Is Anyone Reading Your Online Articles?

By Denise Willms

Writing articles that no one reads?

I hope not. But if you want people to read your online articles, there are two things you absolutely must do.

OK, there are several techniques that will help your articles get read – like writing a catchy title and a captivating first sentence - but these two things that I'm about to tell you are absolutely vital to an effective article marketing campaign.

Without these things, whatever else you do won’t even matter.

1. Write articles about subjects your audience is interested in.

2. Make sure these same people can find your articles.

Fortunately, there’s no guesswork here, and no need to cross your fingers that the right people will somehow stumble across your articles and actually read them.

Some good keyword research will tell you exactly what information your audience is looking for, and even give you the exact terms they’re using to search for it.

If you haven’t done keyword research before, it’s not as daunting as it sounds. “Keyword” simply refers to the terms people type into search engines to look for information. And the research is easy to do. Type relevant words into a keyword research tool, and you’ll get a list of all the words and phrases people have searched for that relate to your word.

Here are some popular keyword research tools:

www.wordtracker.comwww.keyworddiscovery.comwww.seoelite.com

Whichever tool you decide to go with, Word Tracker has an excellent tutorial on how to find and use keywords.

Another place to find good keywords for your product or service is in your own web stats. If you don't know where to find yours, ask your host where they are. Look under “Search String” or "Keyword Phrases" to find the terms that people used to find your site. It's a good idea to add these to your list of keywords because people who used those search terms were attracted to your site.

Once you have your keywords, incorporate them into your title, the body of your article, and into the keywords section of the online article submission form.

When you submit your article to an online database, your title becomes the page title. This is one of the things search engines look at when they’re finding a relevant match for a user’s query.

The keywords you insert give the search engines an idea of what the page is about.
Using the same words somewhere in your article will also help the engines find the article when someone searches for those particular keywords.

As with any marketing strategy, successful article marketing is all about taking the time to learn what your target market is looking for, and then giving them what they need.

Denise Willms, a homeschooling mom of two, writes articles and press releases that gain targeted traffic for her clients. Subscribe to her newsletter, WAHM-Articles Ezine, and receive 105 Power Tips to Get Your Online Business Noticed and Profiting.