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Article Copywriting: How to Write Web Content

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If you do some searching on how often certain phrases are used in articles and other web properties on the Internet, you’ll see that the phrase “Content Is King” is pretty popular. Not as popular as the other Internet Marketing phrase the “Money Is In the List”, and definitely not as overused as the term “Information Superhighway”. In fact, it’s only slightly more popular than the more recent word “Badonkadonk”.

This article is only about one of those things, though – writing articles for the Internet.

It only makes sense that you should want to know how to write – and publish – articles on the World Wide Web. If you’re going to play here on the Information Superhighway (sorry, couldn’t help adding to the pile of overused terms!) you need words. You need content. More importantly, if you want to play a major part in the development of the Internet, you’ve got to show up with your own content.

In this article I’m going to show you the easiest way I’ve learned so far to do Internet article writing – step-by-step. I’ll quickly show you the basics of writing web content that gets seen. And getting your article in front of other people is what matters here. Hopefully, you’ll pick up a hint or two about using articles on the Internet to say whatever it is you want to say about your hobby, your passion, or your cause.

And I’m going to do that in seven simple steps.

• Step 1:  Get a Focus
• Step 2: Research Your Topic Online
• Step 3: Find Related Keyword Phrases (Long-Tail Keywords)
• Step 4: Use Long-Tail Keywords in Your Title(s)
• Step 5: Write Your Article
• Step 6: Re-Write and Add Your “Bio”
• Step 7: Promote Your Article

Step 1:  Get a Focus

Write out one sentence about what your article is about. Not a paragraph, not a page. Don’t get lazy or try to be clever by jotting down a single, solitary word. Write a complete sentence. You will use this one sentence to create your article. The article you’re about to create will be between 400-750 words long. So give some serious thought to what you want to say to your readers.

Here’s the sentence I created when I started working on this article:

“This article is about how easy it can be to write content that gets published,
on the World Wide Web.”

Step 2:  Research Your Topic Online

Use a search engine (Google will do nicely) to find articles realted to what you want to write about. This does two things:

1. It lets you see what’s already available online.
2. It helps you discover what keywords you need to use in order to find articles about what you want to write about.

Don’t get discouraged just because you find lots of articles on your subject. There’s plenty of room for your new article. Your unique spin on any idea is what makes the ‘Net thrive and grow.

That being said, don’t even THINK about stealing someone else’s work and claiming it as your own. Duplicating someone else’s content is the kiss of death to your professional credibility, your personal integrity, and your poularity with the Search Engines. Search Engines don’t like finding duplicated content.

Let’s get on to…

Step 3:  Find Related Keyword Phrases (Longtail Keywords)

When you go looking for articles on the topic you want to write about, don’t be surprised to find that the term you thought you should use to find articles about what you want to write about has hundreds of thousands of  listings. In fact, the term you initially use may turn out to be one of the worst phrases to use to find information about the topic you want to write about.

The good part about doing Step 2 is that you’ll see just what keywords you need to use to find information that you do want to write about. For example, when I started writing the article which turned into the script for the relate video/podcast I created, I went looking for articles about writing articles for the Internet. My ultimate goal was to make it easy for you to find the video/podcast so that you could use it to learn to write your own article. To do that, I considered search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that would make my article (and subsequent video and podcast) stand out in the search engines. I wanted to make it easier for you to find this video when you searched on specific phrases.

To do that, I needed to refine a few of my ideas. Instead of hoping you’d go searching through dozens of pages to find my web-based content about the simple (and too general) term “article writing”, I located keyword phrases known as Long-tail Keywords to showcase my work.

Here’s the list I came up with:

• “write content for the Internet”
• “Internet content writing”
• “how to write web content”
• “article copywriting”
• “Internet article writing”
• how to write content
• “web copywriting”
• internet article writing
• write content for the Internet
• “web content”
• internet content writing
• web content

I placed certain words in quotes to return results for those specific keyword phrases.

That’s what you want to do when you write your article. You want to use keyword phrases that make it easy for people to find your article.

I won’t go into great detail about finding and using longtail keywords. You can get a better, more detailed explanation of Longtail Keywords by doing – of all things – a search on “longtail keywords”. I’ll also be posting information about how to use them here on my website.

More to the point you can get a high rank in the Search Engines by using longtail keywords that specifically target your topic.

Step 4:  Use Long-Tail Keywords in Your Title(s)

The next thing to do is to discover what keyword phrases, i.e., what longtail keywords, people are using to find articles like the one you’re about to write. You can get a good idea of what these longtail keywords are by using Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Select the keyword phrases that receive between 1,000 and 30,000 searches each month. These are the keyword phrases you will use to create your 5 – 10 article titles.

Step 5:  Write Your Article

Some of you might decide to make an outline for your article first. That’s a very good idea. Those of you who cringe in horror of the memory of Freshman English class might not feel comfortable doing this. But you’ve got to use some sort of basic organization in your article or you’ll miss getting to the point and you’ll totally confuse your readers.

So, here’s a quick and dirty shortcut. It’s an outline of sorts. The “Introduction” is the main topic of your article. This is where you tell us what you’re going to tell us. In this case, you’re going to talk about three to four things related to your main topic. We’ll call these things your “Sub-Topics”. So, the outline looks like this:

• “Introduction: Topic” – State your main theme and its sub-topics.
• “Sub-Topic #1” – Tell us something about this.
• “Sub-Topic #2” – Tell us something about this.
• “Sub-Topic #3” – Tell us something about this.
• “Sub-Topic #4” – Tell us something about this.
• “In Conclusion” – This is where you tell us what you’v just told us. It’s the summary section of your article.
• “About the Author” – This is where you tell us a little about you and your cause, website, or hobby.

When all is said and done, your 400 – 750 word article should be all about that one sentence that you wrote back in Step #1!

Step 6:  Re-Write and Add Your “Bio”

Re-write your article’s “Introduction” paragraph a few times to match up with the keyword phrases that you  selected in Step #3. Do the same for the concluding paragraph. In general, if you haven’t guessed by now, you want to alter the text throughout your article to the point that you can say that you’ve “written” 5 – 10 different articles.

Title #1: Article #1
Title #2: Article #2
Title #3: Article #3
Title #4: Article #4
Title #5: Article #5
Title #6: Article #6
Title #7: Article #7
etc…………..

The last part of this step is to write a paragraph about yourself and the website of the cause you’re trying to publicize. You’ll use this short paragraph to say something about yourself, to justify why someone should trust, believe, or care about what you say, and to give directions about how someone can find out more about your other published pieces on the web.

To do that you want to use words that matter. For starters, take this final opportunity to give your longtail keyword a plug. By that I mean, if your main keyword phrase is “keep drugs out of public schools”, instead of saying “For more details click here” … which results in only linking to the word “here”.

A better strategy is to work your longtail keyword into that sentence like this:

“Visit my school’s blog for more details about how your community can keep drugs out of public schools, http:// www.JustSayNoHi.edu”

In this case, both people and the search engines see your keyword phrase “keep drugs out of public schools”. As an added bonus, they also actually see your website address. Most article directories will let you add direct links to more than one phrase in this final paragraph which is commonly known as the “About the Author” paragraph.

Step 7:  Promote Your Article

Once your article is written, upload it to article directories like Ezine Articles, Go Articles and other article directories. There are hundreds.

But your work is not yet done. It’s now time to tell the world – literally! You’re on the WORLD wide web, remember. Besides, there’s no sense in spending time and energy writing something that nobody gets a chance to see. You need to get the word out.

The first, most obvious way to do that is by “Word of Mouth”. Tell your Mom and Dad, anyone with Internet access. You just did a really important and totally cool thing. You took action, you write and published an article about something that was important to you.

Next, get the word out by email. Email your colleagues, close friends, and other people that you actually know who would be interested in reading your article. Be careful with spreading the word by email, though. Blasting a message to everyone in your company’s or University’s address book may win you the notorious title of “spammer de jeur”. Be careful getting the word out by email.

Another way to get the word out about your article is to leave a link to it in the signature you use in forums related to your topic. Be sure in this case to follow the rules posted in the forum that you’re participating on.

Social networking is an ideal way to get the word out about your new article. You can use Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati, MySpace, Twitter, and a growing list of other Web 2.0 pages. You’ll find at least 350 of them on Mashable’s Social Networking God post. Like forums, social networks also have rules of conduct that you need to learn and follow. Social networking is, however, one of the best ways to promote your article because you are actually promoting to real people.

Finally, make a post to your own website or blog to let your readers know where they can find your new article. This works best when your article is related to news you regularly post on your blog.

For instance, you wouldn’t want to waste time on your Health and Fitness blog promoting your latest article about using Google Adwords advertising. It makes more sense to use your Health and Fitness blog to leave news about your Health and Fitness related article. Once you’ve announce your blog-related article on your topic-specific blog, use Pingoat.com or other ping service to let the blogosphere know about all the work you’ve done.

What Next? Celebrate!!! But don’t stop there. Write and publish more Articles!

Do this again. After a while you’ll see just how much fun it can be. You’ll be hooked. You’ll become an expert at writing articles. And if you’re articles are helpful, believable, and coherent those who read your articles will come to see you as an expert on your topic.

Catch the Live Action Flick!

This article is the transcript of a two-part video set that I made about article copy writing for the Internet. Please have a look, leave a comment, and post a rating. You’ll find the videos to this “transcript” on the following video sharing sites:

YouTube:  Part 1 / Part 2
PhotoBucket: Part 1 / Part 2
DailyMotion: Part 1 / Part 2