Blueprinting your articles is extremely important for quality content and search engine optimization. As with blogs, articles should also contain several must-haves for maximum readership. Don’t miss any one of these elements or your article, although with great information and new insight, could suffer from being lost with low quality content and websites.
Title
The very first thing your article needs to have is a clear, concise title that specifically explains what a reader will find in the article. For example, this article is titled “Elements of an Article”, and contains information of what an article should contain. A title needs only a few words and needs to contain keywords that are related to your article.
Summary
The second element of an article should be a summary. This is a one to three sentence paragraph that explains a little more what the article is about. This section should also contain keywords, as search engine algorithms will pick them up. This will also give your reader a small synopsis of the content in your article so they can better understand if the information you are providing is information they want to know more about.
Main Body
The main body is the meat of your article. This section needs to be rich with detailed, easy to read information. You should use the keywords that were in your title and summary and expand on the information you provided in the summary. Don’t repeat verbatim what your summary explained, and be sure you are using a responsible amount of keywords. Crawl bots set out by search engines will “trash” articles that are keyword stuffed, as these types of articles are often seen as spam.
Subheadings
Inside the main body of your article you should include subheadings. Not only does this benefit readers to find specific information they might be looking for within your articles, but this is a SEO tool that should be taken advantage of. Break your article into three or more sections and stick to those topics within those subheadings. For example, if you are writing an article about a nonprofit organization, you might break your article into subheadings into what the organization is about, when the organization was established, who the organization benefits, and how the organization has impacted the world, using keywords that someone might use to find your information.
Conclusion
Without trying to sound redundant, you must conclude and recap the information that you provided within the main body of your article. This is not a repeat of your summary, and still needs to contain keywords, but new keywords do not need to be introduced. Restate the entire main idea in your final thoughts and come to a closure to end the article.
Links
There are two types of links you can include in your articles. The first type is linking to other sites that will provide more in depth information on a certain topic within your article. This is a great way for search engines to find you. The second type of links is called back linking. If you have previously written articles that contain information relevant to the information in your present article, you can back link it. This is a great SEO tool for readers to click on older articles and will gain readership. Likewise, you can go back and edit your older articles with relevant information and link to newer articles you have written.
Images
If you choose images from free web hosting sites (such as morguefile) that are relevant to your blogs, search engines are likely to pick them up. Your captions should include keywords you used in your article for search engine optimization. Also, many articles and content sites capture readers by just their images, so find images that are not only relevant, but that will also catch a reader’s eye to find out more about what information your article contains.
Every article should contain these elements if your goal is to capture readership and keep an audience. If your main goal is search engine optimization, focus on aspects of your article that will rank your content as high quality. If you doubt the quality of your article, you can have a fellow writer or editor look over and proofread your information.
Emily Sutherlin - Emily has been writing on a variety of topics since 2007. She uses only the most credible sources to bring information to her readers.
