Get More Page Views for Your Article

I currently write for two online publishers who offer payments based on the popularity of each article that they publish. Digital Journal pays based on some secret formula largely based on the number of votes your article gets from readers. Associated Content pays out strictly by the number of people who read your article. Sometimes, Associated Content will also offer an "up front" bonus payment, but if you apply for this it may take up to two weeks for the article to be evaluated and assigned a cash value. News is the exception, news articles are generally reviewed within 24-48 hours since they are often time-sensitive, but are limited to a $4 up front payment plus page view royalties. For both Digital Journal and Associated Content, it is important to get as many people to read your article as possible. This article will discuss my experience with what works and what doesn't.

How to Make Your Article Popular

No matter how carefully I follow my own advice, some of my articles still get very few page views. For example, this one, Iraq to British Troops: Go Home, received only 79 page views in the first three days of its publication. This article, Follow Hurricane Ike's Projected Path, on the other hand has received well in excess of 50,000 page views and has netted me something around $90 for that one article. There are a lot of reasons why some articles are more popular than others and, for me at least, it's nearly impossible to predict. However, using a common set of good practices with everything you write can help increase the likelihood of an article soaring off the popularity charts.

Write Early, Write Often

Of course, the first rule is to write often. I write every single day though, not always for the same websites. I have a number of clients and websites that pay fixed fees for a certain number of requested articles each week, and these are my first priorities since the income is higher and more predictable and I have entered into specific agreements with these clients. For sites that pay by popularity, publishing often not only increases the likelihood of a highly popular article, but adds to your cumulative total even if the articles are only of mild popularity.

Finding Popular Topics

What makes an article popular? Of course, no matter how many people find your article, they have to decide to click on it and read it for you to get credit for a page view. The best way to do that is to choosetopics that are likely to be interesting to a large number of people. What exactly constitutes interesting, of course, can be a very subjective judgment. I get that wrong quite often. I thought this article about people eating bugs and a trendy California restaurant that serves more than half a dozen different insect dishes would be very interesting, but in the almost three months since it was published, it has received only 108 page views. Go figure. Again, writing more often means you'll be publishing more articles that other people find interesting. You can look around the web and see what topics are popular on blogs and other timely and topical websites to try to figure out what will interest readers.

The Importance of a Good Title

Once you've published an article on an interesting topic, expect to have competition. In other words, someone searching the web for information on a particular topic will be presented with a list of articles and websites on that topic. Why should they click yours? Choosing a catchy and informative title is the key to capturing that reader's interest and getting them to choose your article instead of all the rest. The introductory text is important, too, but the title is going to have the most influence. When selecting a title, think about the reader. Who is likely to be searching for information on this topic? What do they hope to find? You title should let them know what they will find by clicking on your article from a search engine list. It should also let them know that it's going to be entertaining/ informative/ insightful/ funny/ opinionated or whatever the intent of the article happens to be. For example, The Monogamy Gene: Wired to Cheat? was fairly popular and still draws a decent number of page views each week even though it was published a month and a half ago. The title first gives the general topic, then tells the reader the approach the article will take. This is an article discussing the influence of our genetic make-up on our ability to form lasting monogamous relationships and which examines the question of whether people cheat because they can't help it. One of my worst titles was A Review of the Film Iron Man. While it very clearly tells the reader what the article is about, it does not offer any reason for the reader to choose this article over hundreds of others on the topic. The title is dry, bland, generic and uninteresting. This was one of my earliest attempts at Associated Content, published on June 11^th, less than two weeks after I signed up. Since then it has attracted only nine readers, including my wife and my mother. The review itself is interesting enough, I thought, but the title killed it.

Writing for the Web is Different than What you Learned in School

Having the best title in the world won't do you any good if nobody sees that title. To attract large numbers of readers, you must write your web article in such a way as to maximize its search engine ranking potential. The title is again a big factor, especially at Associated Content where the first 30 odd characters of the title are also incorporated into the URL. The title should include the search term or terms for which you want high rank within the first 34 or so characters no matter where it is published. Search engine ranking algorithms are company secrets and change frequently, but there are some things that seems to work. A relevant title that mirrors likely search phrases is one. Second, use the desired search phrase(s) again very early in the article. The first sentence is good. The first paragraph should be virtually littered with key search terms that are relevant to your topic. When we learn to write, we are usually taught to seek out synonyms and creative ways to avoid repetition so repetition comes hard to some writers, myself included. However, it is possible to write well while using high densities of your key search terms, and it is imperative to get your article ranked highly on search engines. Here's an example that illustrates many of these points. The search terms for which I was aiming are Ryugyong Hotel, Hotel of Doom, and Worst Building in the World, in order of priority. Two of those phrases are in the first 34 characters of the title and consequently, the URL. I think there are ten instances of those phrases in the first paragraph. I use a free web tool called textalyser.net to help me calculate the correct number of usages of key phrases for search engine optimization. No one knows for sure, but the consensus is that a density of 3-6% of the article's text should be the keyword or keyword phrase. The Ryugyong Hotel article meets that measure. If you search Google for Hotel of Doom, you will see this article listed prominently on the first page even months after publishing. It was ranked in the top one or two spots for Ryugyong Hotel in the Google News search tab when it was published. I think despite the high usage of the key terms, the article flows well and is quite readable. If your article is on the 23^rdpage of search results, it doesn't matter how well it flows, nobody will find it or read it.

Developing Community Interest and Cultivating Links

So you've written your title and article to make it easy to find and to attract readers, what else can you do? Another key component of search engine ranking is community interest. In other words, to other related websites, blogs and web communities find your article interesting enough to link to it. If you have many incoming links pointing to your article it will be ranked higher in the search engines. The more popular the site from which your article is linked, the greater the effect will be. Using sites like Digg, Propeller, Yahoo Buzz and the others to promote your article gives you links from popular sites. Often the Digg page with your article title will show up with a higher Google rank than your complete article on Associated Content. This leads to more visibility and more page views. Take advantage of the sharing buttons provided by Associated Content, Digital Journal or whatever sites you write for. If you read an article you like, help out the author by using the share buttons as well. Links from your personal blog, website or other web source (even from within your own articles as I have done in this one) will help the linked story be ranked higher. Another benefit is that these links provide more ways to get your story in front of different audiences. Often people click on an interesting title they might find while surfing through one of these community sites.

Make Yourself Heard

Finally, promote your own work any way you can. You get paid when people read your article. If you have a Facebook page, include an RSS feed of your most recent articles, shout to your friends when you have a new article they might like, join in conversations on community pages about the topics you've written on and mention that you wrote an article about it. Email friends and family with a link to your articles. Get people to read your articles any way you can (ethically, of course). Don't spam people, but do take advantage of good personal relationships. Encourage people to subscribe to your articles.

The Importance of Writing Well

Ok, I know I said "finally" in the previous paragraph, but there's one more important thing I want to mention. Good writing attracts readers, bad writing sends them away. Make sure the quality of your content represents your best effort. Proofread, or have someone else proofread your work before you publish it. A well-written article is much more likely to be linked from other sites by interested readers, and is much more likely to result in readers searching through your other articles to read more of your work.

Note: Feel free to leave links to other sources of writing advice in the message board below.