How To Write Amazing Articles Step by Step

Here are the absolute drop dead, solid gold, closely-guarded secrets to creating great articles that will make your clients happy with your work and keep them coming back to you again and again for more!

After you have been paid for a writing job, follow these steps to ensure that you create the best content that you can for your new client. Then, as you continue to get jobs, stick to your own modified version of this process so you can keep pumping out great stuff.

Step 1 - Research

It shouldn't come as a surprise that your clients will expect you to deliver some well researched information in your articles. So, it makes sense that step 1 is doing research. Here is how I do research for almost all of the articles that I write.

I open up Firefox (or Google Chrome or Internet Explorer) and go to Google and search for my keyword with the word 'articles' on the end of it. So, if 'antioxidant juice' was my keyword, I would search for 'antioxidant juice articles'.

Adding the word 'articles' gives you results from article directories so you can see how other people have written articles about your keyword.

I will open up about three articles (each in a separate tab, since I use Firefox) and I will read each of them. It's EXTREMELY important to realize that I do not, and you cannot, copy anything that has already been written about your keyword.

You can't even rewrite the articles that you find, because Google would figure it out and your client would not be able to get your article into article directories or published anywhere since it will be too close to something has already been written.

So, that's bad and if you do it... it's just unethical since someone else already took the time to write out what you are reading.

So these articles are strictly for research purposes. You need to read over each one and figure out what the most important points about your keyword are. Then, head over to www.wikipedia.org and check out their entry for your keyword. Wikipedia has tons of information on most topics and you should be able to find some good stuff.

Resource: www.wikipedia.org

But, once again, don't copy it even though Wikipedia's information can be copied sometimes (but not by you, since you will be selling your articles).

Read over these sources until you have a great understanding of your keyword. It might even help you if you type out some notes to remember important things. Once you know your topic pretty well, you are ready to begin writing.

Resource: http://www.groups.Google.com

You can search for your keyword and find posts from groups that are/were dedicated to it. Then you can see what people are talking about. This will give you some great ideas for where you can take your article.

Step 2 - Create A Title

Your clients will want you to create interesting and attention grabbing titles (also called a headline) for every article that you write. In fact, this is sometimes a huge deciding factor for your client when they make the choice to order from you again or not. So it will really benefit you to take the time to know how to create a great title.

The most important thing to understand is that, many times, the title is all that a visitor will probably see before they decide to read the article or not. That makes it the most important part of the article. If no one is grabbed by the title, no one will read it and it won't matter how well it's written.

First and foremost, your title needs to include your keyword. This is an absolute must! Remember, the people who pay you to write will provide you with keywords for each article. So, you need to find a creative way to fit it into the headline.

You also need to make sure that your title uses captivating and action-oriented words. Try to use verbs like 'throw' 'jump' or 'earn'. These will get people excited and make them open the article and read it. Tell them what they will read inside and leave them wanting more.

BONUS TIP: Here are a few types of titles that your clients will love you to use.

The Hyphenated Title

An easy way to include almost any keyword into a title is by just writing the keyword, then adding a hyphen and then a catchy phrase. Here are some examples for the keyword 'GPS devices'

GPS Devices - Throw Your Maps Out The Window And Never Get Lost Again

GPS Devices - How To Find Your Way To Anywhere That You've Never Been

The hyphenated title works great. You can work almost any keyword into it and your clients will love it because it shows the keyword first, before anything else and it is still written correctly and makes sense.

The Numbered Title

Readers love numbers. This means that your clients will love it when you use titles with numbers. I don't mean that you should include statistics in your title, but include a number of steps or methods. Here are some examples for the keyword 'Toronto Blue Jays'

5 Reasons Why The Toronto Blue Jays Won The '92 World Series

7 Stars That The Toronto Blue Jays Wish They Hadn't Let Go

If you take a look at the front page of www.yahoo.com, you will see their top news stories. I bet at any given time, you will be able to find at least 2 or 3 stories with a numbered title. That's because it really grabs a reader's attention and keeps them reading until the end.

The Question Title

When your title is a question, you will be prompting the reader to ask that same question. The only way for them to get the answer to that question is to read your article. Have you ever asked someone a question and not received a response? It's pretty annoying, right? That's why people respond great to question titles - because they want the answer to the question that they were just presented with.

You can use question titles with most topics. For instance, for the keyword 'stress due to the holidays' you could write a question title like these:

How Can Stress Due To The Holidays Affect My Health?

Why Should I Worry About Stress Due To The Holidays?

Commands, such as, "Start to Learn to Groom a Dog, Now!" or Abstract titles, such as, "Coming Soon: Fluffed Tails and Trimmed Coats" work great too

Step 3 - Outline And Create Your Article Body

Even though your article will have a clearly defined introduction and conclusion, the body is the meat and requires the most work. Many people find it easier to write the introduction first, and no doubt once you get some experience writing articles you will be able to begin with the introduction.

But for your first few articles you will find that the introduction will probably flow out of your fingers much more easily once the main body of the article is written. But you can go out of order here if you would like to.

It's not completely necessary to outline the body of every article that you write, but there are many situations where it is extremely helpful. For instance, when you first start off writing, you will find that outlining your first few articles will save you from a lot of frustration. Also, later on when you start getting bulk orders of 50 articles on the same topic, outlining will help you remember what the important information is that needs to be included in each article.

Starting Your Outline

How do you go about outlining your article body? It's simple. Try to think of 3 to 5 main points for your body and jot them down. Think about what is most important to the content. Are there steps involved? Can you break your subject down into parts?

Make your main points follow a logical flow. You may want to start with the history of the company or entity behind your keyword. Or maybe your keyword needs to be defined. Each of these broad important things can be a main point.

Think of a summary sentence for each of your points. Try to make it interesting and fully describe what the point is about. Then, this will become the first sentence of your point. Then, think about facts and tips that support that point and write a few sentences about it and voila -you have your whole point. Do that for each one and you will have written your article's body.

Fit In Your Keywords

As you write you article body, remember that you need to include your keyword 2 or 3 times throughout. It needs to be fit into your article in a logical way - make it look like it is just a part of a sentence. If your keyword is 'how to avoid the common cold' you could begin the first paragraph after your intro with a sentence like this:

"If you really want to know how to avoid the common cold, here's the best way that I've been able to find."

Or you could fit it at the end of a paragraph like this:

"Continue to follow those two simple steps and you'll never need to worry about how to avoid the common cold again."

Step 4 - Create Your Introduction

Writing an introduction should be pretty simple once you have created your article's body. You will simply be introducing the ideas that will be presented in the article. You will want to use somewhere around 50 to 75 words in most cases.

Your introduction needs to tell your reader exactly what they will be reading about in the article. If the reader is interested, they will continue reading, if they're not interested, they won't be a very good potential customer for your writing client anyway.

Your clients will want you to include the targeted keyword at least once in the introduction. It's best if you can use the keyword in the very first sentence. Then the reader will know that they have found what they are looking for.

Try not reveal too much information in your introduction. You will kind of be 'warming up' to the readers. So you don't want to scare them off. Get the comfortable by filling some space (sometimes called padding). You can do a little bit of padding by turning the keyword into a little story. For example, if your keyword is weight loss products, you could do something like this:

"Turn on your television, or open your favorite magazine. You will see that weight loss is on everyone's mind. New weight loss products hit the market every single day."

After you do that, then you need to make sure that you tell the reader what they will be reading, like this:

"This makes it hard to figure out what really is the fastest way to lose weight. So, let's compare a traditional approach with something a little more recent."

An easy way to form an introduction is to simply form some statements about your keyword, and then expand like this:

"Antique furniture is quite popular among collectors. Throughout recent history, there have been so many manufacturers that there are always new items to search for and new places to look."

I simply made a statement about the keyword ’antique furniture’ in the first sentence. Then, I expanded on that in the second sentence while at the same time telling the reader a little about what they will be reading.

Step 5 - Create Your Conclusion

The conclusion can be sometimes be the hardest part when you are just starting out. But, after a while you should be able to whip out a conclusion with no problems.

Your conclusion should be one paragraph and should obviously be placed at the very end of your article. Make sure that you also mention your keyword once in the conclusion. It can just be some general statements about what you have already said. It is basically a wrap up of your article.

Don’t make it a complete review of the article. In fact, the conclusion is often the shortest paragraph of the whole thing. Like I said before, make some general statements about what you have covered.

Here’s an example of the conclusion of an article that talks about where new collectors can find old coins, with the keyword being ’Finding old coins’:

"Finding old coins is often a great hobby for new collectors. There are so many pieces to collect, that there are seemingly endless possibilities. Look into as many resources as you can to learn about this exciting field and one day you might complete the perfect coin collection."

The conclusion is also a great place to put a little bit about the next step that the reader could take. In the above example, I said that they should look into other resources. Clients like this type of conclusion because it puts the reader in the mindset to find out more information which makes the article more effective.

Step 6 - Review, Review, Review

This is obviously one of the most important steps in the entire process. Your clients will expect you to deliver well written articles that flow well from beginning to end. Which means that your articles need to be completely free of grammatical errors and misspellings.

If you have software that has a built-in spell check feature, use it! Then read the entire article to make sure that it makes sense and you didn't accidentally make any mistakes like typing a word twice or using their instead of they're.

After I am done writing an article, I use spell check and correct any spelling errors. Then, I read through the whole article out loud to myself. This helps me visualize exactly what is on the page and I can easily spot any errors.