Writing effective articles

Today at work our boss asked me to write some guidelines on how to post articles for everyone who works here at eBoat Loans. What follows is the email I sent out.


A few tips on writing articles.
Your title should be "Keyword Rich." The first 3-4 words of your TITLE determines the success of the article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate...so choose the first 3-4 words wisely.
Example of a Bad Keyword TITLE:
Top 9 Ways to Acquire Fractional Jet Ownership
Example of a Good Keyword TITLE:
Fractional Jet Ownership - 9 Strategies to Help You Acquire Your Private Jet

Standard articles have anywhere from 200 words to no more than 5,000 words. The article should have a keyword density of about 2 to 8 percent. That’s roughly using the keyword once or twice per paragraph.

Your article should be informative/opinionated and concise. You don’t want to bore the reader. If you want you can put most of your information in the first paragraph and then expound upon that information in the following paragraphs. Most article writers have learned that if you put the meat of the article in the first paragraph readers are more apt to read the rest of the article.

If your grammar is not the best, you can always write your article in word first and then copy and paste it into your blog.

It’s ok to use quotes from other articles and or pictures and youtube video in your blog post. You can comment on the article and or pictures or youtube video.
For example you can do your post on your customer’s new boat he or she sent you pictures of and how he or she likes it. Maybe even ask the customer to send you some video of their new boat and upload it to youtube.
Basically try to make your post fun and interesting to people.
People that surf the net are out there to either be entertained or to look up the answer to a question they have. If your posts fall into that category they will be popular.

If your blog has a tags feature, use it. Tags are basically keywords that are apart from the article but still on the page and they help with search engine rankings.
My suggestion is to write the article first and then use the google keyword tool and then edit the article and input the tags.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal






Follow the link, click on the website content radio button. And put the direct link to your single article not the blog homepage. Click the Get keyword ideas button.
After you do that google will generate some keywords for you. Use the keywords that best fit your article. Use maybe 10-20 at most.

The links below are good ones on writing articles.

http://www.ezilon.com/articles/articles/530/1/Checklist-For-Writing-Effective-Articles
http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Marketing-and-Copywriting-Secret:-How-To-Make-Your-Article-TITLE-Sell&id=20000
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
http://www.searchenginecollege.com/articles/2007/11/how-keywords-affect-your-rankings.html
http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/online/articlewriting.htm
http://www.isitebuild.com/article-writing-2.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=writing+effective+articles&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLJ
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGLJ&q=how+to+write+an+article