You realize, without a doubt, that a great article marketing strategy is truly worth its weight in gold simply because article marketing is one of the main ways marketers can receive free, targeted traffic on the internet. So if you’re using article marketing to generate leads, do you know the best way to captivate your reader enough that they say they’re okay with reading your article and actually want to buy what you’re promoting?

Putting your reader first is what article marketing is all about. Period. Think about your needs and precisely how you can meet that need. So how exactly do you manage to communicate the appropriate message to your reader? Just knowing the facts of the problem at hand and then interspersing your own particular understanding of it in such a way that it lets people know about it.

In the first part of this article, I’m going to discuss two of the four article marketing strategy techniques that make it easy for your readers to think “absolutely yes.” The reason I have decided to split the post is the fact that it would be very long if it were just one article and I think you should be given the opportunity to carefully absorb so that you can be more successful in your article marketing attempts.

Marketing Strategy Article #1: Keyword Research

Believe it or not, there are people who don’t give a damn about ranking their articles. They just want to write for the sake of writing. However, if you DO want to rank online, then proper keyword research is crucial. There are many tools, some are free and some are paid, that you can use. I really like free, so I keep going back to Google’s keyword tool to determine what exact phrases people are choosing to find my services and products in addition to training.

Then you need to find out how many other people feel your half dozen keywords are worth searching for. So you just want to Google them. Your main goal is to rank on the first page of the various search engines and then drive visitors to your website, so you want keywords with less competition.

A great standard is to target keywords that have fewer than 100,000 competing pages using a “phrase match” search.

The next part is a great article marketing strategy that not many people know about.

Now let’s say you are the biggest fan of Mickey Mouse and you need to write several articles about him. Google says there are around 28,100,000 results. However, I want to know what my real competition is.

To find out, go to the search URL in your address bar. You want to put “start=900” after the first “&”.

As an example: https://www.google.com/search?q=MickeyMouse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a is replaced by https://www.google .com/search?q=MickeyMouse&start=900

You will see on the last page a statement that says: To show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 715 already shown.

The lower the number, the less competition you have. The average competition is between 500 and 600 results. Anything above 600 usually takes too much work to qualify. Anything less than 500 is the sweet spot. You should be able to sort pretty easy.

Article Marketing Strategy #2: Maintain Reader Interest

Before you start writing, in your mind, strategize all the things you could talk about along with the concerns you can answer to the reader. People would like to have fun. So please don’t bore them when you give them the information they want!

I’ve found that my main article marketing strategy for overcoming writer’s block is to try to discuss a major problem you’ve had or one I’m sure your reader has (as an example: What is the best article directory software?) and then focus on the solution to their particular dilemma in enough detail that they don’t wonder if they really have a solution. You should offer as much value to your reader as possible. That will build trust with your readers. Some things that you should offer your readers are fundamental strategies, techniques, tricks and tips. Add examples, when you can. Precisely what questions can you answer? Well, they should be obvious questions that the reader frequently asks.

You’ll want to make sure your tone is always upbeat and positive until the very end of your post. No one will keep reading an article if you’re a Negative Nelly! Not to mention, no one wants to be lulled into a sleep coma! Keeping your posts entertaining when you deliver great information and facts will make your readers and subscribers want to read another article when it’s published.

So write an article and start using these first 2 article marketing strategy tactics. The second part with the rest of the strategies will be out very soon!