google because they expect to see articles that are based around the health niche.
Some people may even stop following you because they are NOT interested in reading stories about your dog.
I know that there are lifestyle blogs that make great money online and have built up a huge following. However, those blogs started as a lifestyle blog and didn’t start writing in just one niche.
Keep your blog on the topic and avoid confusing your audience and Google.
Use Bullets and Heading
Just like images, bullets and headings will help break up your content and make it readable. Imagine if I didn’t use any headings to break up the content on this post?
Chances are you wouldn’t even take the time to see what it was about. Whenever I run into a blog online that doesn’t use headings and bullets to help break up the text, I NEVER take the time to read it.
If you want people to actually take the time to read your blog, you need to take the time to make it readable.
You can check out the bullets I’ve added at the bottom of the blog post.
Don’t Be Scared to Provide Helpful Information
People come to your blog to help them solve a problem or do something they are struggling to do. Your job as a blogger is to share content that will help your people do something.
You don’t have to cure world hunger or be an amazing teacher to create a successful blog. However, you do want to write content that helps your audience.
Your blog content is NOT about you. Yes, it’s okay to share personal stories and experiences with your audience as long as you tie it in with something that is going to help your audience.
I know that some people think if they share too much, they will never be able to make money from their blog. It’s easy to think this because at one point I used to think like that as well.
However, there are hugely successful bloggers like Pat Flynn who makes over six figures by sharing everything with his audience.
Once people realize that you’re actually there to help them, they will start to trust you. If people trust you enough, they will eventually buy the products and services that you recommend.
This is called affiliate marketing and it’s one of the best ways to make money online as a new blogger. If you’re completely new to affiliate marketing, I highly recommend this free online training course that will help you understand what it takes to make money with a blog.
Keep it Personal and Share Your Experiences
One of the most important things about writing good content is to keep your content memorable and conversational.
There are millions of blogs online and more than one bloggers that blog in the same niche as you do. This means that you need to find ways to stand out from the crows.
One of the best ways to do this is to share a little bit of yourself in your blog posts. A blogger that does a great job about this is Alex and Laren from Create and Go.
If you spend some time reading their articles, you will notice how they share snippets of personal stories of themselves before they start writing their actual blog post.
You’ll notice that their story always relates to the topic that they are writing about.
It took me a long time to do this with my blog posts because I’m an introvert and don’t really like sharing things about myself.
However, since I’ve started sharing my personal stories and experiences, I’ve noticed that people stay on my blog longer and it’s also helped me grow my email list.
If you’re not sharing snippets of yourself and letting your audience get to know you, it’s time to start. You don’t have to do it on every blog post, but you should try to start letting your people in.
People want to know about the blogger behind their favorite blog. They tend to buy from people they like and trust.
So make sure that you’ve set up a gravatar and stop trying to hide behind your screen. The cool thing is you can share as little or as much as you want.
Write Short Paragraphs
We all have short attention spans and if your blog looks like huge blocks of content, you’re going to lose your readers attention quickly.
No one wants to go to a blog where there are huge paragraphs of content. It’s easier on the eyes if the paragraphs are broken up into small chunks.
I never add more than 3 sentences in one paragraph. Most of the articles on my blog are between 1800 – 2000 words long, so it’s important to make sure that I don’t write huge long paragraphs.
When someone comes to my blog, I want to make it easy to read and one of the best ways to do this is to create small readable paragraphs.
Final Take Away
So many new bloggers are led to believe that they only have to write 10 – 20 articles and they will make a lot of money. The truth is that you’re going to have to continually update your blog on a regular basis.
Hopefully, this post helped you realize that it’s not hard to write blog posts. Don’t overthink the content creation process and just sit down and start writing.
One of the main reasons that blogs fail, is because people quit in the first 6 months. As a blogger, you’re going to have to enjoy the process of writing new blog posts.
Don’t worry if you’re not a great writer at the beginning. Everyone who started their blog sucked at the beginning, especially me.
As you continue writing new posts, your blog posts will improve and eventually, it won’t take you long to write one post. At least this has been my experience from writing over 300 articles on this blog.
Hand Picked Articles for You
- How to Find Low Competition Keywords You Can Rank Quickly
- When Is The Right Time to Start A Second Blog
- Blogging for Beginners What You Need to Know
Do you struggle with creating great content? If so, what do you do to improve your writing skills and keep writing articles for your blog?
