Good advice Chris. Reviews are almost always interesting to read and I think Marc should take your sage counsel to heart.

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This sounds like an excellent opportunity for Marc to organize or reorganize his reviews, both for the purpose of article marketing and for website navigation. Top 5 and top ten lists by use or category would allow customers to quickly find what they are most interested in and this should increase traffic and sales, if he is selling.

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This is a great BLOG for writers, and I really appreciate the information! I am having some trouble along the lines being discussed here.
I love writing, but am finding it difficult to be as concise as I should be. It is a problem with wanting to inform and explain, versus the need to convey the information condensed. I hope you guys will help with your suggestions! (BE KIND)
Thanks, Phil B.

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Hey Phil,

I did this more organically over many years but I believe this method would have sped my progress if my goal had been to be more concise. I suggest you write your article as you usually do – stream of consciousness. When you go back to edit and fix typos, sentence structure, etc., ask yourself some questions with each paragraph. My point here is? How can I make it with fewer words? Would a question serve better than a statement?

I can only guess this might be tedious for the first half dozen articles, then your stream of consciousness starts taking on the concision you are after and by the time you write the next half dozen, there will be very little work needed on the edit. I have been publishing here for just over a year and when I started my best essays were 1000 to 1500 words. Now I am saying as much with 500 to 800. Not bad for a year of not really trying. I could have telescoped it into two months if I had known how much more readable the short essays were, in the beginning.

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Phil,

BTW- Loved your website and I am a big fan of non-lethal personal security equipment and gadgets to protect folks from criminals. Great stuff. I would say to you that explaining your products to the consumer thru online article writing makes a lot of sense. I believe you should write 2-3 articles per week on your subject, because it is such a much needed thing to give people piece of mind.

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Marc,

Sounds like you have a heck of a lot to gain from compiling like reviews together and posting them as articles with lead in paragraphs or trasitional paragraphs between reviews. And if you combine them together with 2-3-4 each with additional paragraphs, you would have a lot of article immediately to help bring traffic thru the byline links.

Lance

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I’m beginning to suspect that the 1000 word articles I’ve been producing are perhaps too long for the average reader to slog through. Perhaps five 200 word articles is the key?

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Brenda,

YES, 1,000 words is too long for an article in this type of venue.

Recommendation: Break your articles in half (500 words each) and I know they will produce more results for you.

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Or, even better, 4 articles with keyword rich titles that may appear on Google within a week! I’ve had this happen. Even for highly competitive keywords like “piano lessons.”

One article I’ve recently written appeared in Google within 2 weeks in the top 10. I’m not kidding. And it’s still there. I’d really like to know who contributes to their algorhythm because it’s crazy. You never know who or what they’re going to index.

P.S. Chris, I know Google indexes EzineArticles articles, but I haven’t seen them on Yahoo. Any ideas why?

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