How to increase traffic by targeting your main keyword

If article marketing is not done correctly you won’t increase visitors to your web site. Some folks write articles without targeting a specific keyword or keyword phrase. The more tightly focused your article is the better your chances of receiving high rankings and getting more traffic.

The problem

Search engines don’t want to show duplicate content in their results pages. They want searches to be as targeted as possible. If you write your article based on your main keyword their is a greater chance of it being indexed by them.

How to target your best keywords

1. Create a list of your main keywords

Place yourself in your customers shoes for a few minutes and think what particular keywords they would enter in the search engines to find your web site. Keep adding to the list until you’ve exhausted all your ideas.

2. Use a keyword research tool

Open a free keyword research tool such as WordTracker or Keyword Discovery and enter each keyword from the list above. You’ll get a list of keyword results that show how
many times that word has been searched on in one month. Repeat this procedure for each keyword.

3. Select the long tail keywords

Keywords that receive the highest number of searches are generally the most popular. This makes it very difficult to rank high for these keywords. Select the keyword phrases with a low number of searches (long tail). These are less competitive so you’ll have a better chance of getting high rankings for your article.

4. Weave the targeted keyword phrase into your content

Include the keyword phrase naturally throughout your content. Don’t overdo it as it will look like spam and won’t read well for your visitors. Remember it’s more important to write your article so it appeals to your visitors than the search engines.

5. Include your keyword phrase in the title and resource box.

Place your keyword at the beginning of your article title like I’ve done for this article. Instead of writing:

“How to increase traffic by targeting your main keyword”

Write…

“Article Marketing - How to increase traffic by targeting your main keyword”

6. Include your keyword phrase in the anchor text

Anchor text are the words contained in your hyperlink. The resource box at the end of your article allows you to place anchor text in it that links back to your site. This not only directs visitors to your web site but builds valuable backlinks that help increase your rankings in the search engines

7. Include your keyword phrase in links pointing to your web site

When visiting blogs, forums or doing link exchanges be sure to include your keywords in the anchor text of your incoming links. Google ranks your web site according to the number and quality of links leading back to your site.