If you have ever tried your hand at content marketing, Article marketing, niche website development, or blogging then you will agree with me when I say that not all articles are created equal. In fact, if you are anything like me you will come to expect that out of 100 articles 1 or 2 will generate incredible and almost puzzling amounts of traffic from search engines. 

Sometimes the top performing article is one that you would have expected to do well and other times you are totally surprised of the traffic gap. On the other hand, 6-10 of your articles may seem to be flat out ignored. Finally, the clear majority can be segmented into good, average, and less than average performance. However, the difference isn’t that much. Perhaps the difference 30% between the three categories. The top performing articles have a huge difference from even the good articles, maybe 10 times as much or 1000%. Even more drastic is the difference between the top performer and the barely ever been seen performers, typically 40 – 100 times more. This would be 40,000% -100,000.

The typical reasons for this vast superior performance of top performing content is that a substantial number of users are looking for the info that article contains. Also, the article is most likely easy for Googlebot to understand. Thus, search engines will know what the article is about and will know who it’s for when such a person submits a search. Finally, the article is read in depth by the user, as opposed to immediately clicking to another page with in just a second or two. This user action is known as the “long click” and is what will typically determine if the article will retain the authority status for the long term.

Understanding that user and search actions determine the overall popularity of the article doesn’t hurt. The most important question is how to write and publish top performers. This is an unanswerable question at least until the topic, purpose, keyword, etc., etc. is chosen.

However, if you pay attention to the content elite then you will notice many aspects of similarity amidst the dominating authority blog posts. Most experts on the matter including myself believe that there are four characteristics that are most common amongst that enormous page view count generating content population.

Below is a list of the four article elite characteristics.

1.     Demand, Easy, and Useful – High traffic articles are written for the. This is important because users will be much more likely to read the whole article if it is well written and optimally structured so that it is easy for the brain to organize the info.

a.     Considerable User Demand – The performers all have been on a subject that online users want. This means the content contains information that the user wants and has taken at least some effort to find it.

b.     Easy to read – People are busy and get tired from working and the rest of the stress that life produces.

c.     Useful – It is important that the article satisfies the users need. Now in some cases the article may just satisfy a portion of the bigger puzzle the user is currently working on. This scenario still implies that the resource satisfied the immediate concern.

2.     Headline and Title – Typically the highest traffic articles have Whitty and catchy. When people use the web, they will pretty much ignore 90% of everything. Therefore, it is important to have an exciting and gripping title or headline. Right around 70 – 90% of people will at least read your title but as many as ¾ will not read your actual article. This harmful to the success of the article because it results in a short trip and often what is called a bounce (which is when you get to a site and then immediately return or go elsewhere which implies the article was not helpful.

3.     Visual Content – Almost every single niche site owner or blogger who has any success will tell you that they use tons of pics, vids, charts, graphics, etc. The performance rate of articles without visual aids is a small fraction to the media rich articles.

4.     Interact with Users – When users send emails, fill out contact form, and or comment it is important to reply to each one. Engaging the customers lead to word of mouth exposure and even repeat users back to the article