It is usually quite easy to choose a topic to write about for article marketing distribution, however, it is not always easy to have your article found. There is no point in writing a great article if there are no readers.

This is where your keyword research becomes very important.

Keyword research is the process of looking for those exact words, or phrases that your target market will use when performing a search in a search engine. There are usually many ways to say the same thing, and sometimes by just slightly adjusting the terminology in your article, you can greatly increase the rankings of your articles.

It is important in article marketing, therefore, after having decided upon the topic of your article, you find out the best keywords to use within it.

Performing keyword research involves taking the time to discover which keywords visitors are most likely to be searching for, and among those search terms, which keywords have the best chance of ranking highly in search engine results pages.

Efficient search engine keyword selection is a balance between the popularity of a keyword or keyword phrase and the competition that already exists in trying to rank for that keyword phrase.

There are various tools that can be used to discover the frequency of searched for keyword phrases. Although there are a number of paid for tools on the market, I will point you to the free Google Keyword Tool. You can use this research tool to help you find keywords and phrases that are popularly used. Be sure you understand the difference between Broad, Phrase, and Exact searches.

Once you have found a set of keywords, the second step is to check the competition level for those keywords. If the competition level is too difficult, then your new article will not be highly ranked and the chance of receiving visitors will be low.

There are too many specifics depending on the topic of discussion as to how many searches is ‘enough’ or how much is too much competition for your keyword. These are things that you will have to figure out by trial and error. After a while, you will get a sense of what are appropriate numbers for you.

It is important to perform your keyword research before you attempt any internet article marketing efforts so you won’t be focusing on search engine keywords that no one is using in a search or on keywords that are far too competitive for your site.

The basic idea of this article then is to remind you that just writing an article, even a very good one, may not be enough. You need to add an extra level of sophistication and do some keyword research before publishing any article in order to augment the chances of someone actually finding your article in a search engine.