My Definition Of An Article

bysherylmartin

965 followers

12 years ago

Over the past few days, I have gotten several questions about content creation. To give greater clarity, I have decided to post my "Internal Content Creation Standards" document as a blog post.

1. 3 Titles - 1 primary title (52 Characters Including Spaces) and 2 additional titles
2. Word count - Minimum of 650 words (not including the intro and conclusion paragraphs)
3. Paragraph Count - Minimum of 6 paragraphs
4. Relevant subheadings for each paragraph
5. Introduction paragraph *see information below
6. Conclusion paragraph **see information below
7. Simple Excerpt - 50 words and no more than 170 characters (no html allowed)
8. Advanced Excerpt - 50 words, 2 paragraphs and no more than 170 characters (has

tags)
9. Meta description - 155 character max; try to get as close to the character max as possible

* A good intro paragraph meets the following criteria:

- Gives a clear idea of what the following article is about
- Gives examples of what the reader is about to learn
- Illustrates a benefit the reader will receive from the article

** A good conclusion paragraph meets the following criteria:

- Reminds the reader of the article's main topic
- Provides examples of what the reader just learned
- Gives the reader an idea of what they can now do with this information

This is the current standard that my team is using to created content every day. In my weekly reports, I list how much content is created each day. All of that content is created according to the criteria outlined in this article. I hope this gives greater clarity to those of you who have asked questions regarding content creation processes and quality assurance.

Sheryl