Keyword Variation Within Your Content

Posted by Nick Stamoulis on July 10, 2009
From: searchengineoptimizationjournal

One of the most important principles behind on site optimization of a website is to maintain a good balance between search engine optimization techniques and valuable content for your readers. To be sure, valuable content should take precedence, but if you focus only on making sure your content is readable and likable and you spend no time on SEO then you are likely to produce a site that is not optimized properly. And what will that get you?

Many site owners and webmasters focus so hard on the SEO, however, that they forget about what their readers are interested in. Others don’t focus on it enough and don’t have a quality, optimized website. So where’s the balance?

One of the easiest things to do, and most practical, is to use keyword variations and synonyms for your keywords within your content. You want to use your primary keyword often enough to get it noticed by the search engines, but not so much that your readers know it’s your primary keyword. In other words, don’t use your keyword in every sentence in an attempt to rank for it. Such prose tends to be choppy and unnatural.

A simple variation like plural forms or inserting a preposition between a two-word phrase and inverting their order can go a long way to make your content more readable and better optimized.

For instance, if your primary is “wheeled widget” then you can alter it by saying “widget with wheels” instead. It means the same thing and it alters your keyword enough that search engine robots won’t stumble over it when analyzing your page for keyword stuffing. Many times, better optimization and better reading is as simple as that.