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The headlines you write for each of your marketing articles determine whether it gets read or bypassed.

I’ve read many books on copy writing and the consensus is that the headline amounts to about 80% of your sales message.

Headlines are the attention grabber that stop the browser and turns them into a reader. A well crafted headline ALWAYS creates some kind of emotional response in the reader.

This emotion might be:

• Love
• Hate
• Fear
• Anger
• Greed
• Curiosity
• And more

You can use your words to create one or more emotion within the headline. I’ve found curiosity and how to headlines work well for me.

The keyword phrase you are focusing on should be in the first 3 or 4 words in your headline.

Keep your headline short. You only have 5-8 seconds to grab the attention of the reader so long headlines aren’t as effective.

Some search engines only recognize the first 60 characters of your headline and that includes the spaces. Article directories like ArticlesBin might allow 75 to 100 characters with spaces but why use that many when search engines don’t like them that long? Some of these directories also use your headline as the URL so the length becomes an issue AND special characters in your headline like !@#$%^&*() and punctuation may make your article useless in RSS feeds.

By putting your keyword phrase near the front of your headline, you are telling the reader and the search engines the primary focus of your article. Having that also become part of the URL gives you a bonus when your marketing article gets indexed.

My next article on how to write marketing articles will be more on headlines.

This article summarizes keyword research and gets you started on the path of writing marketing articles people will read.

I spent so much time talking about narrowing down the niche and finding the right keyword phrase because it is THAT important.

• Choosing a keyword phrase in a niche small enough so search engines deliver traffic is a big part of article marketing to article directories.

• Choosing a keyword phrase that fits in with solving a problem your reader has is vital.

• Choosing a keyword phrase that fits the two criteria listed above AND is open enough that you can write numerous articles on is a challenge.

Example: Planters Warts is a good niche phrase but there are only so many articles that can be written on that phrase before it dies as a viable subject. Genetal Warts is another good phrase as I mentioned in my last article and something new is ALWAYS being written on this topic since there is no known cure and a LOT of people are infected.

Using the keyword phrase you’ve chosen well takes training, practice and testing. My next lesson will focus on nothing but the headline since that often becomes the URL in the article directories like ArticlesBin.

The headline MUST capture your reader’s attention in 8 seconds or less when your reader is browsing the search engine results or the article directory so your keyword research has been extremely important in telling you what your reader is seeking.

This article will discuss why it is so important to pay attention to words that are commonly misspelled during a search. A comment was left after my last article that I didn’t mention Squidoo or Propeller as Web 2.0 sites. I apologize for not saying that the sites I listed were just a few of the many Web 2.0 style sites that are available and perform well in the search engines.

I will be covering a use for Propeller in another article and I saved the mention of misspelled keywords to this article because they are that important to you as you do your keyword research.

If you use a free keyword research tool such as Wordtracker’s at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and type in the top level keyword, you will see the top 100 phrases for that term. This includes the misspelled words.

For example: Herpes is a top level keyword. If you research this term, you’ll see some of the 100 phrases include:

Genital herpes - the correct spelling - 1,760,000 indexed pages
Genetal herpes - 19,500 indexed pages
Gentile herpes - 9,850 indexed pages
Gential herpes - 41,200 indexed pages

As you can see, the actual spelling has a huge number of competing pages but the misspellings may provide opportunities if the search volume for the phrase is high enough.

Note: The ArticlesBin Article Directory accepts misspelled keyword phrases but some of the other article directories feel that is keyword manipulation.

Since searchers frequently have typos and misspellings, you will often see domain names with the keyword misspelled and both the correct and misspelling in marketing articles and keyword phrases.

A good business person gives the consumer what they are looking for even when that sometimes means using misspelled keywords in their marketing articles.

My last marketing articles post discussed using keywords to better target your articles. In this post, we will discuss why choosing keywords with fewer competing pages and a decent search volume isn’t always enough.

In addition to choosing a keyword phrase that preferably has fewer than 30,000 competing pages in Google and receives more than 100 searches a day, you need to look at 3 other elements.

1. You need to use common sense because your goal is to drive targeted traffic to your website that is motivated to buy, subscribe or take some other action that will put money in your pocket at some point.
2. You must see how many of the results on the first two pages are using Web 2.0 platforms to promote.
3. You need to see if there are any affiliate programs associated with the keyword phrase.

As an example, type “gallstone symptoms” into Google with the quotes and you will see there are approximately 2,380 competing pages for that exact phrase which is good.

The phrase “gallstone symptoms” only has one Adwords ad which can be a red flag that there isn’t much money to be made with this term.

Common sense should also tell you that people looking for the phrase “gallstone symptoms” are seeking only information where someone that types in “gallstone treatment” is looking for a solution to a problem.

One intangible that it takes practice to get good at it recognizing the Web 2.0 sites in the results on Google. Every time you see results in the top 20 from ArticlesBin, EzineArticles, GoArticles, WikiHow, eHow, HubPages and similar sites, you might have trouble beating them.

The action you want your reader to take won’t be taken nearly as often as you’d like if you choose the wrong keyword phrase for your marketing articles.