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If there’s one thing you can do to grow your site more quickly, it’s to produce more content. The problem of course is that writing articles takes time.
For some of us, writing a 1,000 word post is a piece of cake, while for others, it can be a slow grind. While some people are simply faster than others at writing, all of us can create content more quickly by following a simple process.
In this post, I’m going to share the simple steps I follow every time I write an article. This process helps me to consistently produce a 1,000 word post, with images and links, in under an hour.
1 – Prepare
One of my biggest keys to producing an article quickly is to make sure that I understand the topic and that I have a goal in mind for the post.
Before you type the very first word of your article, you should already know what keyword you’re targeting and have a general idea of the total word count you’re aiming for. I do these steps in bulk as I’m finding keywords and analyzing competition, so I don’t consider them part of the writing process.
With your keyword and word count in mind, next, you need to gain some baseline knowledge about the topic. In the perfect world, you should write about topics that you already have some familiarity with, then outsource the rest (see which services we use). This will drastically shorten the amount of time it takes to create a post.
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If you don’t have a thorough understanding of the topic already, type your keyword into Google Search and take a look at the results. Open up the top 5-10 results that match your search into new tabs.
Now, quickly browse through each article, paying special attention to the headings. Your next step will be to create an outline, so you’re goal here is to figure out how to outline your article.
After spending 10-15 minutes browsing through the articles, move on to the next step. Make sure to keep those tabs open so you can come back to them later on.
2 – Create an Outline
Once you’ve finished your initial research, the next step is to create an outline for your article. This is another big part of speeding up the writing process.
Based on either your existing knowledge of the topic or what you saw in the competing articles that you looked through, add five or more headings to your article. The more headings and subheadings you add, the easier it will be to hit your target word count, especially if the word count is high.
Make sure the very last heading is for your outro. This can be labeled something like Final Thoughts, In Closing, In Summary, etc.
3 – Fill in the Blanks
Now that you have your article outlined, you can start to write the actual content of your article. First, write the intro. Aim for 150-300 words, whatever makes the most sense for your topic.
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Try to add a personal touch to your intro as well. This will help to engage your visitors right away, which will help to keep them on your site longer and lead to better rankings.
Next, if you have a really good feel for what you’re going to write about, go ahead and fill out the outro. The outro will typically summarize the entire post in 2-3 paragraphs.
Finally, write as much text as you feel is necessary below each heading within your post. If you’re aiming for a 1,000 word post and already have an intro and outro with four headings, you’ll likely need less than 200 words per heading.
As you’ll quickly find out, having your article already outlined makes a huge difference in how quickly you can write an article. Adding 100-300 words below each heading is typically a breeze, and you’ll end up over 1,000 words in no time.
If you’re not super familiar with the topic, this is the time to go back to all the tabs that you kept open and research each subtopic as you fill in each heading. Again, the more you already know about a topic, the less time this process will take.
4 – Make It Better
By this point, your article should be just about finished. However, if you want to give it the best chance of ranking well, you’ll want to spice it up just a bit.
First, take a look at your title, if you even have one at this point. Based on the keyword that you’re targeting, create a title that’s better than all of your competitors.
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Next, add any internal and outbound external links to your post. If you already have relevant posts on your site, link to them, ideally using the Link Whisper plugin to make the process quick and easy.
For outbound external links, browse your article and look for anything that’s stated as a fact. Whenever you make statements that are presented as a fact, it’s a good opportunity to link to an external article that proves that point for you.
Linking to external resources is thought to improve your rankings, so this is something worth doing when you make claims within your posts. Linking to high-quality external resources helps Google understand what your article is about.
Lastly, add relevant images to your post. The first, and most important, image is the featured image. After that, try to add roughly three images per 1,000 words.
Images help to break up your content and keep your visitors engaged. In some cases, they can also lead to your article being shared on social media.
Final Thoughts
When starting a niche site, the most important step you can take is to create content. Down the road, you might be able to outsource this task, but early on, it makes the most sense to write your own articles.
While not all of us are expert writers, there are a few simple steps you can take that will help to streamline the process and significantly cut down on the time it takes to produce a post.
By following the steps above for each post you write, you can create content for your site relatively quickly, which will help your site grow faster and free up time for you to focus on other aspects of your business.
