September 2009 "Fun with Keywords" Challenge - Who's in?

[Celeste Stewart]

Can you believe another month has passed? Time for a new challenge! Since we often must work with keywords provided by the customer, we need to have a few tricks up our sleeves. This challenge is inspired by those occasional odd keyword phrases that customers want us to work in somehow. Recently, I had to write a few articles based on keyword phrases that were nearly impossible to work into casual conversation. I managed to do it by applying creative punctuation. Remember, the search engines don't read punctuation and line breaks the same way we do - so use that to your advantage, especially when you have a really awkward phrase to write around.

Let's use the keyword phrase "Artichoke cook prep" as an example of this technique. How on earth are you going to work with that one? Okay, you might be able to say something like "artichoke cook prep is the most important step" but how often are you going to be able to repeat that and still sound somewhat natural? Now, look at the following:

Are you a natural born artichoke cook? Prep work for artichokes may seem daunting but it’s not as hard as you think once you know how to handle an artichoke!

Cook, Prep, and Serve Artichokes with Ease
Start by learning how to cook, prepare, and serve an artichoke. Cook, prep, and cleanup are a snap when you take your time and have the right tools. Blah blah blah. At the store, pick a fresh artichoke.

Cook/Prep Steps
Before you cook the artichoke, you’ll need to prepare it. This involves snipping those dastardly pokes with your kitchen shears. As an artichoke cook, prep is a necessary evil that can be tamed once you are equipped with sharp tools and the willingness to use them.


Now, let's look for that keyword phrase - do you see it?

Are you a natural born **************artichoke cook? Prep**************** work for artichokes may seem daunting but it’s not as hard as you think once you know how to handle an **********artichoke!

Cook, Prep,********** and Serve Artichokes with Ease
Start by learning how to cook, prepare, and serve an ******************artichoke. Cook, prep,************** and cleanup are a snap when you take your time and have the right tools. Blah blah blah. At the store, pick a fresh **********artichoke.

Cook/Prep ************Steps
Before you cook the artichoke, you’ll need to prepare it. This involves snipping those dastardly pokes with your kitchen shears. As an ************artichoke cook, prep********* is a necessary evil that can be tamed once you are equipped with sharp tools and the willingness to use them.

[Celeste Stewart]

I managed to work that awkward phrase in five times in a short 123-word excerpt! Imagine if the assignment was to use the phrase five times in 1000-words - if I can do it in less than 200 words, then you can bet I can pull it off in 1000. These little punctuation and spacing techniques can be used for less awkward keyword phrases as well. If you feel like your article's keyword phrase is too awkward or if you feel like you're overdoing it, think about how you can separate your phrases using punctuation and paragraph breaks. Where the reader sees a pause, the search engine sees your keyword phrase!

So, here's the challenge: use a keyword tool like Google's external keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to find an awkward, but popular, keyword phrase and then write an article around it, using the techniques mentioned above. Practicing these techniques now will help you later when you are challenged by a customer to work in an awkward keyword phrase. Have fun! Let the challenge begin!

[eek]

It's been awhile since I've accepted an assignment or took on a public request needing SEO content, so I'll take the challenge. It's not *fun* but a web content freelance writer should definitely keep this tool sharpened!
Emma

[michellehoman]

I just learned more practical keyword advice in those two posts than I ever learned in my hours scouring the internet...thanks so much Celeste!! I will definitely take on this challenge.

[Celeste Stewart]

Glad to hear it. The idea of these challenges is to keep us learning, practicing, and improving.

[Zabrina]

Oooh. Playing with keywords for me is the equivalent of a toddler playing with big coloured blocks. I'm definitely in!

[Debbi]

Ok, you guys, I took up the challenge and wrote an article using the keywords "best dog training" which I found as the second most popular keyword phrase in a search on dog training in the Google tool. The articlee is "Pet Care Tips: How to Get the Best Dog Training Results" . I think you can read it from my profile page (DM Gutierrez) even though I submitted it to a public request. See how many times the keyword phrase appears. The winner gets.......the satisfacation of winning!

Who knows if it will sell to anyone, but I had a lot of fun writing it. Like the Top 10 list request, I enjoy having constraints to work within.

Debbi

[eek]

How is everyone doing with this month's challenge?

I only tackled two articles for SEO, neither for public requests. I took the idea for the topics after watching the new search term feature CC has set up. I know, the authors use that feature quite a bit too, so I used it more as an idea starter and picked topics I had meant to write about anyway (bird watching) and that fit well with my current portfolio (gourmet kitchen design). I'm just not sure I did so well with the keyword density because both articles were so long (1000+).

Y'all probably already know this about keywords, but when I wrote the bird watching article I had to decide on the most common term. There is bird watching, birdwatching, and birding. I chose bird watching, since it had more popularity, and would be more appropriate for the audience I was targeting (beginners). I threw in the other terms and some phrases, but now that I go and look at the article and that nifty little graph CC puts up there for keyword density, I see that "bird" has a nearly 5% density and "watching" is a little over 2%. Hmmm. Did I choose the right term? I always thought that placement in the title and intro paragraph was a little more important, and then sprinkle it throughout the article, so far as good style would allow.

But anyway, I had fun with the bird watching article, mostly because it gave me an excuse to write about a new interest. I love nature but I'm no expert, just a kid-at-heart who still gets a kick out of watching animals. (Just this morning I saw a vole in the grass through my office window, and got so excited I had to call my husband at work to tell him. And now I'm telling you...)

September's end is nearly here, and I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone who took on the challenge. Going to read Debbi's article now (if you didn't sell it yet).
Emma

[eek]

p.s. Read your dog training article, Debbi, and liked it a lot. Okay, I was enjoying it too much to count the keywords, but I did notice that "training" had a hefty density of 3.5%. Way to go!
emma

[Debbi]

Thanks:) It's had a lot of hits but no buyers yet...

What is the desired density for keywords in an article?

[eek]

Hopefully someone more experienced will jump in here, because I have no clue.

[jrichards]

There's a lot of theories about keyword density. We provide the keyword density graph on articles just to help people understand if the terms that they are most interested in are prominent in an article or not.

Of the opinions that I've heard usually people can agree that between 1-2% is useful. After that the language starts to get unnatural and once that happens, well the art starts to go out of the writing. And that's not good for anyone!

Sorry, I don't have anything definitive to share on this one. But if opinions vary A LOT!

[nichewriter]

I've been writing SEO articles for close to 6 years now and on average, my clients require a keyword density of between 1% and 2%. I've had a few request 5% to 10% KD, (which is overkill, I think, since the article tends to sound too unnatural but hey, if that's what the client wants...).

That said, the KD requirements also have a lot to do with what a client wants and what he intends to do with the article. For instance, if the article is for submitting to EzineArticles.com, I know that the keyword needs to occur every 100 words (or more) in the article; otherwise, the article will be rejected for keyword stuffing. This is also where LSI (latent semantic indexing) comes in where you come up with variants of your keyword/keyphrase (or related keywords).

Then there are the additional requirements like where the keywords should be placed. For instance, for a 500-word article, many of my clients want the keyword/keyphrase in the title (usually the beginning of the title), once in the 1st paragraph (again towards the beginning of the article), once in the last paragraph (usually in the last sentence), and 4 to 5 times throughout the body. Then they'd throw in some secondary keywords to use 1 to 2 times anywhere in the article.