The Importance—and Evolution–of Keywords in Online Content

Strategically using keyword in your landing pages, blogs and social media posts is important, but just as important is understanding how keywords have changed. In the old days, people could get away with keyword stuffing—filling a page with their keywords, often to the point where the page’s meaning was compromised by repeated use of a number of keywords.

Google’s last few major algorithm changes, including Mobilegeddon, have made good content nonnegotiable. You can no longer fool or trick Google. If you’re filling your pages with nonsense trying to create keyword density for the sake of optimization, forget it. This is a bad strategy and Google will penalize you.  Some experts suggest that your keywords should appear in about 2.5% of your copy. But search has become much more intuitive, so it’s not just about your keywords.

As a general rule, it’s good to work your keyword into your headline and a few of your subheads (do use subheads—it makes it infinitely easier to read your articles), but you shouldn’t distort natural copy to accommodate a keyword. If you’re writing naturally, you’ll tend to use synonyms for your keywords and vary your phrasing, and Google and search engines have begun to recognize this. Here’s what’s really cool—search engines are getting smarter. They’re better at understanding context, and you can help them by using well-written, informative content that includes words they would expect to find within that context.

Semantic search is the concept of a search engine’s applying intent and context to the search results. Semantic search seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace.

Search engines able to identify contextual meaning

Google makes an estimated 500 algorithm changes/year, but some of these have more sweeping impact. With the release of the Hummingbird algorithm in 2013, Google became more able to analyze full questions, rather than relying on word-by-word search analysis. As a result of Hummingbird, any single word could have multiple meanings; it used context to discern which meaning might be accurate, often using a searcher’s own history to provide context. That’s one reason why you and I might get different results for the same search, or you might get different results if you’re using Chrome or Safari—the browser you’re using will affect your search results. It also takes in account what other people click on in search results using the same term.

Optimize everything . . .

Optimizing your content’s title by using H tags and keywords, your images with alt tags and using descriptive metadata are all part of what makes your content SEO-friendly. But creating great content that is meaningful to your online audience is the best way to ensure organic success for the long haul.

Do you need help with your content marketing program?

Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing experts.