How to write awesome articles
(when you haven’t a clue what you’re writing about)

Want to write REALLY AWESOME articles when you haven’t a clue what to write about? Of course you do…  Help yourself to my article writing tips:

Love it or loathe it, article writing can be hard if you’re clueless about the topic.  It’s difficult to educate people on a product or service if you’ve never used it!  Yet article writing is an integral part of SEO and we all have to do it.

So, if you’re in the latter category and you loathe article writing, here are a few REALLY QUICK tips that will help you learn to love it:

Finding a topic to write about:

The Google Wonder Wheel:
Struggling to find a good topic for your article? Meet the Google Wonder Wheel.

(Never heard of it? This video explains all!)

Simply type your search term into the Wonder Wheel and click through the various topics.  Note down interesting topics, for example, if you’re keyword is ‘cake decorating’ and you saw the topic ‘basketball cake,’ it could prompt you to write several articles on cake decorating ideas for various sports.

Amazon’s Look Inside Feature:
Try searching through Amazon’s books.  Find a book with the ‘look inside’ facility and sneak a peak at the chapter breakdown.  Try researching one or more of the chapters for your article!

Forming a good title for your article:

Just like I mentioned before, using other people’s experiences can really help you write good copy.  It can help you form great titles for your articles too:

Question and Answer Websites:
Visit Google, type in your topic and then hit the ‘More’ button on the left.  Once the menu drops down, click ‘Discussions’ and then ‘Q&A’ (just like in the image on the right!)

You should now have access to hundreds of questions, which people have asked about your topic.  Go and answer all of those questions in your articles!

Ask.com:
Ask Jeeves a question and on the right-hand side he’ll give you a whole selection of other questions too.  Often these make fantastic article titles!

Researching your article:

Now begins the hard part, right?  Wikipedia is obviously a first choice for many, but why regurgitate the same content that hundreds of other webmasters have paraphrased too?

Instead, write something useful by searching for new content in the following places:

• Google books: Flick through the books in Google’s index to find great material to write about.
• Google scholar: Find great articles, legal documents and patents from a search.   Dig into this material for interesting facts or points of view to write about!
• Your local library: If you have the time, go and explore books that your competitors are too lazy to go and find!

Writing your article:

Ah, now the even harder part.

Structure:
Don’t even think about writing your article until you’ve drafted a structure.

Throw a couple of headings down on a piece of paper and work out where all your research fits into these headings.  I like to scribble my research onto paper and then cross them off my notepad as I type up my article.  It’s very satisfying!

Finally, if you’d like to write your article quicker, try this article from Copyblogger: How to write an article in 20 minutes. Enjoy!!!

I hope these quick tips have helped you, let me know in the comments!  And, if you have any tips to share just let me know!