Plan ahead what article types to write on your website

You probably heard the expression content is king and wondered how come ? If content is king then why do we need SEO ? This is a matter that I wish to address quickly in the beginning. SEO will tell you what keyword phrases to target, how to use them and where to use them on your pages. Writing content that is not SEO friendly will diminish the impact that a well written article may have. Content is The King indeed but you need a strong foundation and good planning to support the king.
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Do you know the importance of articles ?

The articles you write are the content of your website or blog. Therefore the articles are the king. Depending on the quality of the information presented in the articles, on the consistency of the message and the quality of the writing you can benefit or not from your work. You don’t need to write incredible articles to rank well.

The analytic software that you use on your website will tell if people find your articles useful or not by using something called bounce rate. If the bounce rate is higher then 35% then you have to be careful on the information you publish. The thing you need to watch is the bounce rate for traffic that is coming from organic searches. If you have a low bounce rate on that kind of traffic then it’s ok, even if in general you have a high bounce rate.

Here is what can determine a high bounce rate despite the fact that on organic searches you have low values. For example you can market your article on social networks; people click on the link but once they see what the article is all about they bounce because they’re not interested. That is why I always post the name of the article and an intro also, if possible. It’s a small thing but you have to be careful with. Don’t chase traffic for the sake of it : try to get relevant quality traffic that would really help your business.

Why do you need a plan

You need to look to your website as a whole. Do not let your mind be stopped by every minor obstacle. It is very important to develop a vision of your entire website in order to stay consistent on the information you publish in your articles. As in any type of design, consistency is essential : and creating content for a website or blog is a form of design because in the end it provides an image of that website.

Developing a strategy on how to write, what to write about and how often to publish is the beginning of a process which will lead to a successful business (or not). These decisions you’ll have to make, should be based on your knowledge of your niche market. The better you know your customers the better you’ll know what strategy works best for them.

Creating a plan will also help you to express a vision of something. Writing to many articles on a subject, or writing to many articles in the same way or the same type of articles may not get you the benefits you would expect. You need to find a balance between all those article types you’ll write for your business : and creating a strategic plan is the best way to do it.

You will always have to be ready to insert some unexpected content into your website or to make small adjustments on the direction you are heading. This is something that could happen along the way. You may notice at some point that you receive good traffic from a certain type of articles and you decide to concentrate a little bit more on that. Your original plan should allow this kind of decisions.

That is why I recommend not to overload the plan. Keep it loose but be specific. We don’t want it to be much to general. Plan different themes and what types of articles to write in order to touch the specific theme. On the long run I would not recommend you to try and pin point the exact thing you’ll write about just because things usually evolve in a different direction that we initially plan.

How to develop a list of article types to write

I think that this is something very important that you have to be aware of. The reason is because different article types can very easy help you get a different perspective on some of the subjects you wish to touch in your articles. For example you will write totally different articles if the title would begin with “How to …” as opposed to “10 things you need to know about … “. Both articles could be talking about the same thing but the way the subject will be presented can be so different.

Here are some simple article types that are general true : customer success stories, product or services tips and advices, future services or promotions that you are planning, news, how to articles, what to look for in a product articles, what to watch for articles, related interests, 10 thing type of articles. Of course that these article types are not the only ones you can write on your blog. These are just to get you started because every market has its own particular subjects and themes that you can write on.

Additional inspiring ideas

Finding ideas on what to write about should be your main concern when it comes to how to develop your website. A simple tip is to pay attention to comments on your blog or to the e-mails you receive. Usually people have different requests or different questions that might serve as a source for some upcoming articles. You can also be a part of different communities on forums or on some chat rooms. This way you’ll see what people would like to know on a specific subject and you can come to meet them half way.

Always keep looking

This is something that you have to be constantly aware of : always keep looking for more interesting subjects to write about. Here is why you have to keep your plan flexible.

Now that you’ve heard mine ideas and thoughts on this subject I would like you to share yours. Maybe your vision is better and I could learn something from it. Or maybe you just don’t agree with something I wrote. Use the comments bellow and lets interact.