The Secret to Using Keywords Effectively in Articles

This is the fourth part in my series, Top 5 Ways to Get Your Articles Found and Read Online.

In the last post, we talked about how to find the best keywords for promoting your articles and blog posts. Now let's look at the most effective ways to use those keywords.

Keywords in Headlines

Search engines use the words in article headlines and subheads to help determine the topic of the article.

For maximum search engine optimization, use the primary keyword at the beginning of the headline, in the first three to five words. Here is sample headline for the "promote your book" keyword:

Promote Your Book With Facebook Pages

Also, be sure to format your subheads with a heading tag, rather than just manually making the font larger. This helps search engines identify them as headers.

Headlines are also vitally important to attracting readers. When someone is glancing over the articles posted on a blog or skimming down a page of search results on a search engine or article directory, the article’s headline needs to grab their attention and encourage them to read the article instead of passing it by. 

See this article for tips on writing effective headlines that draw readers in. Lynn Baldwin-Rhoades shares some great advice on writing compelling headlines in her article, Do You Know the 3 Secrets to Writing Killer Headlines?

Keywords Within the Article

It's also a good idea to use the primary and secondary keywords several times in the body of the article. Text that is bolded or linked is given a little more weight in the search engines than plain text. 

Many experts talk about keyword density – the ratio of keywords to total word count on a Web page. It's recommended that a particular keyword make up no more than three percent of an article. Search engines may even penalize your site for using a large ratio of keywords, since that's a favorite tactic of spammy sites.

If you'd like to count words to get a feel for keyword density in your articles, try highlighting the keywords in color to get a count of them, then divide by the total word count of your article.  You can find the total word count in MS Word by highlighting the article text, clicking the Review tab on the top of the screen and then selecting Word Count.

For example: 12 keywords/560 word article = 2% keyword density

Be sure that your use of keywords looks natural. If you stuff in too many keywords or write awkward sentences to use keywords, it will be obvious and will tend to turn readers off.

Having said all of that, keep in mind that keywords are just one way that search engines determine the rankings on a search results page. A number of other factors affect your article's ranking in the search engine when someone searches for your chosen keyword, including the number of inbound links to the website.

If you write a lot of blog posts and articles, it's probably not practical to keyword optimize every article, but try to use keywords effectively in your post important posts.

Read the entire series here:

Part 1: Top 5 Ways to Get Your Articles Found and Read Online

Part 2: Produce High Quality Articles and Make Them Easy to Read

Part 3: How to Find Keywords for Book Promotion Articles

Part 4: The Secret to Using Keywords Effectively in Articles and Headlines

Part 5: 5 Easy Ways Promote Your Articles and Blog Posts Through Social Media

Comments

[Judith Briles]

Thank you for these. I find your tips on strategic location of keywords useful in my website and my article submissions. It is indeed not enough to write high quality articles but a good and effective SEO will often be more efficient. I would certainly check out the other parts of your series.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Judith, I'm so glad you found this article helpful. I find that my biggest challenge is to remember to do the keyword optimization!