Article Writing Mistake #1 - Writing Articles That Are Too Long
Now here's the thing about writing on the internet.
For some of you, this will free you up.
For some of you it might frighten you at first, then it'll free you up.
You've got to forget a lot of what you were taught in school about writing.
The way I like to say it is your English teacher is not here, and if you're as old as I am, your English teacher may even be dead.
They're not here.
Many of us were taught to write at length, especially if you come from an academic background or another background like that.
So I get a lot of newbies that are writing 1,000-, 1,500-, 2,500-word articles.
That is immensely too long for the internet.
When you write an article for the internet, the optimum length is between 300-500 words.
Now why you need to get excited about that is that's not a lot of words when you break it down into chunks.
If you wrote a 7 tips article, how many words would that need to per tip to get in that range? 50 words per tip? You're in that range of 300-500.
Here's why.
You could write one 1,000-word article, submit it to the article directories, and have it out there working for you.
In your resource box you could have two or three links - let's just say three - linking back to your website or blog, back to your information.
And that's great! You've got one article out there and three links.
What I recommend is that you take that 1,000-word article and break it down into two 500-word articles or even three 350-word articles.
Do the math, folks.
Would you rather have one article agent out there working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? And what I mean by that - because I'll often check my stats at EzineArticles.
com before I go to bed at night.
I'll see how many views I've got and how many URL click-throughs.
That means how many people have clicked through on the resource box to come back to my sites.
Then when I get up in the morning, sometimes 4, sometimes 6, sometimes 8 hours later (if I'm really tired), while I was sleeping, all around the world people are reading those articles and clicking through to my websites.
Then it happens all day every day.
Now would you rather have one of those article agents out there working for you 24/7, or would you rather have two, or would you rather have three? Which would you rather have? One of them, two of them, or three of them? Do the math.
That's not saying that you write bad stuff.
As a matter of fact, in some ways it's harder to write a great quality article in less words.
You have to cut away the fluff and only leave what absolutely needs to be there.
For some of you, this will free you up.
For some of you it might frighten you at first, then it'll free you up.
You've got to forget a lot of what you were taught in school about writing.
The way I like to say it is your English teacher is not here, and if you're as old as I am, your English teacher may even be dead.
They're not here.
Many of us were taught to write at length, especially if you come from an academic background or another background like that.
So I get a lot of newbies that are writing 1,000-, 1,500-, 2,500-word articles.
That is immensely too long for the internet.
When you write an article for the internet, the optimum length is between 300-500 words.
Now why you need to get excited about that is that's not a lot of words when you break it down into chunks.
If you wrote a 7 tips article, how many words would that need to per tip to get in that range? 50 words per tip? You're in that range of 300-500.
Here's why.
You could write one 1,000-word article, submit it to the article directories, and have it out there working for you.
In your resource box you could have two or three links - let's just say three - linking back to your website or blog, back to your information.
And that's great! You've got one article out there and three links.
What I recommend is that you take that 1,000-word article and break it down into two 500-word articles or even three 350-word articles.
Do the math, folks.
Would you rather have one article agent out there working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? And what I mean by that - because I'll often check my stats at EzineArticles.
com before I go to bed at night.
I'll see how many views I've got and how many URL click-throughs.
That means how many people have clicked through on the resource box to come back to my sites.
Then when I get up in the morning, sometimes 4, sometimes 6, sometimes 8 hours later (if I'm really tired), while I was sleeping, all around the world people are reading those articles and clicking through to my websites.
Then it happens all day every day.
Now would you rather have one of those article agents out there working for you 24/7, or would you rather have two, or would you rather have three? Which would you rather have? One of them, two of them, or three of them? Do the math.
That's not saying that you write bad stuff.
As a matter of fact, in some ways it's harder to write a great quality article in less words.
You have to cut away the fluff and only leave what absolutely needs to be there.