Penny Halgren

My friend, Jim, teases me about writing articles for quilters. "After all," he says "there are only a few articles -- 'a,' 'an,' 'the' . . ."

And, while I'm not talking about parts of speech or grammar here, many people ask me the same type of question: "How do you write website articles?"

It's actually pretty easy to write articles for your website, and can be fun, especially when you are writing an article for your own website on a topic you know a lot about.

First things first -- the purpose of ezine articles is two-fold:

• To educate and inform your audience -- that is to provide valuable information for the visitors to your site or your newsletter subscribers

• To get traffic to your site -- good articles written on topics that lots of people want to know about work their way up in Google and Yahoo Search results; and when that happens, people click through to the article on your site and find you, the expert!

Keeping those two goals in mind, the first thing to do is choose a topic that people want to learn about.

Because you are an expert in your field, you probably already have in mind what types of information will be valuable to your newsletter subscribers.

Just as this article is -- information about the basics is helpful.

Don't ever assume that your readers know even the basics about a particular topic.

You may think that your subscribers all have the same base level of knowledge, but there may be readers who are just learning about your topic.

For those folks, it helps to include definitions and explanations in your article.

In addition to people new to the topic, there may be people who are more familiar with the subject, but actually have some mis-conceptions or have some "holes" in their knowledge.

They will appreciate being "filled" in -- without being made to feel stupid. If you have a broad topic in mind and are looking for something more specific, checking with the Google Keyword Tool may help. This is a free website where you enter your big topic, and then Get Keyword Ideas.

We will explore other ways to use this tool in future emails, but on first glance at the list of results, you may get some great ideas for topics for articles.

Most folks agree that between 300 and 500 words is a good length for an article. Unless you are writing a research paper or something for the scientific community, your article should be easy to read in a relatively short period of time.

Remember, people are reading it on their computer screen, or possibly (you hope) printing it out to share or read later. You want them to get the whole content, not get bored, tired, or interrupted before they finish!

Be Wildly Successful!

Penny