Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
Writing content for your website, or for a client’s site, takes more than just plugging words into the page if you want it to be successful. One of the most important aspects for content on your website is the use of keywords and phrases. Although you could generate a few visitors per day by simply writing naturally, keywords and phrases are how the visitors find you in the first place.
{source}<h3>Search Engine Optimization Through Keywords</h3>Search engines use bots to crawl your website looking for special words that make up the jist of your content. These words play in your favor as long as the content around them fits the criteria. For instance, if your keyword is “boat parts” you wouldn’t want to stick it in content written about baby diapers. For one reason, Google’s algorithm for keyword categorization includes the content before and after the word. The more of these keywords appear in relevant content, the better your website ranks in the results page.{/source}
How to Put Keywords Into Your Content
When writing an article or blog post, you can slip in keywords and phrases without making it look too obvious. Cluttering up an article or blog post with these words can make the content look terrible. Your mission is to keep the readers attention, not confuse the material.
You can normally get away with putting in a keyword every two or three sentences without it looking too crowded in the content. Although many SEO professionals have differences of opinion, the fact of the matter is readability. You want your visitors to know what they are reading. Sometimes, it can be trial and error to find the perfect combination of keywords for your content.
Examples of Using Keywords in Your Content
To find the best words to use in your pages, you’ll have to do a bit of researching. Google Adwords has an excellent tool for words and phrases you can use in order to find the most commonly searched terms both locally and globally. However, let’s use an example so you can get the jist of what keywords look like in your content.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that we have a client who wants a 200 word article on snack foods. This client wants the keywords “Chili Cheese Fritos” used 3% of the time. That means, every 33 words needs to be the keyword phrase “Chili Cheese Fritos”. Now, 3% doesn’t really sound like a lot, until you have to write it out. Here is what it would look like:
One of America’s favorite cheap dishes is Frito Pie. Originally, Frito Pie was made with regular Fritos. However, some have grown accustomed to using Chili Cheese Fritos in order to add that extra kick. What makes these flavored corn chips different than others?
When it comes to chili, many things may come to the mind for enhancing the bowl. Whether it be onions, cheese, or bread there really isn’t a wrong answer. Using Chili Cheese Fritos as your additive gives a little more kick to each scoop as they are already spiced with chili flavoring. The shape of these corn snacks make it easier for dipping or simply layering the bottom of the bowl before the chili is poured in. Chili Cheese Fritos can make more of an impact in your meal than you would have thought.
Chili Cheese Fritos are more than just an additive to a bowl of beans and meat. They can work great as a stand-alone snack as well. A small bag of Chili Cheese Fritos can bring a smile to someone’s face who suffers from chronic heartburn from the food they love. Although the chili lover may be missing the meat, Chili Cheese Fritos can go a long way to satisfy a craving for a spicy bowl of heartburn.
In this example, you see that the keyword is used six times through the article. Unfortunately, the article is also 212 words long. Most clients don’t care that you are a little over the requirement…more words for them without having to pay for them. However, some will be very picky about this and you will have to reduce the amount of words in the article to match. But, that’s a different post all-together.
As you can see, if we were to increase the quantity of keywords any more, it would start to look jumbled and unattractive to the reader.
By replacing descriptive words for your subject with the keyword, you can build a SEO conscious website. Just be sure not to use too many otherwise it will look horrible to the visitor and could confuse the subject matter.
Natural Keywords Can Work for You
Natural keywords happen when someone is simply writing content to reflect a particular subject. Blogs are big on this natural flow because the one posting the information isn’t concerned with making sure the words are relevant to the content. Natural writing can be beneficial for SEO especially since Google has changed its algorithms. As long as your conscious about what you are writing about, the keywords will form themselves and place you quite high in the search engine rankings.
A perfect example of natural keyword creation is the series of blog posts I made on a particular tablet brand. I only wrote three total posts on these tablets but all three appear in the top 10 pages of Google when searching them out. At the time I wrote the posts, I wasn’t concerned about keywords or placements, just the subject I was writing about. Apparently, Google’s algorithm agreed with me and one of my posts is higher than Amazon’s.
As long as your content has 500 or more words to it, the keywords can form themselves. For the beginner blog or article writer, just write naturally about the subject and see how many keywords are pulled from your content.
PS> This entire article was written naturally and I was hoping for my keywords to be “keywords” and “content”…guess what they are?
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