10 Warning Signs Your Article Content is Bad

As writers, you have all been there. You write Content for an Article or blog that you are certain will be a hit. However, after a day or so, you barely have more than a handful of hits. So you start to get a little worried, wondering what more you can do to promote your content. Turning to social media, you tirelessly share and promote, until you are banned and blocked from almost every sharing platform.

Now what? Maybe the problem is not how well you are promoting your content. Maybe it is the topic you have chosen to write about.

How do you know if your content isn't interesting?

How can you tell if your content stinks? How do you avoid this in the future? Although there is no sure-fire way to know for sure, here is a list of ten Warning Signs to look for that will help you determine if your content is lacking. If you fall into one or more of these categories, don't fret, there are ways of reviving your site.

Signs that your content needs reviving

1. After reading your article, you determine it is sufficient.

Your content will either blow people away or bore them to tears. On a scale of 1-10, where does your article fall? Anything below a seven is not worth publishing.

2. Your topic fails the "For Dummies" test.

This one is pretty simple. When thinking about a topic, see if there is a "For Dummies" book that has already been written on it. If there is, chances are it is a popular topic that a majority of the audience wants to know more about.

3. There are not any Facebook groups on your topic with more than ten thousand fans.

This is a big indicator that your topic is not what most people are interested in, especially today, when you can find a Facebook group on almost every pop-culture topic in existence.

4. Google shows less than 100k searches per month on your topic.

Again, if people are not Googling the topic you want to write about, chance are your article will not receive many hits, if any at all.

5. The topic you are writing about does not already have an audience.

Sometimes we like to get creative and write about new topics that not many people, if anyone at all, have ever heard about. Unless you have found some mind-blowing new concept, this idea will almost always flop. In order to write something that has sharability, it must be a topic that many people are already interested in.

6. Your niche is too narrow.

Does your headline sound a lot like the other articles or blogs you have written?

If the answer is yes, then you may need to broaden your niche.

7. You spend less than an hour writing your post.

I'm sure you could write an awesome piece in less than 15 minutes, but that doesn't happen very often. Write, take a break, write some more. Then, walk away for a while; afterward, try to re-read your content from your audience's perspective.

8. You focus too much on SEO and not the content.

A lot of newbies will write around keywords that may boost their search rankings, but this is a sure-fire way to write crappy content. Write amazing content first, then enhance it for search engines.

9. Google Analytics tells how long your visitors, when you have them, stay on your blog or site. If it's under two minutes, you need to revamp your content.

10. Your article does not fall into one of the seven most popular topics on the internet.

These seven categories are: personal finance, self-improvement, parenting, social media, business, news, and gadgets. If your topic falls into one or more of these categories, chances are it will gather a large following. These categories are established, and some of the most popular blogs on the internet contain at least one of these subjects.