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I hate keywords. When I write, I like the words to flow freely. That doesn’t happen when I have to figure out how to make keywords work in a sentence. My hatred of keywords is one of the reasons I don’t do much of that kind of writing anymore. I did it for years and made a great living, but I’m over it now.
Sure, there’s SEO involved in blogging, but it’s kind of optional and I can write what I want without having to make sense of some silly keywords. It’s easy enough to write a piece around the words “wedding favors” it’s a lot more difficult to write a 500 worder on “
One of my biggest pet peeves is an obvious keyword article. I’m not faulting anyone; I realize keywords have to be used in order to drive traffic to a website. So I’m wondering, how do you make keywords work for you? How do you work them in without the piece sounding awkward?
Keywords–they are a thorn, aren’t they?
I get so sick of them from content writing, I barely have the pateience for them on my SledChix blog. I’m trying to be a bit better about them there, but basically, if it doesn’t work naturally, it doesn’t go into my blog post.
The other problem I have with keywords while blogging is that they don’t fit the lingo. I.e.: snowmobilers tend to call snowmobiling sledding or riding. It souns stuffy for me not to use such refeerences on my blog posts. However, no one really searches for snowmobile info or products by the word ‘sled’, so I’m at an impasse.
I’m fairly new to this, but I have a client for whom I write articles and press releases for SEO purposes. So far, it’s a fun challenge to write in a way that all the keywords fit without sounding hokey or blatant. I know the keywords I am supposed to use and I usually know the topic. Sometimes I get to choose the topic. I make as many words fit as I can. If I have keywords left over, I include a little “About” graph at the end of the piece and that’s where I toss in the rest of the unused words. Here’s an example where I had to write an article about gum disease, but also had to include the keywords “porcelain veneers, dental implants and extreme makeovers”:
The dentists at Smile South Florida Cosmetic Dentistry have offices in Broward County and Boca Raton and serve patients from Boca Raton to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. In addition to being trained in identifying and treating gum disease, they also are highly skilled in porcelain veneers, dental implants and extreme makeovers.
I hate keyword articles, but I’ll accept some assignments because the work is steady and payout is quick. I once worked for this marketing company that assigned ridiculous keywords such as “for sale Nevada home” or “home sale California buyer.” They wanted exact keyword phrases within the articles five to ten times, and had the nerve to send an email to all writers. Their complaint: “many of the articles are difficult to follow.”
I can see where this would become an infuriating challenge if you had to use entire phrases numerous times in an article.
I use sub-headings to identify the points to follow and it seems to naturally make the keywords come through. So for example, one client I have needs How-To articles. I am working on “How to Setup a Bypass Trust.”
Naturally you would have trouble reading something that used those keywords over and over. However, if you make subtitles:
Use an Estate Planning Attorney to Setup a Bypass Trust
Then write a few paragraphs on it, you have now helped the reader by using the sub-headings and you have enough keywords.
It might sound like a silly trick, but it works!
Tina Marie Frawley
V.C. those are the exact types of keyword phrases that made me quit doing that type of writing.
It’s so annoying to be told to include those words in that order in a sentence when that phrase makes no sense at all. I used to cheat a little bit and say “You can use the internet to find homes for sale in Nevada by typing the phrase “for sale Nevada home” into a search engine.”
When I couldn’t do that, I just inserted the keyword phrase as if it were written correctly. So I’d pretend the phrase was actually “Nevada home for sale” and write a sentence like “If you have a for sale Nevada home, you don’t have to use a real estate agent to sell the home.”
Boy, am I glad those articles didn’t have bylines!
I start by writing the article/piece as I normally would, and then checking the keyword density- if it isn’t high enough, I go back and do as many tweaks as I can without disrupting the flow of the article, and then check the density again. I usually aim for about 1 to 5%.
If it’s a really specific keyword phrase, I start by figuring out what sentences the phrase will comfortably fit in (and sound natural) and build the tone of the piece around that. I got a lot of practice at that once when I had to write several hundred Google ads (which must be
specific, keyword-oriented, and still make sense- bit of a brain-buster!)
Sadly though, not all projects have that amount of freedom.
Titles are very important though, and I like someone else’s suggestion of using subheadings or ‘About’ bits.
I strongly detest key word phrases.
Latoya,
I did the exact same thing. I did 88 dental articles once and they all had phrases like “dentist Cook County” where it makes no sense to include it in the text of the article any other way. So, every paragraph would say something like, “Use your favorite search engine and search for a professional by using phrases such as “dentist Cook County” and “dental professional Chicago.” It’s the only way I got through keyword articles.
In my own work, I only aim for 1 or 2 percent density and if it’s not a natural keyword, there’s no way I’m using it. I rely on a lot of unique content with low density. It seems to work; my Web site is #4 on Google for the phrase “expert copywriting” and there are over 1.8 million Web sites on that topic.
I hate hate hate hate keyword articles where the same phrase must be used multiple times. I understand that keywords are important for searching, but I had an internship where each article had multiple keyword phrases… it always sounds cheesy and obvious, especially when you can’t use variations of the phrase.
The day I really felt that I was a writer was the day that I wrote a 500-word article on “wholesale bungee cords.”
one thing that sometimes works is injecting punctuation (such as commas and periods) in the middle of a ridiculous keyword phrase. as far as i know, this is generally allowed for web content writing as Google apparently doesn’t pick up on punctuation.
usually small 1, 2, or 3 letter words (is, an, a, the…) are ignored, too, but not all clients will allow the variation. Would be nice if they got it through their heads that it is much better to add small, ignored words than to sound like you can’t write. Especially since most keyword articles are ghost-written & look like they came right from site admin!
What really needs to happen (i think) with keyword phrases is that you need to write the article FIRST naturally, and ADD THEM in later. IMHO
I’ve been fortunate enough to have my limited keyword writing experience stick to doable keywords, the worst being “vitamins for acne.” (Divvying that one up with subheadings including the phrase worked pretty well.)
Yeah, I’d sometimes feel like it was a bit obvious that I was repeating a phrase, but adjusting sentence structure to make it fit naturally was a bit fun to figure out.
I wrote the articles with the keyword(s) in mind, then checked the number of times I’d gotten in in there. I only needed to do a little tweaking to add or remove a time or two, then.
But on one of those messy keyword phrases, I think I’d quit.