May 2nd, 2010 by Nick

When producing content for SEO purposes, the use of keywords has to be considered with care. Keywords can be of some assistance in the competitive struggle up the search engine results pages, but if poorly used they can prove to be counterproductive in their effect. As the net expands and the ways of the search engines alter, there can be a need to change the way keywords are employed. To understand why content should now flow naturally, a brief explanatory journey to the past may be of use.

Many articles about keywords do not actually specify what they are, which may be somewhat confusing for absolute beginners. A keyword is a phrase or a word related to a service, a product or a piece of information. It enables users to discover what they are looking for via a search engine. A site providing loans can be accessed by typing in something like ‘fast payday loans’, for example. The search engine swiftly goes through its database and comes up with a list of the most appropriate responses (the search engine results pages) for the user to examine.

Back in the day, webmasters perceived the value in adding numerous keywords to articles. The web crawlers of the major search engines ranked sites highly which had large numbers of keywords in the content. Some site owners and search engine optimisation firms showed little restraint; they produced content which fell below the standards users required. Even worse, their arguably nefarious activities made the search engine results pages confusing because sites of little relevance were being ranked higher than their ‘objective’ merits warranted. The search engines were obliged to act against the dubious practice of keyword stuffing. Most people now realise that loading text with excessive amounts of keywords is likely to lead to suboptimal results, not least because the true goal of SEO is not simply to attract users to a site for a single visit.

Despite search engines like Google altering their algorithms from time to time, some content writers are reluctant to let go of what used to work in the past. Even though they may be aware of the possibility of search engine penalties, the firms they work for are focused on short-term gain. Some individuals even engage in the practice of cloaking, where text with copious keywords is concealed from users but visible to the search engine web crawlers. This practice is contrary to the spirit and the rules of the game and has thus attracted punitive responses from the search engines.

As there are no clear rules about the optimum level of keyword density which is considered legitimate, and because the rules on cloaking are similarly vague, it is never quite possible to tell exactly when a specific type of behaviour slips into the territory of the unacceptable. Hence the correct attitude to adopt is arguably one of caution. If a client trusts an SEO company with some of its limited resources, anything less than prudence could be seen by some as irresponsible. The best way to deal with the dilemma is to write content with a natural and uninterrupted flow.

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