Everybody here writes articles. Many of us research the information to learn more about the subject before writing about it. Still more of us use a keyword tool, such as what Google offers, to find which keywords and phrases are searched most often for a given subject.

The creation of an article often follows this timeline: (1)think of an idea for an article; (2)use something that we know very well or do some reading of other articles and sources on the desired subject; (3)take a look at the keyword tool and identify some of the most-searched keywords; (4)edit article to include keywords; then, (5)submit article and hope for the best.

At the very least, someone will click on the "Post a Xombyte" link, bang out the minimum 100 words, submit the article and forget about it. Days, weeks, or months later, the AdSense account is comparatively empty.

This is probably the most common way to write original articles here. Even I used to write like this. But, what if there were a better way?

I strongly believe that, if we are to write for the search engines, we need to understand the search engines. Not from the writing side, but from the "customer's" side. It's one thing to say, "What are the keywords?," but a different thing entirely to run sample searches on your keywords.

Let's say we wanted to write an article about polyethylene water storage tanks and their advantage over galvanized steel water storage tanks (as I did for my first article here). I went over to Google's keyword tool and ran some sample keywords and phrases, making a list of the best five. Then, I fleshed out a 150-word article on the benefits that polyethylene had over galvanized steel. While keeping the best keywords in mind, I edited my copy and incorporated every keyword as many times as I could without being redundant.

Then, I saved my draft as a Word document and let it sit for a day. During that time, I thought about the article from the perspective of someone who would actually be running a Google search for it. Would they be someone new to water tanks and would be new to the vernacular? Would they be a contractor or distributor, who knew exactly what they needed? Or, would the reader be someone who was possibly doing research for an article and would be Googling for article ideas?

From my previous work experience with a company selling polyethylene water storage tanks, I was accustomed to the basic knowledge base of the average retail customer and also answering more technical questions from contractors and other more intermediate and advanced customers. I decided to focus on the average retail customer because I felt that contractors already knew the advantages of each and would already have made up their mind even before they dialed our number.

So, with the retail customer in mind, I looked at the keywords and thought about what someone who knew little or nothing about water tanks would want to know about the subject. Many people are familiar with plastic liquid containers, but maybe not so much with the actual material of polyethylene, so I substituted "plastic" in my search queries of the keyword tool (which actually tests better anyway.) Water, as in water tank, is a given, so both words were tested and found to be better. Storage, as in water storage tanks, was also tested, but only came back with an average search volume, so I culled some of the occurrences of that word from my article.

Then, I ran actual Google searches using my keyword combinations and took note of the actual results. Most of the hits were for companies selling the tanks, so I identified my competition for the reader's attention on the basic keywords and noted the common words in their titles and opening paragraphs in the search results.

Following more editing, I submitted my article to Xomba and, then, the Xomba article URL to Technorati, Digg, Reddit, and others. (Digg doesn't accept Xomba URLs anymore, though.)

In summary, from start to finish, you need to keep your target audience and how they are going to find your article in mind. By doing a little extra research and testing different combinations to see which work best, you too can be on your way to a wider readership and, if that's your goal, more AdSense income.