If you are using content to increase traffic to your website or blog, or perhaps to build credibility in your niche market, you will want to spend some time developing keyword rich articles.

The first step is to determine what these keywords actually are. Keywords are what your potential customers use to seek out information about specific things, so determining the best keywords that will lead people to your website is critical to your article marketing success.

To determine your keywords, you can use a free keyword search term product that will allow you to type in a series of keywords and will display results that include how many people, on average, use those specific keywords to search for information over the past month. It will also display a list of related keywords and phrases, which will help guide you in choosing the best keywords possible.

Once you have generated a decent number of popular keywords and phrases, you will want to re-evaluate your list to weed out keywords that are overly competitive, meaning that you should be focused on finding keywords that will yield results without being used by a lot of other websites, otherwise it will be harder to rank for these keywords.

WordTracker.com will provide an extensive listing of popular keywords based on competition and previous months search data.

After you have pruned your list and are ready to construct your first article, you will want to ensure that you use your keyword within the first few lines, as well as in both the first and last paragraph. You should also focus on articles that consist of 400 words or less, and are completely original. The more information you provide that is not found elsewhere, the better your results will be.

For example, if you are considering writing an article on used guitars, you could write an article about four things to look for in a good pre-owned acoustic, or bass guitar. Just the same, if you plan to write an article on home improvement, you could focus your article on ‘Five Tips For New Painters”, and feature easy techniques for painting ceilings or creating art decor on walls and doors using sponge brushes and stencils.

The more targeted and unique your article is, the better it will do in the search engines and on directory websites, such as www.EzineArticles.com or www.GoArticles.com

In the closing of your article, be sure to include a relevant resource box or author bio that features a link to your website, and is focused on building credibility in your market. Never direct your readers to a website that does not contain information on your primary topic, to avoid confusion.

Once your article has been distributed, people looking for specific information about your topics will be directed to your content via these high ranking, popular article directories and subsequently, directed to your website for more information. This is one of the easiest ways to drive high quality, targeted traffic to your websites at absolutely no cost.

How do Internet Marketers use articles to drive traffic to their websites and blogs

Here are just a few ways that article marketing can effectively generate new visitors and potential customers.

1) The first and most obvious result will be incoming links from the article directories and those that use your article because of the bio box you use that includes the link.

2) Submit multiple articles to multiple directories for the best exposure and to build more interest in your writing.

3) Use keyword research to gear your article towards popular search terms so that more people will use it and link to you, bringing you more exposure and more traffic.

4) Make the best of your resource box, use your name (or title, whatever you are branding) a link, and at least one important keyword in the bio/resource box.

5) Don’t give away the whole package at one time, give tips and be informative but leave a little bit yet to be learned so they will want to click on the link in your byline to learn more.

6) Give examples, no matter your topic may be a real life example is always interesting and gets people curious enough to want to click to hear more about it.

7) Don’t be a pushy, an article full of click here, go here, see me, is going to defeat the purpose behind itself.

8) Don’t expect it to happen over night, it takes time as your article gets distributed and the results for each article you do are going to be different in the amount of time it takes to see results happen.

9) Article marketing is just one slice of the pie, combined with other marketing techniques it can build a strong foundation for your website or blog, but it’s best not to rely on only one single method.