How to Write Content that Sells

After having a couple articles rejected by the Associated Content (AC) Editors, I was feeling a little out of sorts. "What is it that they're looking for?" I asked myself in frustration.

I write well. I do my research. I proof read for grammar, spelling and syntax. My word count is right on target. So what exactly is the problem?

After doing some research, I realized that the problem was ME. It was my mindset and approach. I was writing to please myself. While that probably works well for Stephen King, it obviously wasn't working for me. A little research (and soul searching) revealed the answers to my dilemma.

If you want to write content that sells everytime, here are a couple things to keep in mind:

First, remember that when it comes to writing for AC, the bottom line is the bottom line. In other words, AC is a business and their goal is to make money. Like any business, they have to meet and respond to consumer demand. If you want to make money as an AC content producer, you have to approach this as a business person. You're not writing for AC just to express your innermost feelings or talk about your own interests. You have to develop high quality content that helps AC meet consumer demand.

If you want to make any real money writing for AC, you have to write about the things that interest John Q. Public. Sometimes that means writing about things that bore you to tears. But that happens in any job. Suck it up and move on.

How are you supposed to know what other people want to read about? Do your research.

Take a look at the MSN homepage. MSN is one of the top ten websites in the United States. The links on the homepage give you a good idea of what people want to read about.

Go to the Yahoo! Buzz Index to find out what people are searching for on Yahoo! Their top search list is updated hourly. The Yahoo! search engine is second only to Google in popularity.

Google offers several tools to help you determine the most popular internet searches. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool lets you enter keywords and gives you feedback about how frequently people search for those keywords and closely associated terms. Google Trends and Google Zeitgeist let you examine their search database to determine which search terms are most popular within a given time frame, geographic region or language.

Select a topic, expand on it and add your own perspective. AC Producer Jillita Horton does an excellent job of this. Over the past couple weeks, OctoMom Nadya Suleman has been all over the news. Horton has turned this story into a little gold mine by expanding on the OctoMom story - Who does she look like? Who was the sperm donor? Does she have any common sense? When was the last time she had sex? How much money has she received? Is she mentally ill? What is the correct pronunciation of her name?

Do you really think that Ms. Horton is totally enthralled by the smallest details of Nadya Suleman's poor, pathetic life? No, of course not. But Ms. Horton is a business person as well as a writer and she knows what type of content will sell.

Secondly, take some time to learn about search engine optimization and keyword density. You don't have to be an expert - I'm sure AC already has a team of experts to deal with this. But if you understand the basic principles, you'll do a better job of writing content that meets their requirements.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of customizing your content to make it search engine friendly. The goal, of course, is to get the highest search engine ranking possible.

Once you identify a topic, choose one primary keyword and two or three closely related secondary keywords to include throughout the article. The secondary keywords help the search engines understand what your article is really about. For example, if you're writing an article about octuplets, then octuplets will obviously be your primary keyword. But you'll also want to include secondary keyword terms like fertility, multiple births, premature births, babies, high risk pregnancy. Get the picture? The secondary keywords help to clarify and qualify your content for the search engines.

When writing content for the internet, most SEO experts recommend a keyword density of 3 to 7 percent for primary keywords (approximately 3 to 7 keywords for every hundred words in the article) and 1 to 3 percent for secondary keywords.

Be sure to place your primary keywords in the title, summary and headings of your article. Also try to include your keywords in the first sentence of a paragraph near the top of your article. Keywords located in these areas will be more important than keywords located in the last paragraph of the article.

Keep your article tight and focused. If you're going to write about OctoMom Nadya Suleman don't go wandering into a general discourse about baby formula.

Finally, don't compromise the quality of your writing just to try and satisfy the search engines. If you're a serious writer devoted to high quality content, these tips will certainly help your sales and views. But there's nothing worse than a poorly written article that shamelessly panders to the search engines. Remember the reader.