Writing and syndicating articles is a powerful way of broadcasting your message to a larger audience than you’d usually get on your website. A helpful article can be the turning point in convincing a new prospect to seek your advice, join your newsletter, or buy from you. By making good usage of the author resource box, writers can also create links to their website, feeding the search engines and improving their website’s ranking.
However, with over 10,000 articles posted per hour throughout the major article directories, how can you get yours to stand out from the masses? The answer is performing effective keyword research, so you feed the searchers exactly what they are looking for – and nobody else’s has supplied yet.
When researching for keywords, your best friend is Google search. No fancy softwares, no advanced techniques, no time wasted. Of course, you may want to go that route, and look for services such as Wordtracker, KeywordElite, or Spyfu, and those work beautifully, but I suggest an alternative route.
Since article marketing is a numbers strategy, meaning a single article will hardly make a difference, the less time you spend researching means you have more time to actually write.
So use Google search to determine first: a generic search, with millions of results. For example, lets say you’re selling drills, so you look up “best drills”. Write down what are the most repeated keywords on the top 10 pages.
Then, refine your search to be a little more specific, and include some of those keywords, for example: “best dewalt drills”, and you write down which terms repeated in this second search.
With these two simple searches, you’ve found an initial list that would relate directly to a drill-related search. But we’re going deeper, to guarantee exposure to your article. Research “best dewalt cordless drill” or “best dewalt drill for home use”. You should notice that those terms have random results, not specifically related to our keywords.
That’s when you’ve accomplished a successful keyword research for your article. Include those hot keywords on your article’s title and body, and submit it to one or two directories, changing 50-60% of the content before reposting, and you should see your articles right on the top results in about a week.
P.S – Article titles with statements are less powerful than those with questions. So, modify your keyword research to fit in a qualifying question, such as “Looking for the best Dewalt drill for home use?” Or “Do you know which Dewalt drill is best for home use?” Just make sure you answer the question on your first paragraph.
