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Have you ever found a piece of content that stuck with you? As a beginner, do you want to know how to write a good article that ranks high on search engines and resonates with your audience?
In this post, we will discuss what makes the qualities of a good blog article, and give tips on how to write a good article as a beginner that attracts a lot of traffic and the admiration of your audience.
23% of readers think bad content affects their trust in a blog.
Let’s get started!
What is the point of creating Quality Content?
When you hear that content is king, it actually refers to quality, well-written content. Later in this post, we will look at the components of a quality article. For now, we will simply focus on why it is important to create quality articles for your blog.
- Google loves it. Creating original and quality posts that address a certain issue will always be favored by Google. And this will give you an edge over your competitors who don’t put in the same effort to create quality content for their audience.
- You build a Loyal Audience over time. When people see content that is well-detailed in explaining a topic to them, they tend to trust the source. And if you can keep it up, they will always rely on the information they get from you as accurate.
58% of marketers said that “original written content” is the most important type of content, outdoing visuals and videos.
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How To Write A Good Article For Beginners That Ranks High On Google
#1. Choose a Topic
Choosing a topic is one of the first steps on how to write a good article for beginners. As a content writer, one of the first things you do when you want to write an article is to determine which topic to write on. Although there is no limit to the ideas or topics you want to write about, we advise that you perform research on the topic to determine the exact keywords people are using to search for such topics.
That only makes sense since you will be posting your article online and you need people to also find your quality content online.
The terms that people use to search for content on search engines are called keywords. Thankfully, Google stores these searches alongside other metrics to help writers see what people are searching for.
One of the ways to perform keyword research is by using the Google Keyword Planner. This will not only give you the exact terms people are searching for but will also show you the average number of times people search for those terms in a month.
I advise choosing a long-tail keyword. Long-tail keywords are easier to target and rank high for and they are keywords with 2,3,4 or more words. The easiest way to find a long tail keyword is by using our Long Tail Keyword Suggestion Tool.
#2. Research
No matter how knowledgeable a content writer is on a subject, he will still have to do some research before writing an article.
This is the stage where you have the opportunity to get into the minds of your audience. How did they react to other resources available on the web? What are their pain points or interests? What questions are they asking on the topic?
You can visit Quora to find out the common questions people are asking on the given topic and consider addressing them in your content.
Other advanced Keyword research tools like Ahrefs can also give you insight on the questions people are asking around the topic as well as the average number of times they ask the same questions in a month.
#3. Draft An Outline
This is where you outline what your content will look like. All the headings and subheadings will have to be drafted out at this stage. You can also add some points within each heading and subheading to itemize the points you will be making in the content.
You can also add the kind of quotations, images, charts, videos or any other resourceful material you feel will be necessary for your content. These simple but important points contribute to good article writing for beginners
Drafting an outline is very necessary to build the flow of the content if it has to rank high. After this stage, even when you come back to your draft after some days or weeks, you can still be able to work on it.
#4. Develop the Outline
This is the stage where you start developing your content. Follow your draft and start writing your content out. The quality of your content at this stage largely depends on your expertise on the subject and how much research you did.
There is no way you can give what you don’t have. This is why research on a subject cannot be overemphasized as it largely affects the quality of the article you are going to produce.
This development stage comprises a lot of work as you will have to factor in a lot of things that will not only make your content to be of high quality but also rank well on search engines.
In the next section of this article, we will be going over the various components of a high-quality article. These are the components you should add to your content to make it of high quality as well as rank well on search engine results.
#5. Run a Grammar Check
After you are done with developing your content, make sure your content is without any grammatical errors. This is because no matter how resourceful you believe your content is if it is full of grammar errors, people will deem it of low quality.
This is why when you are done developing your article, you must proofread to make sure that your article is free of any poor grammar.
Thankfully, there are now easy writing tools that can help you check your content for grammatical errors. You can get the free Grammarly app and that will correct grammatical errors on a basic level. If you want a thorough grammar check, you will have to get the premium version.
Another great option is to use our Grammar Checker Tool to check your content for any grammatical errors. It is completely free to use and very effective too.
Components of A High-Quality Content
1. Use Compelling Title
Good titles can make all the difference. A good title can make all the difference between your post being shared widely and not getting much traction. A title’s main purpose is to grab attention and encourage people to read your post. Your title will determine the success of your post. This is why you need to be careful about the words you choose and how you craft them.
Even if you have the best post in the world, a title that doesn’t encourage people to click on it will not get them to read your post. The title of your article will make it stand out and encourage readers to click. A boring title with little engagement will get lost in the seas of information online.
Titles with 6-13 words attract the highest and the most consistent amount of traffic.
Your blog title is an essential marketing tool. The title will be displayed in search engine results, archives, and social media sites. It is therefore important to spend time on your title. Visitors see the article title first and in most cases form an opinion instantly. We all know what they have to say about first impressions. You never get another chance to make a good first impression.
Tools like Sharethrough Headline Analyzer will help you analyze the strength of your headline and give you suggestions on what to add to get better headlines.
2. Cite Statistics
Always try to cite and link out to secondary sources. This can be in form of statistics or a quote from a reputable source. By citing some statistics in your work, you will give the impression of well-resourced content and your audience will be more receptive to your ideas and recommendations.
3. Use Short Sentences and Paragraphs
Don’t make your article too difficult to read by using very long sentences and long paragraphs. It’s not a good show of article writing for beginners.
Although the way a writer organizes their thoughts on a page can be subjective, there are certain benefits to breaking down thoughts into concise, readable paragraphs. Here are some of the benefits.
- Keeps readers’ attention with less text. Readers are more likely to be engaged if the content is broken down into digestible groups of sentences. Reading large chunks of text can make readers turn away. However, shorter paragraphs that have white space between them are more inviting.
- The dramatic effect can be achieved with short paragraphs. Sometimes, writers will isolate one thought that is important to their text. To emphasize their statement, they will create a single-line paragraph.
- On a screen, short paragraphs are easier to read. The digital age has transformed the way people read. People consume online content on all kinds of devices, from smartphones to tablets to computers. Your target audience will find it easier to scroll and read your ideas if you condense them into shorter paragraphs.
- Different paragraph patterns show the writer’s point-of-view and voice. Each writer has their own unique style of telling stories or presenting ideas. This is done through the words they use and how they combine them. Writing can help a writer define their voice. They can break down their thoughts into paragraphs to create rhythm. This includes how and when they use shorter paragraphs.
4. Add a Table of Contents
The table of Contents is very necessary especially if your content is a lengthy one. It helps the reader to navigate through your content headings quite easily. Always consider adding a ToC in your content to help your readers quickly get to the point they want to.
To make this a breeze, consider using this Table of Content plugin if you are a WordPress user.
5. Add images to your content
People can remember visual information better and longer than they can remember written or spoken information. People retain images long after they have forgotten the text.
Blog posts with images get 94% more shares as compared tp those without.
Images can effectively help people recall your articles for longer periods of time than if they were just text. In addition to being easier to remember, images are processed 60,000 times faster than text, based on 3M Corporation research cited in this HubSpot blog post.
Images are effective because they elicit emotions from the viewer. This truth has been used for years in advertising and marketing. This can be used to your advantage, encouraging a certain emotion in your audience. However, you should be aware of the emotion that you are triggering. Anger and fear can backfire on your audience and cause them to lose interest.
The attention span of your readers is another reason to use images. You may have heard that humans now have shorter attention spans than goldfish. Images are a quick break from long paragraphs of text that can be tiring.
Images can help you get your readers to the end of your blog posts. Adding an image every 100-200 words is a good way to keep your readers interested in your content till the end.
6. Write Compelling Intro
This is one of the important parts of how to write a good article that can captivate your audience. You only have 15 seconds to grab the attention of the reader. That’s how long it takes on average before someone decides to leave your content behind. It’s why it is so important to write a great introduction.
The reader will move on if the intro is boring or weak. There are millions upon millions more blogs out there, so it is likely that the reader will find the same information somewhere else.
This is why you need to pay good attention to the first two or three sentences you make at the beginning of your article.
This article explains in more detail how to write a compelling intro for your content.
7. Write Long Copy Articles
Google and other search engines love long-copy articles. By long copy, I mean articles of over 1800 words. Research by Neil Patel has shown that articles with over 2000 words performed much better on SERPs than articles with less than 500 words.
Another study conducted by MarketingExperiments also shows that long copy articles outperformed short copy articles by over 40.54%.
When Google deems an article to be of “Thin Content”, they downgrade such an article. In fact, the popular Google Panda update specifically focused on punishing articles with less than 200 words by downgrading them.
You should aim for at least 300 words or more in an article if you want it to stand a chance in the SERPs competition. To count the words in your article, use our free Word Counter Tool.
8. Use LSI Keywords
LSI keywords, which are search terms that are related to your main keyword, are a part of SEO (search engine optimization). These keywords are used to support your content and provide context so that search engines and users can easily understand what your content is all about.
The following are some of the benefits of incorporating LSI keywords into your content:
- They can increase your website’s rank in search engines. Search engines will understand your page if you include LSI keywords in your text. This will help to improve its ranking.
- Your content’s relevancy is improved. You can also add related words to your content to avoid keyword stuffing.
- LSI keywords can increase the number of people who find your content. It can also be used to provide a better search experience, which in turn will translate into improved rankings factors such as bounce rate and time spent on a page.
LSIGraph is a free keyword tool you can use to find LSI keywords you can incorporate into your content. You may not include all of them, but try to add as much as is reasonably possible.
9. Add Other Media Where Necessary
To ensure quality content, you can add videos, audio, infographics into your content as long as it is relevant and adds value to your content.
Whatever media you choose to add to your content should also be of high quality. Also remember to optimize all your images, videos, and other media for search engine visibility by adding Alt texts to them.
10. Conduct Keyword Optimizations
While writing an article for an online publication or blog, you must consider some keyword optimization tips that will help you rank high on search engines each time someone performs a search on it.
Some of them are:
A. Keyword Density: While it’s not advised to write out of context or stuff your keywords in your article, you should consider adding some of your keywords inside your article a reasonable number of times.
The number of times a keyword appears in an article in relation to the length of the article is called keyword density. To check if your article has a good keyword density, use our Keyword Density Checker Tool and simply enter your URL and our tool will analyze your article and give you a detailed report on it.
B. Alt Text
If you understand SEO, you will know the importance of adding Alt text to your images, videos, and other media.
C. Meta Titles and Descriptions
Make sure your meta titles and descriptions have your keywords in them while also being relevant since this is what people will see on search engine results.
11. Plagiarism Checking
While a lot of effort has been put so far into writing a high-quality article, you might still need to run a plagiarism check to detect if some of the words in your article exist anywhere on the web.
This might not be a problem if you are not writing to rank, but if you are you should run a plagiarism check because Google will not rank your article high if it feels you copied another source.
Plagiarism refers to the act of using someone else’s ideas without their consent or including them in your own work. It can be accidental, deliberate, or intentional.
The act could affect your Search Engine Optimization strategy. Not to mention that you can enter into some serious legal issues if your article is reported by users, which could lead to your website being blocked and/or SEO being affected.
To check your article for plagiarized content, copy your article and paste it on our free Plagiarism Checker Tool. Our tool will show you the parts of your article that are plagiarized (if any).
How to write a good article: In Conclusion
If you are ever going to have a chance to write an article that stands a chance to rank high on search engines, you should take a cue from this post on how to write a good article. Your article will not only rank on SERPs but you will earn the respect and admiration of your audience. Plus the leads generated from the web traffic that flows to your site.
