Have you been getting lackluster results from your article marketing efforts?

Most people will tell you that the reason is because you haven't written enough articles.

But for the most part this is probably not even the cause.

The real reason is probably because you aren't providing content that people actually want to read.

Churning out gibberish that people don't take any interest in is just as pointless as writing nothing at all.

Why waste hours if you know your efforts aren't even going to pay off?

This is exactly the reason why I almost gave up on article marketing until I discovered a better way to do it.

One day while reading up on article marketing tools, I discover Dean Shanin's guide to mastering EzineArticles.

Dean Shanin, an expert article marketer, wrote a guide called Underground Secret EzineArticles Manifesto to tell others how to get thousands of clicks from their articles.

At first I thought it was a joke but after reading the information on his website, I discovered that he is really a true master of EzineArticles.

Dean Shanin posted just 20 articles that he wrote using his own refined techniques and received over 200,000 clickouts to his websites from his author resource box in just 20 articles that he posted to EzineArticles.

I realized from reading this guide that I had been doing things the wrong way.

The truth of article marketing is that you really need to provide quality content if you want readers to click on your links.

So here are some of the secrets that I learned about article marketing.

1. Keep your articles short. Although people love quality information, they also don't want to read a dissertation. So try to stick to the information that you think that your readers would be interested in and then direct them to your website if you think that they would be interested in reading more.

2. Do proper keyword research. Content comes first but if your article does not contain keywords or keyword phrases your article will not get exposure in the search engines.

Dean Shanin actually has a very specific strategy for inserting keywords into your articles.

3. Stick with what you know. If you are writing on a topic that is unfamiliar and that you have not researched it will be pretty obvious that you do not know what you are talking about. So if you are going to write on a new topic either find an expert to write the article for you or make sure to do your homework first.

4. Proofread your article. There is nothing more ridiculous that someone who attempts to write an article as though he or she is an expert on the topic but fails to realize that there are hundreds of errors throughout the article.

5. Edit your article. Although a few amateur article marketers like to recommend that you just churn out as many articles as possible, the best strategy is to edit your articles and make sure that the articles get the points that you want to present across in the most concise and error free manner as possible. This is the quality content that people want to read.