The RIGHT Way To Use Keywords In Your Article Submissions

If you’ve just started marketing your website and you’re trying to figure out what’s the deal with all this keyword stuff, I’ve got good news for you:

Using keywords in your articles submissions is not nearly as complicated as you may think.

Actually, it’s quite easy once your realize that the main purpose of your article is to provide valuable information for your target market and that your articles should be on the topic of your website. When you are writing on the topic of your niche, many times your keywords will naturally pop up in your articles.

That is the RIGHT way to use keywords–An article that is using keywords correctly will sound entirely natural to the reader and will be easy to understand.

If you use keywords the WRONG way, the article quality will be compromised and the reader will come away thinking, “That article sounded like it was written by a robot, for a robot. There was something weird about that article.”

WRITE FOR YOUR HUMAN READERS

First and foremost, you should write for humans first, and search engines second. Think about it–if you write for search engines and your article ends up with a high ranking and the title or article is not appealing to humans, readers simply won’t click through to read your article. A high search engine ranking alone will not drive more traffic to your articles or your website–you need to provide quality content that will be of value to your readers.

Focus on writing a quality article that will be useful to your readers, and then after you’ve completed the article go through it and see if there are any spots where your keywords or variations of your keywords can be inserted. Most likely though, you will find that your keywords are automatically popping up in your article if the article is written on the topic of your website.

VARY YOUR KEYWORDS

The HTLM resource box is a great way to bring exposure to your keywords. In the HTML resource box you can hyperlink your keywords, and that can draw more attention from Google. In order for this to be effective though, you need to be careful and vary your keywords–don’t use the same keyword for each article submission.

If you use the same keywords every time in your HTML resource box, it can appear that you’re trying to manipulate Google’s rankings, which Google does not appreciate.

Use semantically related keywords in your article and resource box.

Do not simply use one keyword phrase over and over again. This means that if your keywords are “sail boats”, you can use “sailing boats”, “sail boat gear”, “how to sail a boat”–you get the idea. Mix things up and write in a natural sounding way.

DON’T OVERDO IT

Have you ever read an article that had one phrase repeated over and over again throughout the article when other words would have worked much better?

You can go overboard when using your keywords, so be sure to keep your keyword density between under 3%.

Here’s a formula for calculating keyword density:

[Number of times the specific keyword or keyphrase appears in the article] divided by [Number of words in the article] multiplied by [the number of words in the keyword or keyphrase] multiplied by 100

KEYWORDS AND TITLES

Use your keywords in your title when appropriate–your title should always reflect the subject matter of your article.

If it is appropriate to use your keywords in your title, try placing them at the beginning of your title. That will help readers who are scanning long lists of titles–if possible, the first 3 words of your title should clearly tell the reader the subject matter of your article.

If you’re not sure what your keywords are, there are many excellent tools available on the internet, some free and some paid. Some of the top keyword research tools are WordTracker, Keyword Discover, Overture, and Google Keywords Tool.

Your article submissions are a great place to make use of your keywords, and your best bet is to write naturally, write on the topic of your website, and focus on creating a quality article that will be helpful to your target market and a joy to read.