How To Research for Articles

So now you’ve set up a basic website, now what? You’ll need to start writing articles and adding content. Google and the other major search engines, Bing and Yahoo!, love content. When you add posts regularly, they then know it’s an active site and rank your site more favorably.

You probably already have some ideas for articles and probably have some keywords to get people to your site. But you might not know where to start in putting together your articles. Let’s talk about how to research for articles.

 Getting Started

I highly recommend using Microsoft OneNote or another note-taking software or app. I use it on my desktop and also have the app on my phone, set to sync together. This is a great way to organize your research and ideas. This way you can put ideas in the app and they will be there on your desktop and laptop when you’re home. You can even save the links of web pages you’re studying or referencing in your articles. It’s amazing!

You can download OneNote for free here: https://www.onenote.com/Download

I save my “winning” keywords in OneNote and under that, I put the links to articles I might be referencing or studying. You can then make an outline as your ideas and facts come together.

It’s really good to have references for your articles, especially for technical or medical types of content. You can list them at the bottom of your pages and mention them in your articles. It’s not required but it adds some credibility if you are going down those paths.

Ways to Research

how to research for articlesOf course, it depends on your passion or niche, but I like books as a research tool. Especially for medically-based or technical niches. Ebooks are reasonably inexpensive but you can also check out library books online as ebooks for free in many library systems. This is a goldmine of information!!

Not only that, you can become an affiliate of a bookseller and recommend books to your visitors (and you make a commission). Not bad, right?

I’m sure everyone knows about Wikipedia as a source of information. That’s probably a great resource for many website niches. However, for natural remedies or medical niches, I recommend using NCBI, a national repository for medical research and information. It’s completely free to use. 🙂

Additionally, you can find podcasts on almost any topic and follow some podcasters in your passion subject or niche. You might find some info on Youtube as well. Eventually, you could create your own podcasts or videos of your own. But for now, let’s focus on research. 

The main thing is you want to provide credible information. People can see right through a scam or what they think is a scam. They will not trust before they trust your site. So in order to build that trust, you want to provide credible information and reference where you got the information from. Bottom line, be careful where you get your information from.

Keep Learning

If you don’t already know everything about your passion or niche, you’ll probably find that as you start learning, it’s like going down a rabbit hole. 🙂 It’s a journey and will take you on a knowledge ride. You’ll find more things to learn as you go. You’ll get surprised! It’s very cool.

You might decide you want to take a course on an aspect of your passion. I mean the learning is half the fun in creating a website about your passion. I have some resources for you for low cost courses you can take online. And I mean low cost.

This certainly isn’t required but if you can, it’s a great investment. And it’s a small investment, that’s for sure.

Conclusion…

I hope this article gave you some inspiration and resources for writing on your website. Keep learning and you’ll have more than enough ammunition for articles for your website. And the more you learn, the more you can share. 

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in the Comments section below. I’ll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for reading! Happy writing! ✍🏼

6 thoughts on “How To Research for Articles”

  1. Thanks for writing this article as I have been in a slump and have not felt like writing for my website. I am trying to figure out what ranks on google as I have had luck on bing but google is not ranking me that well. I think that research is the biggest part of writing an article as it can make it a lot easier to write it when you know everything you want to put in it.

    Reply
  2. Hi Paula,

    In the blog post checklist doing research is the first thing we need to do.

    As we all know content is king! Your article is very helpful and informative on teaching the fundamentals and basics.

    I am not aware of Microsoft OneNote app, thanks for the information I will use it. Keyword research and then article research are very important so that we get the topic ideas. After these research we can write quality and helpful content.

    Often people focus on writing content for search engines instead of people. Your visitors and their user experience is the top priority. Continuous learning is the key to success. Great information, you have really given a lot of value here.

    Reply
    • Hey Paul. You sound experienced. I’m glad that even you learned something valuable. Thanks for pointing out that we need to write for people, not search engines. Thanks again, for reading and commenting.

      Reply
  3. Hi Paula. This topic is a very important one for content writers especially newbie like me because I sometimes find it hard to put articles together. I prefer using my phone for research checking the internet for useful information regarding the topics I want to write on. I very much like the idea of using reference.. I totally agree with the keep learning aspect. One of the best way to develop ourselves in our niche is to keep learning by taking new courses, read articles, watch videos, listen to podcasts etc. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

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