I’ve never built a house.
But I have a vague idea of what’s involved.
Specifically that a house is built in steps.
You can’t put on a roof without walls, right?
Yet, not everything must be done in a particular order. You could put roof shingles on before siding or vice versa.
This is my approach to building websites AND constructing articles.
Many aspects build on one another but you have plenty of wiggle room as to how you go about adding content and constructing articles.
Today I want to restrict this analogy to writing an article.
I write articles nearly every day. I enjoy it.
Some articles I free-flow like most of these emails.
Other articles I meticulously plan out every aspect. Normally I plan it out as I write it, but each section is carefully considered.
I layer it.
I bust out my usual suite of tools such as Ahrefs, Answerthepublic.com, keywordshitter.com, Frase.io, and my brain.
I usually kick off writing by listing out the sub-headings which is really just an outline.
TIP: Once you have a detailed outline, articles write themselves.
I come up with sub-headings via KW research and my brain. I just rifle out questions I have about the topic. I use KW research tools to find additional content that should be added (I can’t think of it all).
Once my outline is done, I start writing. I love this part.
I try to have fun with the writing. I kick off every section as personable as I can. When humor strikes, I add it.
For every section in the article, I consider how I can make it interesting. Often these are boring topics so I have to get creative.
As I fill in the sections, I may move sections around.
There’s no magic formula for ordering an article. I use my best judgment. I put myself in the readers’ shoes and try to put the most salient info at the top.
The most salient info is that which addresses the topic (title) the best.
Throughout the process, I run every included long tail keyword in Ahrefs, Answerthepublic.com, and keywordshitter looking for additional KWs (sub-topics).
When nothing new arises, there is nothing else to add. Often during the KW research process, I find topics that are better as stand-alone articles. I add them to my KW research list.
Soon the writing is done as well.
Then it’s time to fine-tune the article – the interior design.
Usually, by that point, I have 1,000 to 3,000 words. In rare cases more than 3K words.
Fine-tuning involves:
- Finding and inserting images (including alt text and sometimes captions if they help visitors).
- Proofreading
- Writing a great introduction
- Looking up any statistics or data I can include
- Tweaking the title
- Inserting links to other articles on my site and/or attribution links
- Inserting the table of contents
- Creating charts applicable to any data (I don’t do this for every article)
- Shortening the URL slug to the keywords
- Creating and insert any applicable schema markup
Before publishing, I preview it on the front end just to make sure it looks good.
Then it’s GO TIME. I get to click “Publish”; an action I still relish to this day.
I never know how an article will shape up
I’ve written thousands of articles over the years.
To this day I never really know how it’s going to shape up. As I outline, research, and write, the article evolves. I actually enjoy this.
I get a kick out of uncovering sub-topics and then turning that into great content.
I also enjoy finding the perfect image, illustration, or creating the ideal chart for my articles.
Just the other day I started what I thought would be a straightforward article and it ended up including topics and content I had no idea about. I also found a terrific illustration on Shutterstock as well as an informative image on Amazon (which I embedded via the AMZ Image plugin).
TIP: Some Amazon merchants have some super helpful images that not only promote the product but inform readers.
For another recent article that I was updating (it’s getting a ton of traffic so I wanted to make it better), I discovered a major missing piece of info to add. Fortunately, I had used the service and so I added something very, very helpful along with some great images. I expect that article should perform even better. That was quite a coup.
And yet another article I wrote from scratch presented some opportunities to use images I had obtained permission to use from other websites that turned it into what I consider the best write-up on the topic.
Digging for opportunities
The entire article writing process to me is an exercise in looking for opportunities. That’s what makes it so fun. Yes, it can be tedious. Some articles take more than a day to write (not often but it happens). But each time I find something other sites don’t offer, it’s a little win.
Little wins add up to big wins.
What started out as a small starter home turns into a lavish mansion.
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
