Throughout the previous few tutorials we’ve introduced you to the “whys” and “hows” of article marketing strategy for affiliates and discussed how to choose a hot topic in your niche.  Now, you’re probably sitting their scratching your head wondering how the heck you’ll actually come up with anything to write. 

After all, you’re probably a relative newcomer to affiliate marketing, a total newcomer to article marketing and quite possibly not a true expert in the field that you intend to write about.  So, how can YOU possibly come up with ideas for articles let alone actual content that makes you sound like you know what you’re talking about?! 

Not to worry.  Read on and we’ll get it all sorted out for you.

Creating Great Content

In the last tutorial, our fictional affiliate marketer, Bob, did a couple of Google searches of his keywords and came up with some great article topic ideas.  Well, that process not only identifies a bunch of potential hot topics but, as I’ve already alluded to, it will provide Bob with all the content he’ll ever need to write great articles for his campaign. 

Remember, Bob’s searches came up with a bunch of web pages and articles already written around the keywords that he is targeting.  

Affiliate Marketing Article Content - Click to Enlarge

Now, all he needs to do is take the article topics that he has jotted down, go through a few of the best articles and web pages that he has found on those topics and cut and paste the best and most relevant content from each into a text editor such as Windows Notepad (a free program that comes with Windows operating system; he wouldn’t want want to use Word because it leaves in unwanted code from the original source which will mess up the formatting later.)

Once Bob has cut and pasted the relevant content, his job is simply to do some re-writing and editing to come up with articles of his own.

Think of it like doing research on a paper in high school or college.  It’s much the same except that it’s really a lot less work since your articles do not have to be particularly long.

Article Writing Tips

When using this method of article content generation, here is what you want to achieve:

1.  An Original Work.  It’s not okay to simply copy other peoples’ work and claim it for yourself.  Besides the fact that it’s plagiarism, Google will recognize duplicate content and may omit it from search results.  However, there is nothing wrong with using someone else’s ideas or basing your article on information that is readily available online.   So use the information that you have copied and pasted as a template for your article but work it over and insert your own ideas and language until you have something new.

2.  A Cool Headline. Notice how generic and boring some of the titles are in the above search results?  (”Panic Attack Cures”, “Anxiety Disorder Cure – Panic Attacks Treatment”,   etc.)  These are great headlines for a pamphlet in a doctor’s office but BRUTAL headlines for an article marketer.  We can do much, much better than that, right?

How about something like “Panic Attack Cures – 3 Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You” or “Panic Attack Cures – 5 Sure-Fire Remedies”.   Headlines like  these arouse a lot more emotion and curiosity than the clinical sounding headlines in the Google search results above.  

In particular, Headlines which suggest lists (”7 Symptoms of…”, “5 Great Tips for….”, “6 Best Recipes for) or that ask a question will stand out in the search results.  They are much sexier and appeal to human curiosity which makes them almost impossible for people to resist.

3.  Article Length of between 400-800 words. Aim to write articles between 400-800 words  in length (as a rough guideline).  You want the article to contain solid and helpful information but you also want it to be a fairly easy read and leave the reader wanting more (which will help in getting them to click through to your website).  Keeping articles short will force you edit out anything unnecessary which will keep your articles snappy and to the point.

4. Keyword Density of 3-5%.  Keyword density is critical!  Search engines won’t recognize your article as relevant for the keywords you are targetting unless they appear often enough in your article.  In the example above, Bob is writing an article which is targetted at people searching the keyword phrase “panic attack cures”.  Therefore, he would want to achieve between 3-5 occurences of those words for every 100 words of text.

Too little use of the relevant keywords and the article won’t appear in the search results.  Too much use of the keywords and the article will be akward to read and may be ignored by search engines for “keyword stuffing”.

Keep in mind that use of the exact phrase “panic attacks symptoms” is not required throughout your article.  Use it as much as you can without making the article annoying for your reader.  After that, use the keywords separately (or different variations of them) to achieve your desired density.

5.  Use a Properly Crafted Resource Box.  Last, but certainly not least, you absolutely MUST use a properly crafted resource box at the end of your article, including “anchor text”.   We’ll discuss this in the next tutorial.

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To check your article keyword density, you can find a cool (and free) real-time keyword density tool at live-keyword-analysis.com.  There is also an excellent keyword density tool included at the Wealthy Affiliate University for those who are members.

Up Next: We’ll discuss how to create a proper ”resource box” when submitting your articles.

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