Using Keywords in Your Articles

The most important part of the article you write is the proper use of keywords for the best search engine optimization or SEO. Using the right density and placement of keywords will rank you better with search engines. The reason we use keywords is to get the attention of the search engines so that when someone types in a word to search for your article and/or website will rank high in the list of information retrieved.

What is a Keyword and How to Know Which Keywords to Use

A keyword is a word that someone looking for information on the web will type in the search bar. Keywords are ranked by the amount of times the word or phrase is used by consumers. For instance if you were to use one of the many keyword research software, or free sites for keyword research and you wanted  to see how many times the keyword “shoes” is looked for and what other phrases referring to the same thing, the results that come back will be a list of the word and phrases it was used in so shoes is typed in over ten thousand times in a twenty-four  hour period, then the next most popular phrase may be “red shoes” or “tennis shoes” is typed in four thousand time and so on. From this list you can determine what words or phrases are important for you to use in your content concentrating on the words with the highest search results that most closely relate to your subject.

Keyword density is how many times your keyword is used in your article. A good reference is five times in one hundred words. Remember that your content must read correctly not sounding as if you were just throwing keywords in at will. So an article of six hundred words should have your keyword or keyword phrases repeated thirty times. You can use less keywords per one hundred words however beware of using more than the suggested 5%.

Don’t over use keyword density however, if you decide to use more than the 5% rule for keywords you could find your site or article being penalized and dropped in SEO ranking. Keyword stuffing is considered spamming and is not looked at favorably at all. Save yourself some grief and stick to five keywords for every one hundred content words.

Keywords should be placed at the beginning of your article, the most important keyword or keyword phrase should be in the title and opening sentence and then throughout your content and again in the closing of your article. Having the right keyword density and placement in your article makes it more likely that you will rank higher in the listed search results.