If you need an effective article marketing campaign to help raise your site’s hit rate and/or get more people to subscribe to your blog then you need to read this article. Well written articles give your site credibility, provide backlinks and can be used as mini sales pages to generate click-through to affiliates. In this article we’re going talk about two of the more important aspects of articles and article marketing. And, after we’re finished, you’ll have a better idea of what’s involved in article marketing effectively.

Good research is a cornerstone of any article marketing campaign. You need to find out which keywords will work best in your niche, how much competition you have and if your keywords will be profitable. To find out if your keywords are viable, do a Google search and look at how many total searches there were for the month. A high number is good in that it shows there are a lot of people searching with your keywords.

Now take your high-number words and rerun the process. We are looking for the total number of results. If the number is high (100,000+) you have a significant amount of competition. Conversely, a lower number (say less than 2000) would indicate your competition is fairly low. Profitability is our next consideration. When you’re running your searches for keyword viability and competition, pay attention to the number of Google ads on the right side of the screen. Businesses are paying for these ads. If there are more than 3 or 4 you can be fairly confident that your keywords should be profitable.

OK. Lets move away from research now and talk about article quality. What does a quality article look like?

Lets start with “Keyword density”. This is a common term used in article marketing but what does that really mean? Basically it’s nothing more than what percentage of the total word count your keywords (or keyword phrases) represent. Your keyword density should be between 1% and 3%. A density of much more than 3% will possibly get your article/s “flagged” by the search engines and you’ll loose the high ranking you were hoping for.

And most importantly, does the article hold the reader’s interest? The whole point of submitting articles is to get people to read the entire article and find the link in the resource box. If people have to “work” at reading the article, chances are good they won’t finish it and click the link.

So what is the bottom line? Well, articles should be viewed as mini-sales pages. They should have a headline that grabs your attention, body copy that holds the reader’s interest and “guides” them to the resource box. And above all they should be relevant to your target market.

These are some of the more important things to think about when designing an effective article marketing campaign. There are certainly many more. However, you should now have a better understanding of what makes a good article and an effective article marketing campaign.