by Andy Williams, 3/27/2007

I was reading through some articles that were submitted to my article site the other day. Some are really very good, but on the other hand, some were not.

Of the "bad" ones, the thing that struck me was how easy it was to pick out the main keyword the author was using when he/she wrote the article. Even after reading only the first paragraph, I could spot it, and my suspicions were confirmed as I continued down the article.

Articles written around a main (primary) keyword often read very badly. The author tries to insert the exact phrase over and over again, even when it is not grammatically correct to do so. The article sounds forced (because it is).

And my point is?

Well my point here is that if I can spot this type of keyword focused content, so can a search engine. Articles written in this way are written for the search engine, not the visitor, and are therefore going to be the type of article that the search engines want to remove from their database. Remember, the search engines want to serve up the most relevant content with the best information. They will assume (as I would) that any article written purely for the search engine is not going to be of interest to a visitor.

So, where does that leave us in terms of keyword research? Does this mean we should not target primary keyword phrases?

Keyword research, and manipulation of keywords going into an article has evolved in recent years.

When I first started out it was simple. Write content around one primary keyword and 2 or 3 secondary keywords. Insert the primary in the title, meta tags, H1 header tag, twice in each paragraph, H2 header etc etc. Insert the secondaries throughout the article.