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Keyword research and analysis is a constant effort in optimizing. Yet, optimizing requires a sandbox to test in. Article marketing and article directories, like eZineArticles.com, can be that perfect test environment–good traffic volume, competitive content, and metrics.

Keyword Analysis

The first step in setting up your tests is the keyword analysis. The methodology for analyzing your project will largely depend on the purpose of your copy. Blogs are looking for volume, PPC campaigns are looking for a profitable niche, companies are looking for product and service inquiries.

As you begin to research keywords make sure you keep these concepts in mind. Resources like Google and Wordtracker.com keyword tools can focus you on the right keywords for each objective. Once narrowed to a handful of promising keywords and phrases to are ready to seed your tests.

Writing the Test Articles

Testing with articles can be as much art as science, but done properly it will still yield valuable information for any SEO project. Article directories and Google (your ultimate client) are very fickle about duplicate content. So, simply submitting multiple iterations and controls, like a traditional scientific test, is not an option. Instead follow these guidelines:

• Try to find the most appropriate category for your SEO article test
• Consistently post all of your test articles into that category
• Ideally you have already published yourself into a top 10 author for that category
• Write three unique articles for each keyword you are testing
• Vary keyword density, key phrase word order, alternate keywords
• Try multiple headline techniques (try a number in at least one)
• Try various summary techniques (try a famous quote in one)

Marketing the Article

Once written and submitted this is where you can get a bit more scientific. You can attempt a variety of different article marketing techniques. Here are a few that I recommend:

• Blog reference/link
• Twitter comment
  
• Social bookmarking
• Email

I like to use bit.ly (a tiny URL technology) because it gives you detailed click-through source and tracking metrics.

Measuring the Results

If you are not measuring then you are simply hoping for miracles and most people don’t pay for that. Before you start submitting and marketing your test articles make sure you are certain of your objective and key tracking metrics. Here are some possible metrics:

• Views
• Click-through
• Syndication/Publication
• Traffic sources

Quality article directories, like eZineArticles, are making it easier to track and capture these metrics.

The nice thing about using article marketing as an SEO content and keyword test environment is, once complete, you have a great repository of validated and ready to deploy SEO Web copy.