While nothing new in 2021, sponsored articles are still hugely popular. However, creating a quality text is not easy and requires not only intuition, but also knowledge and skills. How to write a great article that will attract your audience? What to pay attention to so that it is noticed and appreciated? You will find the answer to these questions in the article below!

What is a Sponsored Article?

A sponsored article is content published on external websites that develops a specific topic. This is one of the better ways to promote your online business and an important part of your marketing strategy that brings many benefits. It is primarily a great alternative to the ubiquitous paid advertising. It does not attack the recipient, but attracts them, offering quality content. Thanks to it, the recipient can expand their knowledge or receive other specific benefits from reading.

Creating high-quality text attractive to the recipient allows you to gain higher positions in search results. You should take care of substantive content and naturally placed linking. It cannot turn into an advertising banner!

Sponsored article? Who needs it …

If you are still wondering whether it is worth investing in sponsored articles, the answer is a post – definitely yes! Here are some examples of the real benefits of publishing sponsored articles:

Higher position in the search engine – using linking to the landing page and ensuring a good selection of publication places will help you rank higher! The more quality content you publish on websites with good SEO parameters, the more trust you gain in Google’s algorithm. Let yourself be liked!

Expanding knowledge on a specific topic – thanks to the articles, you can focus on a selected issue and describe it extensively. Of course, the level of advancement of the content depends on the target group. Remember to use the content further. If you create content for people who are familiar with the topic from scratch, you can not only attract completely new audiences to your website, but also use it as part of your knowledge base building strategy, enabling self-service. You can modify some texts, add more advanced statistics and topics, and send them to specialists.

Building a brand image – by creating quality content and reaching new recipients, you build the image of a specialist. Present your company from a professional side and show that you are the best in the industry!

The ability to reach a specific target group – by selecting the appropriate pages on which you will place your articles, you will reach a group of people interested in the topic. Therefore, it is important that the text matches the content on the publication’s landing pages. The audience should be attracted by the topic, and the content should encourage them to read the entire article. It will only be possible if we direct the text to the appropriate audience interested in the topic.

Driving traffic to the landing page – the articles are designed to support the sales process. Therefore, their task is to attract potential customers to the website. The content of the article should contain an unobtrusive offer or description of the product. However, it should be remembered that no advertising elements cannot dominate the substantive content!

Building brand recognition – by publishing articles on other websites that are popular with your target group, you can gain more and more recognition.

Content for publication in social media – you have no idea for valuable posts in social media? The content of sponsored articles comes to the rescue. As we mentioned, it’s worth using them further, and one way is to create posts on your brand’s social media. You can share links to the publication or use content elements, e.g. by developing new issues or creating a series of posts on the topic described in the article.

You already know what for, now find out HOW! Learn the 5 best practices for writing sponsored articles.

Select a group of recipients and set a goal

Before you start writing an article, be sure to ask yourself the following questions: what is the purpose of writing it? Who is it to reach? What are the benefits for the recipient to bring its content?

Remember that the goal and target group complement each other.

If your goal is to present a specific issue from A to Z, then direct the content to people without specialist knowledge, but interested in the topic. However, if you want to reach professionals, the content must contain specific content, issues and statistics. In creating a strategy, you can use tools such as the content matrix. They will help you effectively choose both the target group and set a goal.

It is also important to choose the right topic! It must carry interesting information that will attract audiences. It is worth looking for inspiration in current trends or industry news. You can also track what a specific audience is looking for or collect information on Facebook groups or online forums devoted to specific topics.

Remember that you are creating the text for the recipient

Once you’ve established your audience and purpose, and started writing your article, note that you’re writing it for the reader. It must be properly adjusted to the recipient’s knowledge, but the reading itself is also supposed to give him specific benefits! It is not only a way to advertise your company, but also valuable content.

The language should suit the reader. Before you start writing, do a thorough research and prepare valuable information or statistics. The more time you spend on it, the more substantive and valuable the text you will write.

Don’t stretch the topic

None of us like to stretch the topic unnecessarily. Imagine a conference where each speaker omits the topic and you expect specific and practical advice. You wouldn’t be particularly happy about that. It is the same with readers, even those who learn a given topic from scratch. Remember that the recipient’s time is extremely valuable. There is nothing worse than the disappointment of a reader who takes a long time to read the article and does not learn from it.

Divide the article appropriately

A good sponsored article consists of several elements:

Title
This is the first moment of a potential reader contact with the article, therefore it is extremely important. Its purpose is, above all, to attract the audience and encourage them to read! So how do you make it catchy?
– It should be the essence of your article, so keep it short;
– Use emotionally marked adjectives;
– If your article is a set of tips or instructions, use the power of the word “how”;
– Catch the reader by using a strong phrase such as “check it out!”, “Don’t be fooled!”;
– It should show the value of your article and refer to the benefits of reading it;
– Include in it a phrase to the target group, for example, “Marketing toolkit for 2021”.

Lead
This is a brief summary of all the elements that will be included in the article. This is the right place to present the benefits of reading the article. It is worth using phrases and information that will convince the recipient that this content is exactly what he was looking for.

Introduction
Here you can describe a topic in more detail and give reasons why it describes a specific topic. This is a good time to present statistics or gather knowledge on the subject so far. Still, this element should be short and refer to the real needs of the recipient, making him aware of the benefits of reading the article below.

Development
This is the place where you can answer all your questions and dispel any doubts on a specific topic. Show off your knowledge! Remember to diversify the content a bit by weaving graphics and dividing the content with subheadings. You cannot let the reader be overwhelmed by a wall of text.

Summary
Finally, it is worth collecting all the information in the form of a short summary. It is also a moment to draw conclusions or discuss the issue.

Choose your place of publication well

As we know, linking is of great importance in positioning. Until recently, it was enough to invest in as many publications as possible, in various places. However, that all changed with Google’s 2012 update called Penguin, which was designed to protect against low-quality linking. It is a pity, therefore, to waste time publishing low-value content on equally weak websites, unrelated to the subject of the article. According to Ahrefs, almost 91% of websites do not have any organic traffic. This is why investing in backlinks is so important. So what parameters of the pages should we take into account when choosing the place of publication?

– visibility in the search engine – tools such as SEMSTORM or Senuto will help us in this,
– number and traffic of unique users – this data will be obtained thanks to Google Analytics,
– domain link profile – this will be assessed using Majestic and Ahrefs tools.

It is also worth looking at the quality of content published by a given brand, or the ratio of outbound to inbound links.

Summary

Sponsored articles are an essential part of your marketing strategy. It is an unobtrusive way of advertising that brings many other benefits at the same time. Good article writing practices will help you create quality content that will attract your audience.

It is important to choose the target audience and the purpose of your text well. Thanks to this, you will know how to write and to whom to direct the content. Dividing the article properly will help to structure it and ensure a smooth transition for the reader through the text.

Results before positioning

The client in question runs an online store where he sells sockets, switches, cables, wires, extension cords, installation boxes, insulating tapes and other products used in electrical works. He signed a SEO contract with us in June 2019, opting for a budget of $ 1,400 per month. When we started SEO activities, the client’s website appeared in 18 phrases in TOP3 and 145 phrases in TOP10, while in TOP50 there were less than 1000 phrases. So it cannot be said that we started from scratch – the website was visible in the search engine and also had organic traffic. However, the audit showed us that the website has the potential to generate even more search engine hits and gain better places for industry phrases.

The first year of cooperation

During the audit, we noticed that the client’s website is available at two addresses, which would be a significant difficulty in positioning, among others due to duplicate content. At the beginning of the cooperation, permanent redirects to one of the addresses were introduced, thanks to which the problem was quickly removed and opened the way to new activities.

In the next stage, we focused on the most urgent issue, i.e. optimizing the pages of the most important product categories by adding comprehensive descriptions. We chose the best key phrases for each of them and placed them in the texts to increase the probability that the page will be high in the search results for these keywords. We have also determined the optimal H1 headings and meta titles, and we took care of the appropriate length of the text for each subpage. This brought the first signs of increased visibility, which showed that the chosen positioning strategy was working. The website appeared on 38 phrases in TOP3, 387 phrases in TOP10 and 1795 phrases in TOP50.

Second year of cooperation

After a year of cooperation, the client decided to extend the SEO contract and additionally increase the budget to $ 1,800 a month. As the most urgent changes have already been implemented, we focused on increasing website traffic with blog articles. We focused on extensive, valuable texts containing phrases loosely related to the client’s activity, which we could not implement in the category descriptions. This resulted in a significant increase in the number of phrases in top positions, and thus an increase in the visibility of the customer’s website, which translated into greater brand recognition. The client also agreed to expand the website with detailed categories that were optimized for long tail phrases. Thanks to this, we were able to fight the competition for even more keywords relevant in the industry.

The strategy based on extending the website with high-quality texts brought particularly noticeable effects in May this year, when the Google algorithm was updated. Our observations show that as a result, pages with a large amount of unique content recorded increases, and sites with little text or duplicate content fell in the ranking (e.g. product descriptions taken from manufacturers’ websites). This change confirmed our predictions about the future of positioning, and although it did not echo widely in the industry, it had a significant impact on a large number of websites, especially online stores. This is shown by the results achieved by our client:
– TOP3 – 218 phrases,
– TOP10 – 1099 phrases,
– TOP50 – 4656 phrases.

What is the conclusion of this? Positioning requires not only knowledge and experience, but also tracking trends so that updating algorithms, instead of destroying the effects of work, help to climb higher and higher positions.