Keyword Search and Article Marketing Content - Tips for More Effective Book Marketing

By Karen Cioffi

As an author you may not realize the necessity of keywords. You may feel they’re something a marketer or affiliate marketer needs to be aware of. It’s their area of business and their problem to find these mysterious words that help increase the ranking on search engines. But, that’s not really the case, not by a long shot.

Authors and book marketing go hand-in-hand. This area of online marketing is like any other and needs to use the same strategies to be effective.

While it’s true keywords don’t hold the same power they did a couple of years ago, they are still important to SEO and CDO (content discovery optimization).

Today, if you are promoting you and/or your book, service, business, or product, you need readers to now several things:

• Who you are
• Where you are
• What you have to offer
• Why what you’re offering is what they need
• Why you’re qualified to be offering this product/service

Yes, there are a lot of requirements that need to be met in order to be successful in this ever expanding and competitive internet arena.

One of the basic strategies used to get noticed is writing or providing content – this is considered article marketing. I’m sure you’ve read or heard a hundred times that “content is king.” It is absolutely true. Imagine being a spec in the sky . . . so tiny and far away that you are invisible to the human eye. Well, that’s you in the internet universe.

So, how do you get a flickering light going and build it into a steady strong beam?

Valuable Content and the Keyword Search

The only way to get on the internet radar is to create valuable content, provide it regularly, and make sure it is keyword effective. As I mentioned, content is essential, without it you don’t have a chance. But, even with it, you need to fine tune your ‘must read information’ with keywords.

Don’t fret though. Finding and using keywords is not difficult to do. Most of it is really common sense, using words you would use to search for your topic.  But, a keyword tool affords a much larger pond to fish from and is search engine specific.

For this article I plugged in the word “keywords” at freekeywords.wordtraker.com (a free tool). The number one phrase for this keyword is “keyword research,” number two is “keyword analysis,” and number three is “keyword.” I really didn’t have to do a search to realize the word “keyword” would be there, I didn’t know, however, that “research” would be part of the number one phrase. Knowing the number one keyword phrase provides valuable information; this also means it is a highly competitive keyword.

The Long Tail Keywords

To make your keyword rich content even more effective look for what’s called long tail keywords.
These are words that will move you away from the general querying crowd—and the heavy competition.

For example, if your niche is children’s writing your key words would be: writing, children’s writing, and possibly children’s fiction and/or children’s nonfiction.

To elaborate on these keywords - to get more specific and narrow your target audience - you might use: writing for kids, children’s fantasy chapter books, picture books, middle grade fiction books, or kids’ nonfiction magazine articles. You get the idea; you need to focus in on your niche. Instead of aiming at the outer rim of a bull’s eye, go dead center, or at least very close.

To get started in this area of book marketing, try a free or ‘free trial’ keyword search tool from the three listed below:

http://wordstream.com/keywords/
http://keyworddiscovery.com
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

I hope this helps you move forward in your book marketing efforts.

Originally published April 2010 at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com


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