All website owners want to know how to write great articles. Not many bother to learn how. And it is not that hard if you stick to a few simple rules.
Any website you own needs to be appealing to your target audience. It doesn’t matter who your target audience is they are all people and they will only engage with what you have to say if they find your article or post easy to read.
There are five basic components to making your articles an easy read.
Title
Paragraphs
Headings
Images
KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid
Title
Your title should tell your audience what your article or post is about and also capture their interest. It should make them intrigued as to what you have to say on the subject. It will not hurt if it also includes a valuable keyword ( a search term used by the online world and google to rank pages, posts and articles)
Paragraphs
We learn how to use paragraphs in school but back then we were learning to write essays. Today we are learning how to communicate in the online world. We are used to the 140 character type of reading from twitter and the short posts from our Facebook friends. Long drawn out paragraphs with lots of information are hard to read and will switch your readers off.
Paragraphs should be short with no more than four sentences. I will often employ the read as I think method and then when I have got it all out onto the page, I go back and edit. I take words out and put them in and then create my paragraphs. A paragraph can, where appropriate be just one short sentence.
Doesn’t this make it all so much easier to read?
Headings
Using headings just like I have here on this article gives your reader a heads up (Excuse the pun) as to what’s coming up next. They also help to make the page easier to navigate for the reader and therefore they are more engaging.
Images
A picture paints a thousand words. We are visual creatures and images help to cement what we are reading. There is a school of thought that this goes back to how we learnt to read as children. Children’s books have more picture than writing.
An image in your article should be relevant. There is no point in having an image just for the sake of it. That will only aid your readers to be distracted from your writing, not aided by it.
As a general rule you should place an image in the first fold of your page. That is within the first piece your reader will see when they go to your page or post. Not too big or you will push the writing too far down the page and your readers may not ever scroll down to see that there is more for them to see. Placing a thumbnail size image to the right will work the best.
All of your other images should relate to the content but make sure not to use too many as to drown out your writing. Your readers will not scroll through lots of images to get to your actual content.
KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid
Well I just love this analogy and it relates to lots of things within our articles and content. Black on white works best. The odd use of colour within our writing doesn’t hurt when appropriate but just because you have the option of a rainbow of colours does not mean you have to use them. Very distracting for your readers.
We also have at our fingertips a wealth of fancy fonts but again they can be very distracting to the reader. Pick one style that suits you and stick to it. Don’t have every post on your website in a different colour and font. It will make your website disjointed and confuse your readers.
If you are an expert in your field it is really easy to try to tell everyone, everything you know all at once. Verbal diarrhoea is what it comes out like. Your readers are unlikely to be experts in the field. They are there to learn so make sure you keep your message simple. You can expand in other articles and then link them. But that’s another subject for another day.
I hope you have found this article or post (they are the same thing) useful and that I have stuck to my own rules. Please feel free to let me know if I haven’t or if you have any questions by commenting below.
If you want to check out where I gain all of my knowledge and leverage that knowledge from the best Industry experts read my review of Wealthy Affiliate.
Thanks for these great reminders. I am glad you have kept this information so very simple. I really appreciate these suggestions, because I will now go back and check my articles to make sure I am on the right track. I think some of my images may be out of line, so I’ll fix them. This page I will bookmark as my “go to reminders for writing great articles.”
Hi Carol and thank you for your kind comments. Whatever we write or do on our websites can always be updated later. I am always re reading and adjusting too.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Thanks for the great article. Loads of new ideas for me to try ?
How many words do you think my posts or pages should have ? Seems different sites have different ideas !
Makes it a bit confusing at times.
Thanks in advance
Paul
Hi Paul and thanks for reading. I usually use about 1000 words per post. I think that is plenty to keep people interested without boring them. Sometimes I will go to 1500 depending on the subject but no more because I get bored if a post is too long and will have forgotten what I started reading it for by the time I go over that many words. Some posts will also be 500 words if that is appropriate too.
Hope this helps
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Great information. I believe your advice on paragraph size is very important. Writing for a website is very different from what many people learned about writing in school. I also believe we should keep in mind more and more readers will be using phones to view our websites and adjust our paragraph size accordingly.
Thanks for your comments Tony. You are quite right mobiles make a big difference to the way we should be writing so our readers can digest information easily.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Interesting! I never really sit still and realize that when we know a lot about a topic we tend to want to say everything at once. I never though about the KISS analogy before (at least not when writing blog posts). It is something to think about. Here you are talking about how the article should look which I think it’s not difficult to follow and apply. What I’m struggling with sometimes is in what format to write, which words to use. I am used to business writing and writing a blog post is a very different beast. Anyways this post was really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Hi there Dira and thank you for reading. Swapping styles of writing is difficult when you have been using a business style for a period of time. What I try to do is write out everything that’s in my head, without thinking too much about style or what words are best.I then go back and edit. In the edit it is easy to see that several sentences actually say the same thing so some get the cut. It is also easy to see what sounds like business or Industry talk and I just change the words to something more simple.
Hope this helps.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
You have given those who are interested the right path to follow. Yes, this article is descriptive of the title. However, along with teaching starters how to create great articles, I think it is only fair to mention to your readers the value of quality content
Hi Maurice, good point, well made. Quality content is vital to your success but you do need to make sure your quality content is readable.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Great post on writing articles. I think the one thing I need to work on is keeping it simple. That has long been true, yet I always tend to want to elaborate and sort of include everything but the kitchen sink! So, this is something that I am going to work on. Thanks for sharing. Made that lightbulb in my head go off, and I put a KISS sticky on my computer so I can work on this 🙂 Your article is perfect !
Hi there Matts mum and thank you for reading. It is really hard not to say too much when you know so much. The Kiss analogy is one I have used for decades and has always served me well. When I don’t use it, I end up confusing the customer.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Felix
atWow really nice info what you have here it is really easy to follow and a very complete info keep going
Karen Noone
atThank you for your kind comments and for stopping by my site.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
carol
atThanks for these great reminders. I am glad you have kept this information so very simple. I really appreciate these suggestions, because I will now go back and check my articles to make sure I am on the right track. I think some of my images may be out of line, so I’ll fix them. This page I will bookmark as my “go to reminders for writing great articles.”
Karen Noone
atHi Carol and thank you for your kind comments. Whatever we write or do on our websites can always be updated later. I am always re reading and adjusting too.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Paul
atThanks for the great article. Loads of new ideas for me to try ?
How many words do you think my posts or pages should have ? Seems different sites have different ideas !
Makes it a bit confusing at times.
Thanks in advance
Paul
Karen Noone
atHi Paul and thanks for reading. I usually use about 1000 words per post. I think that is plenty to keep people interested without boring them. Sometimes I will go to 1500 depending on the subject but no more because I get bored if a post is too long and will have forgotten what I started reading it for by the time I go over that many words. Some posts will also be 500 words if that is appropriate too.
Hope this helps
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Tony W
atGreat information. I believe your advice on paragraph size is very important. Writing for a website is very different from what many people learned about writing in school. I also believe we should keep in mind more and more readers will be using phones to view our websites and adjust our paragraph size accordingly.
Karen Noone
atThanks for your comments Tony. You are quite right mobiles make a big difference to the way we should be writing so our readers can digest information easily.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Dira
atInteresting! I never really sit still and realize that when we know a lot about a topic we tend to want to say everything at once. I never though about the KISS analogy before (at least not when writing blog posts). It is something to think about. Here you are talking about how the article should look which I think it’s not difficult to follow and apply. What I’m struggling with sometimes is in what format to write, which words to use. I am used to business writing and writing a blog post is a very different beast. Anyways this post was really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Karen Noone
atHi there Dira and thank you for reading. Swapping styles of writing is difficult when you have been using a business style for a period of time. What I try to do is write out everything that’s in my head, without thinking too much about style or what words are best.I then go back and edit. In the edit it is easy to see that several sentences actually say the same thing so some get the cut. It is also easy to see what sounds like business or Industry talk and I just change the words to something more simple.
Hope this helps.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Maurice Jackson
atYou have given those who are interested the right path to follow. Yes, this article is descriptive of the title. However, along with teaching starters how to create great articles, I think it is only fair to mention to your readers the value of quality content
Karen Noone
atHi Maurice, good point, well made. Quality content is vital to your success but you do need to make sure your quality content is readable.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Matts Mom
atGreat post on writing articles. I think the one thing I need to work on is keeping it simple. That has long been true, yet I always tend to want to elaborate and sort of include everything but the kitchen sink! So, this is something that I am going to work on. Thanks for sharing. Made that lightbulb in my head go off, and I put a KISS sticky on my computer so I can work on this 🙂 Your article is perfect !
Karen Noone
atHi there Matts mum and thank you for reading. It is really hard not to say too much when you know so much. The Kiss analogy is one I have used for decades and has always served me well. When I don’t use it, I end up confusing the customer.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen