Everyone loves a good argument. It clears the air, it makes things exciting – and it gets the blood pumping. Even when reading, people love to have a well constructed argument presented to them – whether they agree with the opinion or not.

This may be why controversial content often works so well on the internet. Many influential bloggers swear by the technique of featuring an occasional argumentative post. It usually stirs up the conversation, if not a huge amount of controversy, and at its best can get whole sections of the web buzzing. When that buzz is about you, it can do wonders for your site’s traffic and a great SEO blog post can really make a difference.

Unsurprisingly, not everybody has had extensive experience in writing informative or persuasive articles. For most people, any experience in that area was left behind once they graduated university or high school. The skills learned in these institutions are not directly transferable to writing for the internet, but many of the principles are just the same. Writing a persuasive piece as part of your SEO content makes use of much the same structure as most people learned for essay writing.

1. Form an argument. This may seem like the easy part, but it isn’t. If you’re planning on using persuasive articles as a regular part of your content schedule, you’re likely to quickly run out of ideas. You also need to be able to comprehensively defend your position, so it pays to think about the possible attacks on your argument before you dive in.

2. Draw up a title. There is a school of thought with copywriters that at least 50% of writing time should be spent composing a title. Not everyone works this way, but it is often helpful to begin a piece with a title, and work from there.

For persuasive pieces, it is usually a good idea to begin by presenting your argument. This means presenting it in the title, e.g. ‘Controversial content is easy.’

3. Compose a killer opening. Your opening paragraph will either convince your reader to stay and absorb your argument, or put them off reading the piece. In terms of SEO, an opening paragraph also gets a fair amount of attention from the search engine spiders. Take the thought that you used in your title and expand on it.

4. Set out your main points. Your argument needs to be supported after you’ve presented it. Draw up two or three main points that support your argument, and explore them in a couple of paragraphs each.

5. Finish with a strong conclusion. Some people find conclusions difficult. It can be hard to sum up everything you’ve just said. Usually, it’s a good idea to restate your main argument, showing how you were right. The conclusion is also a good point to slip in another keyword mention in a natural manner.

As with any content for your site, it can be a lot simpler to approach your search engine optimization consultant if you don’t have any experienced writers on staff. You can discuss this with our team at www.seoconsult.co.uk