There is so much rubbish on the Internet today. Every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks that if they start a blog they are going to get heaps of traffic and consequently make money. Well they may be able to get a trickle but if they don’t have good content in their blog they are not going to get repeat visitors, email sign ups, good reviews, product conversions. So how do you go about creating good content and what actually is good content?

First of all you must put yourself into your visitors shoes. Ask yourself what your visitor is looking for.

Mostly it is information, so writing a rubbish article is not going to help them.

Remember that most people skim over whatever they see in front of them so you must get their attention in the first few seconds of them opening up your page.

Here are a few guidelines for creating content that will help your readers:

• Give your visitor information, after all it is for facts that readers have come to your site for.
• Check that you have your facts straight.
• Get info from http://www.wikipedia.org/ and specialist sites
• Keep it short, 500-600 words unless it’s a complex subject.
• Be topical, watch the news.
• Be funny if it suits your kind of blog.
• Be controversial if you don’t mind having some possible adverse feedback and you want to attract attention.
• Tell it as it is. Imagine you are talking to your reader.
• Write it for your reader not the search engines. Don’t keyword stuff the article.
• Use your main keyword in the heading and in the first and possibly last paragraph.
• Make it look good
• You have to keep your visitors interest so make your article look inviting.
• Create impact with a good header, good colors, font etc.
• Use bullet points or numbers as people love lists. This makes it easy on the eye and much easier to read.
• Highlight sections or phrases within the text.
• Bold the sub headings.
• Don’t cram everything together. Open it up with more white space.
• Use images to catch the reader’s eye and imagination. You can get free images from sxc.hu or for a greater selection you can pay a minimal amount for images from istockphoto.com
• Add diagrams, charts and/or tables if applicable. Take screenshots, put to right size and insert into article.
• If you are using Adsense, put in smaller blocks either a banner at the end or use the plugin Adsense de luxe to wrap text around the content. In other words do not make Adsense look like it’s the reason for the articles existence. Be subtle.
• Make use of spell check for grammar, spelling and punctuation.

About the author: Jaks Lloyd is an ASC Elite coach at the ASC and author of eyebeautytips.com, otexercise.com and preciousmetalinvestment.com