In the last Chapter we looked at two models that you can use when building your own main pages. You should have created your main pages before going any further with this course.

In this chapter, I want to discuss articles again. Now, when I refer to articles, I am not just referring to any old content that draws traffic and gets your Adsense ads exposed to visitors.

I am talking about genuinely useful content that will reinforce your site as useful, add value to the internet, build your reputation, help keep visitors on your site, encourage then to return to your site, and recommend your site to others.

If an article is going to provide these benefits, it must pass the "Value Test".

12.1. The Value Test for an article

Take an article page on your site.

Remove all graphics.

Remove all Affiliate links

Remove all Adsense

Remove all “sales pitches” (which includes everything that is written for the sole purpose of pre-sell without any informational value in itself).

Remove any script generated content (e.g. RSS feeds).

Remove all menus leading to other pages.

Then read what is left. Would a visitor on your site find the remaining text interesting? Would they recommend it to a friend looking for information on this topic? If yes, then the article passes the value test. If no, then it doesn’t.

12.2. The Value Test for a Site as a Whole

Remove all pages that contain affiliate links. Does the site still have value in the remaining information.

12.3. Creating Articles that Pass the Value Test

Since we are looking to create articles that pass this test, we need some guidelines.

I divide articles into two main groups - product reviews, or discussions about a particular topic.

Everyone approaches article writing in different ways, but let me tell you how I do it.

Let’s look at reviews first.