Article Writing & Content Writing Guide

If you have ever heard anything about Internet or online marketing, you probably have heard the phrase, “Content is King”. This refers to the content of a website, which makes it much more accessible to visitors based on relevancy and subject matter crawled by the Internet browsers. Because so much emphasis is placed on the content of a website, an entire branch of writing has developed known as content writing. Content writing is a specialized style of writing, which differs slightly from journalistic styles.

There are many different types of people and businesses that use content writing. Most of which are webmasters, however many are also marketing professionals who understand the world of search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization is a marketing method to make a website much more accessible to prospective visitors through the use of search engines. The more optimized a website is for the search engines, the higher it will appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The better and more relevant the content on a site is, the better the rank it will have.

Content writing includes a number of variants including not only SEO writing and SEO copywriting, website writing, blogging, sale documents, press release writing, e-books, e-catalogs, and many other forms which appear on the Internet. Content writing is basically anything that is intended to be read on the Internet or sent across the World Wide Web. The body of any article or piece that a content writer generates should be clear, concise, and easy to read quickly. Most content articles are relatively short works, usually ranging from 100 to 500 words although it really just depends on the topic and the particular website.

A good content writer should be able to convey information, thoughts, and instructions in short, structured sentences. The words and paragraph organization to the content writing should always be written so that anyone can understand it, as website visitors will range greatly in levels of intelligence, patience, and education. Because of the wide audience content writers target, the way in which content articles are written is different than for print. Some basic differences include the use of simple words, one idea per paragraph, inverted pyramid style with the conclusion or most important point first, and bulleted lists to name a few.

With so many differences going on between content writing and writing for print, it is actually difficult to find good quality content writers. We must remember that while it is important to have a sufficient amount of relevant content on a website, it must also be well written. While there is no shortage of available freelance writers out there, many of them still have not been able to successfully transition to content writing while others just do not have a good grasp on the English language. A growing problem is that many writers claim to speak (and write) English well, but actually have no handle on the language whatsoever.

When hiring a content writer for a website, a hiring webmaster or company should always request a writing sample – or several to get an idea of the writer’s style, abilities, grasp on the language, and range. During the interview process, it is even wise to ask the writer to do a test or sample article so that you can gauge his or her writing styles, turnaround time, and your working relationship.