Here's an article marketing tip: You need to get your articles read in order to have them help you accomplish your goals. One way to get your article read is to answer your target market's burning questions. What keeps them up at night? What are they combing the Internet in search of answers for?

Let's say your niche is "science fiction". What are people interested in this topic craving an answer for? How do you find out?

My tip: Do some key word research.

When I did a quick search on SEO Book's key word tool, I found several key word phrases with a Google daily estimated search volume of 50 or more that looked promising (Note: I'm shortening "science fiction" to "sf" because I'm not going for that as a keyword in this article):

upcoming sf movies
sf movies
sf novels
sf book stores
definition of sf

There were more, but these looked like something I could write an article about without doing too much further research. These phrases also implied a burning question. For example, "What science fiction movies should I go see?" or "Which science fiction novel should I read next?"

Once you know what the burning questions are, you can answer them in your article. Better yet, create a product or opt-in bonus that answers the question at a deeper level and use the article to tease them with part of the answer. Your resource box then points them to your more developed answer to their burning question.

Now, to make sure that your article is found, you'll need to optimize it for the key word phrase. So, let's say you've chosen to write your article about "definition of science fiction."

The first thing you need to do is include that phrase as early in your article title as possible. For example: "A Definition of Science Fiction from a Feminist View Point."

Then you need to use the key word phrase in your article a few times. But don't over do it. About once for every 150 to 175 words is good.

Using these quick article marketing tips, you can develop several articles to post to directories and start driving focused traffic to your website or offer.

Author's Bio: 

Would you like some help with your article marketing? Carma Spence-Pothitt's Article Marketing Marathon may be just what you're looking for! Carma will hold your hand -- virtually, of course -- and assist you with key word research, writing headlines and writing guidance. To see when the next Article Marketing Marathon will be held, visit http://www.articlemarketingmarathon.com.