Generally speaking, I am against micro-managing the writing process for writers. As a writer, I want you to feel the freedom to write the best piece of content you can without feeling restricted by ‘writing guidelines.’
However, some general guidelines when it comes to structure and formatting are necessary, especially when it comes to making articles more SEO friendly.
Here are some guidelines on how to write and format articles for Zenful Hiking:
Create The Outline
After choosing a topic, begin by researching potential sub-headings.
This is done by searching your topic title in Google. Check the ‘People Also Ask’ as well as the ‘Related Searches’.
People also ask can usually be found toward the top of the search results page, typically after the first or second search result.
Related Searches can be found at the bottom of the search results page.
Any of these questions and/or related searches that would support your topic should be included as a sub-heading in your article.
You don’t have to force anything that doesn’t make sense, but this should be your first step in building the outline of your article.
We are the Experts
Remember that you are the expert. People are coming to Zenful Hiking to get answers to their hiking questions. Make sure to choose articles that you can write on with the necessary knowledge and experience to help the person asking the question.
I encourage you to include personal notes/stories of your own hikes when appropriate for the article.
Keep paragraphs short and sweet (usually never more than 3 sentences)
This one took some time for me to get used to personally, but most people get overwhelmed quite easily by huge walls of text, especially when reading on their phones.
1 to 3 sentence paragraphs keep readers engaged longer and give breaks to allow for advertising which, love it or hate it, is how we all get paid.
Length of Content
While most articles will generally fall in the 1000-1500 words range, I do not have a set standard for how long an article needs to be. Write what you feel completely covers the topic. If that ends up being 800 words or 2000 words, I’m okay with that.
At the end of the day, ask yourself if you’d be happy with the content if you were the one that Google’d your topic question and your article was the one you found.
Do NOT Plagiarize
I feel like this is obvious, but do NOT plagiarize ever, for any reason.
All content must be original.
Doing research for your topic is fine (and encouraged), but if you use any specific statistics, quotes, etc. make sure that you cite the source by adding the direct link within the text itself.
Ask if you have questions
Finally, I’m always here to help. If you have any questions or are unclear on anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask.
