by Thu Nguyen

Created on: September 18, 2010   Last Updated: September 19, 2010

Search engines will normally crawl through three places to find out what your content is all about - title, meta keywords and description. Therefore, knowing how to properly position an article so that it will be found must cater to these areas. It’s a benefit to the writer as it can bring in greater exposure. So let’s go into the anatomy of an article and find out how keywords should be effectively placed to perform well long-term.

The First Impression - Titles

Nothing beats a boring title like one that has no advantage to it. Despite titles in general performing it’s basic function, giving the reader who will further search for a term that has the added ‘long tail’ phrases might produce more click-throughs. Moreover, when the reader is responsive to an enhanced title, the hard work in making a choice for them is already taken care of. Thus, the next step is to prove that the content is as great as the title they found.

The First Paragraph

The last thing a reader needs is to be reminded of what they’re reading about. They already know because they clicked through. That’s why the first sentence is really important in presenting what the rest of the content is, not repeat what was said in the title. Therefore, the keyword should not be thrown out yet. You might want to present the main idea through a scenario and then state the keyword in the last sentence of the first paragraph.

This is basic paper writing where the hook is often meant to be presented. The same goes for web writing. You don’t want to repeat what was said in the title again. Eliminate the problem of insular content where it may sound like you’re talking only to yourself. Thus, don’t produce an echo chamber. When you do this, you’re overlapping the main point through repeating the same thought in every sentence, which in turn will produce more negative searches than positives.

In the Body

‘Keyword stuffing’ is a term often used to describe an article overusing a keyword or phrase. The general rule of thumb is to insert the targeted portion 2-3 more times somewhere in the middle of the article and the last paragraph. That’s it. That’s all it takes for the search engines to recognize what it is that you want to optimize for. Any more and you’ll be heading into grounds for becoming a spam site.

Overall, effectively using keywords in an article is more or less dependent on the writer’s ability to present the topic well. Oftentimes, a thesaurus would come in handy if duplication of words become a pattern. So with a little practice, leveraging content through using only 2-4 keywords throughout an article is the best way to help the search engines find your content better and overall rank too.

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