My Article Topic Finding Process

This is the exact method im using to find article topics to write about. I thought I’d share the steps with you so that you get to see how I select a topic, check out the competition, and find a product to promote using that articles topic, all with the hope that I can drive that article to the top of the search engines for free traffic and clicks.

If I have no idea what to write an article about, I’ll use a few steps to find a great topic to base an article upon. The very first thing I do is open up Wordtracker and use the free keyword tool.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Once I open up Wordtracker I will be met with a blank search box just waiting for me to enter a term to search on. As I said before I don’t have any idea what I want to look up right now, so what I do now is use certain action words and make Wordtracker find interesting article topics for me instead.

By “action words” what I mean is using words that people will use in search engines when they want to perform and action, like “buy”, “order”, “purchase” or “how to”. They are all words used by people wanting to do, or find something in particular. The good thing is that you don’t have to guess when using Wordtracker, all you have to do is use your action word and Wordtracker will find related terms people use that include your action word.

This is my example…

finding action phrases with Wordtracker

So my action word for today was “how to”, that’s all you need for now. Once you are ready to grab your results click that “Hit Me” button to bring up some related phrases.

Wordtracker brings back results

The number on the left of this table represents the number of searches per day that people use to find that information. Then on the right side you are presented with the keyword they are using too, notice how they include your action word “how to”.

The next part is up to you to decide what one of the phrases above will have the best possible chance of a person coming to your article to find information, and once you present them with some information, you will then want them to click on a link in your article to find the solution to what they are looking for.

So the intent of your article is to have that person searching for your action word phrase to click on your article listed in the search engines, then read what you have written in that article, which will hopefully point them to your ultimate destination which is an affiliate product that they will purchase, making you a commission at the same time.

Two phrases above stick out to me in this example…

• how to survive a depression
• how to make a charcoal grill

Both of the words above are from people looking to take some action, in the first one they are looking for help/knowledge about how to survive depression, in the second they want to build a charcoal grill. Now we have a couple of options we want to find out if we can find them the answer to their problem in the form of an affiliate product.

The next step I take is to search through my affiliate programs to see if I can match an affiliate product to one of the previous searches. So I will go over to Clickbank and search in their marketplace for that exact keyword hoping to find a depression help, or charcoal grill building product that I can earn a commission on.

Hopefully I will find a great match for my action phrase, if not I’ll check other affiliate programs the same way to find a product. If I have no luck at all I’ll go back to the first step and start it all again.

If I find a great product my next step is to find out how much competition that search phrase has, so I’ll head over to Google and do this..

Make sure to put your phrase in ” ” to find out how much direct competition you have for that phrase. Then hit the Google Search button.

This is what you are looking for, the Results section which can be found just to the right of the search box that includes your phrase. So for the depression search you would have 796,000 sites competing for the same phrase!

This is what we get for the charcoal grill phrase..

So just 42!! Much better than 796k right!

There are other things to notice on this Google listings page apart from the number of competing sites, you might want to look to see if other articles have been listed in the search results too, and also check to see if any sponsored ads are present for that term, if people are paying for clicks then you can be pretty confident that it does convert from searchers into buyers.

If no sponsored ads are present then you might want to consider another action word altogether. But I say that  if its not costing you money for people to click on your listing in the search engines, and as in the case of charcoal grills you would get around 500 searches a day, why not give it a try anyway?

So I picked “how to make a charcoal grill” as the keyword I will base an article on in this example. Next post I’ll go into writing an article, then matching my affiliate product to the searchers action word of “how to make a charcoal grill” hoping that I can persuade the reader to click on my affiliate link at the end.

Tags: action word phrase, action words, affiliate product, find article topics to write about, wordtracker

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 pm and is filed under article writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.