How to write a good article. Ten principles for your site.

How to write a good article comes down to a short list of habits. You start from the question your reader is asking and answer it early. You write from facts you can point to, credit and link your sources, and keep the piece easy to read. It sounds like your business, it ends with something useful, and a person reads and approves it before it goes live.

Those are the ten principles the Desk sets out for small-business articles in its October 2026 guide, How to write a good article. This piece explains how each one works on a real website. It also says which two we'd put first. If you only change two habits, make them these: write only from facts you can point to, and have a person approve every piece. The other principles work best on top of those.

Start with the question your reader is asking

Every article answers something. Before you write a word, find that question and write it down. Everything else in the piece serves the answer: the facts you choose, the order you put them in, the headings, the ending.

Then answer it early. Readers decide in the first paragraph whether a piece is worth their time. If the answer sits in paragraph six, most won't get there.

How you open depends on the type of piece. News opens with what changed and who it affects. A guide opens with the question and a short answer, and the detail follows.

Here's an illustrative case, not a real one. A trade association hears that a licensing deadline for its members has moved. The news story opens with that change: the deadline is now later, and it affects every member who holds the licence. A guide written a few weeks on opens differently. It starts from the question members keep asking, "When do I need to renew?", and answers it in the first sentence or two. Same subject, two openings, because the reader arrives with a different need each time.

This piece follows the second pattern. You asked how to write a good article; the first paragraph gave you the answer.

Write only from facts you can point to

This is the habit that matters most. Every claim in your article should rest on something you can point to: a source, a figure, a date, or a named person or body. If you can't point to it, you don't yet know it.

When a claim can't be supported, you have two choices. Narrow it to what you can support, or leave it out. Never fill the gap with something that sounds right. A sentence such as "most local firms are already doing this" needs a source with a figure behind it. Without one, cut it back to what you do know, or drop it.

Before you publish, a short check helps:

1. Go through the draft one claim at a time.
2. For each claim, note where it came from: the source, the figure, the date or the named person or body.
3. Narrow any claim that goes further than its source.
4. Remove any claim you can't trace at all.
5. Credit each source by name and link to it where you first rely on it.

Crediting and linking is a principle in its own right. The guide's reasoning is that readers and search engines both trust a piece that shows where its facts came from. That's the guide's view. It doesn't give evidence for it, and it doesn't say which search engines it means.

We'd follow the principle anyway, for a plainer reason. A linked source lets your reader check a claim for themselves. It also lets you check it again later, when someone asks where a figure came from. An article that shows its working is easier to keep accurate.

Make it easy to read and cut the padding

Most people scan a page before they read it. Three habits help them.

Use headings that say something. "Background" tells a reader nothing; "Who the new deadline affects" tells them whether to stop and read. A good test is to read only your headings. If they give the shape of the answer, they're doing their job.

Keep paragraphs short. A wall of text on a phone screen is hard going, and most of your readers are probably on one.

Use lists only where the content really is a list: steps in order, items to bring, documents to check. A list of loose thoughts reads better as prose. The checklist in the section above is a list because the steps happen in sequence.

Then cut the padding. The guide names the usual offenders. Stock openers that could start any article. The line about living in a fast-paced world. Phrases such as "it's important to note", which add words without adding a fact. Summaries of what you've just said. If a sentence could be deleted without the reader losing anything, delete it.

This is often the quickest improvement you can make to an existing draft. Read it once looking only for sentences that carry no fact or no step. There are usually more than you expect.

Sound like your business and link to your own pages

Write in one consistent voice: the way your business actually talks to its customers, or the way your organisation talks to its members. If your shop counter is friendly and plain, your articles should be too. If your trade body writes formally to members, a chatty news piece will feel out of place.

Consistency matters more than any particular style. A reader who moves from your home page to your news page should feel they're still talking to the same people. Pick a voice, write it down in a few lines, and use it for every piece.

Your own pages belong in your articles too, where they help. If a story is about an upcoming change, a link to your events page where members can book a briefing is useful. If it's about a new requirement for suppliers, a link to your member directory might help readers find someone who can help. The guide is clear that these should be relevant pages that genuinely help the reader, and not just any page. A link added for its own sake is a distraction.

For agencies, this principle runs per client. Each client's site keeps its own voice and its own internal links. A bakery's news page shouldn't read like a law firm's, and it shouldn't link to pages that belong to another client's offer. If you manage several sites, keep a short note of each client's voice and their most useful pages, and check every draft against it.

End with something the reader can use

The last paragraph is the one most likely to be padding. Make it useful instead. Tell the reader what to do next, or what to watch for.

In the illustrative licensing story above, a useful ending might tell members how to renew and where to find the form. A guide about a rule change might close by naming the next date that matters. Either gives the reader a reason to act, which a recap of the article can't.

Have a person approve every piece

The last principle is the second of the two we'd put first. A person reads and approves every piece before it goes live.

The guide doesn't say who that person should be, or what the review should cover. That's for you to decide on your own site. In a small business it might be the owner. In a member organisation it might be whoever signs off communications. In an agency it might be the account lead, the client, or both. What matters is that a named person reads the piece and makes the decision.

Approval is where the other habits get checked. It's the point where someone asks whether each claim can be traced, whether the opening answers the question, and whether the piece sounds like you. Without it, the earlier principles are good intentions.

One note on platform rules. Search engines and social platforms change what they expect from time to time. The guide says any such rules should be treated as current good practice as of October 2026, not as permanent. If you write guidance for your own team, date it, and check it again when the platforms change.

That's how the Desk works too. Every piece is written from facts taken from the source, and claims that can't be supported are narrowed or removed. A person approves each one. Nothing goes live without that approval.

Read our FAQ on human approval and how claims are checked.