Search Engine Optimization: Keyword Placement

One of the most common mistakes that beginning search engine optimization (SEO) content writers typically make is misinterpreting keyword placement and how they function in the entire piece of content. Indeed, permutations of a keyword phrase can be very valuable in increasing an article’s search engine value.

However, to realize the greatest amount of value from each SEO article, you must take the time to consider how each of the keywords, and keyword phases, are placed within the article and how they add to, and contribute, to the entire piece of content.

What Not to Do

While many writers consider only keyword saturation as being important to SEO, there is a great deal more to take into account. After all, based on only this consideration, keyword stuffing would be the best SEO technique. But keyword stuffing is actually one of the worst things that you can do when writing content. If you are unfamiliar with keyword stuffing, think of an article that includes the keywords and only the keywords. Of course, this is an extreme example. Much more common would be an example like the following:

“There are many birds in North America refrigerator. While these birds can vary in both size refrigerator and color refrigerator, much of their anatomy refrigerator is often similar.”

You might assume that this piece of content would rank well for “refrigerator” and “birds”, it would not rank well for long or be of any value to visitors looking for solid information on birds or refrigerators.

Placing SEO Keywords Effectively

There are several rules that you can follow to make sure that your keywords are effective and properly placed. Test your article against the following guidelines:

1. Do the keywords exactly match the keyword phrases (birds of North America vs. North American birds)?
2. Do your subtitles contain the keywords of the title?
3. Does the first sentence of your article include the primary keyword or keyword phrase?
4. Are there no descriptive words like “the” or “it” that can be replaced with keywords like “birds” or “North America”?

If you were able to answer “Yes” to all of these questions, your article is in very good shape. Although SEO optimization is a great deal more complicated than following the above 4 rules, you can quickly begin generating good content that has the potential to rank well on search engines.

Remember that the highest ranked content depends on a variety of factors that determine how search engines determine its value. In many cases, first page ranked content has more links pointing back to it than lower ranking content on the same subject, a richer (yet proper) saturation of keywords and a web site that justifies the content with related material.

While you might need to do much more work with a good piece of SEO content to achieve high rankings, you must start with properly placed keywords before moving on to any more complicated or labor intensive SEO techniques.