How To Rewrite Articles
Before we start talking about the actual article rewriting process I want to emphasize one point preparation. See, if you plan out what you need to do and collect the tools and materials you need for the rewrite in advance, you’ll be able to save a lot of time doing this. So what do we need to start off with?
- Article Pack
- Keyword research
- A list of ‘related’ keywords (that I’ll tell you how to create just now)
- Related Content
- A few hours to spare
You already have the article pack and the keyword research that comes with it – plus you’ve chalked off the time you think it will take to get this done (I’d estimate around 30 minutes for the prep, and then 5-10 minutes per article).
Related Keywords
The first thing you want to do is create a list of related keywords for your keyword list (taken from the keyword research file). Some prefer to call them synonyms, but this list is more than that (although you can use software to generate a bunch of synonyms for each keyword and dump that in a text file to get you started). Put in synonyms, keyword tangents, product names, and key terms from the niche. When you are brainstorming related words branch sideways to related niches and upwards to the general niche. For example, if I’m rewriting an article on antioxidants I’ll make sure that I use vitamins (related) and health (general) as ‘related’ keywords. You can then these when you are in a rush to rewrite sections of the articles. Makes life a lot easier.
Related Content
Basically, what you want to do is introduce content into your articles apart from the traditional article text. To explain this better, let me define the term “alternate content”.
Related content – information in a different medium. If your site is content site, branch out into images, downloadable reports, audio (podcasts, music), video, search… Makes sense? If not, ask and I’ll elaborate. Before you start rewriting the articles, come up with at least 3 different ways of producing alternate content to support your new VRE site.
Example:
One of the article packs has the parent keyword “learn guitar”. If you were asked to find 3 different things you can add to your site apart from articles on this niche, what would you add? Here are a few ideas:
- Videos – people showing how to ‘handle’ a guitar, how to perform guitar
maintenance, etc. - Music sheets (is that the correct term?)
- Images – not of you and your dog, but of guitars and famous guitar players.
- Guitar sites from around the web
- An online store – sure, you are probably signed up as an affiliate, but why not ‘sell’ the product on your own site (where you have control over the sales process) and send them over to the affiliate only for payment processing and beyond?
- Tips section
- Glossary of terms
- A guitar learning / playing FAQ
This way, not only will you be creating something that is link worthy in your niche, but you will also be helping yourself create internal sources of content that you can add and
link to from your articles.
Where to get this content?
You don’t have to create it yourself. If you do have a background in the niche or can rely on someone else to do this for you cheaply, that’s excellent. If not, you will have to search the Internet for it and get it from somewhere else. Should you copy other people’s material? Absolutely not. Link back where necessary, give credit every single time. If there is content that you cannot copy off someone’s site without running into problems (someone doesn’t want you copying their FAQ and tips), just link to them from your site. You can easily get quality, topical non-royalty images for free (I’ll be adding a resources section soon where I’ll place all the links). If you’re pressed for time, just copy the image from someone’s website and make sure you link back to them and learly give them credit for the image (in my limited view, attribution without commercial use comes under ‘fair use’ – but I’ll check up more on this, and you guys should correct me if I’m wrong – but only facts please). In short, make sure that your VRE website becomes a magnet for your target market – it cannot be all things to all people, but it must be remarkable in a way that attracts attention immediately – and the best way to do that is to provide your visitors with amazing value. Note that this approach will help in three ways:
- Get you more links (and make it easier to get links)
- Get you more affiliate sales (more people coming to your site = more people clicking on affiliate links)
- Get you more visitors from the search engines (Marc’s already talked about using different language versions of the same article as alternate content – what about alternate mediums such as pictures and other stuff?
SEs are going down the road of providing alternatives to their users, you might as well cash in now) It’s up to you to decide how much time you want to spend collecting ‘alternate content’. I would typically spend more than 20 minutes, but only because I have the tendency to focus too much on one site alone. Don’t make that mistake. If you narrow your focus in VRE, you’ll spend too much time tweaking sites and not enough time building new ones. Set yourself a limit to research and find alternate content, and then get on with it. It may seem daunting, but here’s a thought – you know your topic, right? Why not search for the following in Google:
- “keyword” + FAQ
- “keyword” + Glossary or “keyword” + Definitions
- “keyword” + images (search on Google’s image search for this one)
That makes it a lot simpler to pick off content from other sites, and then link to it (or in cases such as definitions and FAQs, use snippets of them. Remember – Time’s money and you should put more effort in promoting the site than in building it.
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