Articles create incoming links, leading back to your site, boosting both your traffic and your search engine rankings. And articles remain active and archived for years, continuing to bring you benefits long after you wrote.

So given the many benefits of articles, it’s in your best interest to learn to write them and write them quickly. Yet many people say they either do not like to write or they take hours to write a single article. Here are five ways to improve the speed with which you write as well as dilute the pain involved with the process.

1. Take a typing course. If you are still hunting and pecking with two fingers on your keyboard, you’re costing yourself time. Take a few hours to learn to type faster and you’ll gain in productivity for years to come.

2. Write in short spurts. Set your timer for 5 minutes, then start writing. Don’t pause. Don’t think. Just write. At the end of that time you’ll have at least a half page written – and it will make sense. That will give you the confidence to write faster.

3. Write regularly. Get up every morning, write one full page on a single topic – and you now have an article. When you get into the habit of writing, you write more easily and more quickly.

4. Talk it onto paper. If you talk better than you write, use a recorder – or talk out loud as you type. You can have a transcriptionist to put your words onto paper or you can use a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking. There are even programs that let you call in your dictation, then they email you the finished article.

5. Repurpose your content. When you write a long response in a forum, use that content as an article starter. When you do a teleseminar, transcribe the recording, then chop it into articles. When you write an ebook or a report, divide it into articles. Always be on the lookout for how to reuse and repurpose your content.

Use these tips to help you start to write more articles faster than ever before. And you’ll reap the rewards for a long time to come.

Dr. Jeanette Cates is an Internet strategist who works with Business Owners to help them create Online Success. Learn about software to help you write articles more easily.