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It’s a pretty well-known SEO rule that adding content regularly to your website gets you in Google’s good graces in the organic search rankings you expect for your website. How long should each article be though? Is a mini 500 word article enough? Or is something no longer than 200 words, as short as the typical blog post length goes, completely sufficient? Does it matter how long your article submission is? In truth, there is no specific rule that can qualify an article submission length as better than the next. But there are more important consideration than mere article word count. A lot depends on whether your website is designed in a way that pleases search engines more than people. If you design your website to appeal just to the search engines, you could come up great in Google’s books, but lose out when visitors turn away disgusted.

Take for instance the way some people design their home pages. They know that the more content there is on the home page, the more link equity they stand to get. So they put all their new content on their front pages and are afraid to move anything off the home page. They’ve got it all wrong though. The front page only has to have new content and not just a lot of any kind of content. Keeping a cluttered home page though will certainly turn visitors away.

One of the best ways to make every article submission count would be to make sure that  the writing is logically laid out. Good article writing practices involve the use of sub headers, ideas broken out into paragraphs, and stuff that is to the point. And remember, content that’s not entirely unique gets caught out by Google. With the word count question, a good way to go about it would be to use as many words as your ideas require. People who use article submission websites try to go for a specific and arbitrary word length. That makes all articles nearly 500 words long or so. That’s not a natural way to go about writing articles, and everyone knows it.

Google has algorithms to determine how relevant something is. It looks for national writing. This means that it doesn’t value an approach where as few words as possible are used – that’s not how natural language goes. Writing articles based on natural language now is getting to be as effective as writing around long tail keywords. And that is good news.

As marketers, we are told that we should be article marketing.  It is how you make money as an affiliate, it is how you promote your websites and it is how you add content to your virtual real estate empire.

Many people find article writing difficult to do because they are not used to writing.  If you have the money, it can be outsourced.  However, for many people starting out online, money is tight and so they can’t afford an outsourcer.

You can get articles written for a couple of dollars, but they are likely to be very poor quality.  For a decent 400 to 500 word article you are looking to pay around ten dollars, possibly more depending on the niche and the author.

You can write the articles yourself, and it’s not that difficult to do if you follow a system.  Many people suffer from writers block or are just not used to writing an article.  It can be very daunting to sit down and write if it is something you are not used to.

Below is a system that works very well, it is one I use myself and you can be writing high quality articles surprisingly quickly with this technique.  It really isn’t that hard and it enables even the most novice of writers to create decent articles rapidly.

Step 1 : Decide upon the niche you are writing in.

Step 2 : Determine which keyword(s) you are targeting in your article.

Step 3 : Determine the subject your article will be about.

Step 4 : Type into Google some of your keywords and see what problems and issues people are facing in that niche.  What do they want to know?  What is their pain?  What solutions are they looking for?

Step 5 : Write a powerful, interest building title with your keyword at the start, if possible.

Step 6 : Write out four or five short sentences about the problem (don’t give away too much … you want your reader to buy).

Step 7 : Turn each sentence into more descriptive paragraphs, remembering not to give away too much information.

Step 8 : Write a paragraph introducing the article at the top.

Step 9 : Write a paragraph summarizing what was in the article at the bottom.

And there you have a good quality, unique article that you could spin or just submit to an article directory or use on your website.  Content is king on the Internet, and unique content provides you with an edge over the competition.

This method will help you to quickly write articles, and it won’t be long before you can write a high quality article in under ten minutes.  With practise, you will be able to do them in five to seven minutes easily!

And remember the more articles you have out there, the more you can potentially earn!