Research is the most important step you can take in the preparation of you articles.
Good research will make or break the content of your articles and I will go over some of the steps involved in doing good research.
1.
First of all, you need to choose a topic.
A topic is the entire subject of what your article is going to be about.
You want to choose a topic you already know a little about in order to add a professional touch.
This is where a lot of affiliate marketers fall, because they choose products they don't know much about and start writing articles about them.
You personally need to have some experience with what you are writing about.
Knowing something about the topic is just a starting area, of course there is always more to know.
This is where the actual research comes in.
You need to find out what is new, what changes have been made and why.
Write up to date articles on your topic.
There is always more to learn as well and the more you know, the better your articles will be.
2.
Keyword research.
Yes you are writing an article to send traffic to your site but you want people to find the article itself in the first place.
This is where the keyword research comes in.
You have an opportunity to see what people are looking for exactly when they are looking for your product and other related products.
A good start is to go to Google and type in the topic, you will see many other suggestions come up at the bottom of the search box.
These suggestions are the most search words with the topic word you just put in.
Try to include these other words in your article as well to give it a higher chance of being found.
There are many other way to determine what keywords are best for your topic or product as the case might be.