Write a good article—the basics

Never imagine that you can sit at your computer and within a short span of time, produce an article for the Web that everyone’s going to love. Wrong! Absolutely wrong!! This is so wrong because no matter how experienced or inexperienced a writer you are, it is extremely difficult to organize your thoughts and write almost simultaneously. And if your grammar is so shaky that you have to worry about it before committing it to paper, then worrying is not going to get the best article out of you. Far from it.
But thankfully, there are ways of circumventing the problem. Here are some of them:

Organize your thoughts before you write. Arrange your material before you get down to writing so that your flow of thought is smooth and you know the order in which you’re going to present your article. To do this, you need to write an outline—the bare bones of your article.
Present information your reader can use. Since readers on the Web use it to find information they can use, it makes sense to make your articles user-oriented. Your information should be specific rather than general so that your readers can act on the information you provide.
If you have a site, ensure that its purpose is known. Let your readers know the purpose of your site. If they cannot fathom this out, they will move on to another site.
Write, rewrite and rewrite! Do this until you’re sure you’ve turned out a good article. Good article writing doesn’t happen the first time you write—it’s a process that evolves with time and sincere practice. Once you put your first thoughts down on paper, you will find that you can improve them if you try. So, give yourself enough time to rewrite and improve your pieces so that what you finally put up on the Web is something worth reading.
Personalize your writings. If you personalize your writings—i.e. use “I” or “we” it makes for a more conversational style and people take to it better simply because you come across as a friendly sort of person. This makes your piece more readable.
Spread the word around. Ask your friends and family to read your published works. However, don’t let them wait till you’re a much better writer than you are today. Why? So that they can suggest changes that might just improve the quality of your writing. Allow them to comment on your writing style, your ideas, presentation style or any other aspects. And be bold enough to accept the changes they suggest.
These apart, online readers are known to not spend chunks of time on a particular site but move on quickly if an article or site doesn’t grab them. Usually, they scan a page, read quickly across a page, and then scroll down quickly before moving on. To avoid this happening to you, do the following:
Start with an impressive headline—one that provides benefits to the reader.
Have short subheads, each comprising not more than 100 words.
Make a bulleted list of important points that the reader can see at a glance.
Put important phrases or words in bold.
Leave one space between paragraphs for a neat look.
Have simple paragraphs with each one explaining one thought.