You already know that keywords are the backbone of your search marketing campaign. When writing website copy, you know that you need to include the keywords into your copy so that the search engines can identify what your page is about and rank it accordingly.

However, there’s a very thin line between optimized copy and keyword-stuffed copy. Follow these tips to make sure you aren’t guilty of the latter.

• Read your copy aloud—One of the easiest, most effective editing tricks I use is to read my copy aloud before finalizing it. Whenever you read it out loud, you can get a better idea of how it will sound in the reader’s mind when he’s scanning through it. Ideally, your copy should flow easily and have a conversational feel to it. When reading your copy aloud, it’ll become apparent if you’re using your keyword too often. It won’t feel natural, and you’ll stumble over difficult keyword-stuffed phrases. Identify trouble spots in your copy, and correct them.
• Measure keyword density—Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who believes there’s a magic keyword density that will get your website vaulted to the top of the search results. That’s a silly SEO myth passed off by SEO consultants who are stuck in the past. That being said, I do think that measuring keyword density serves a purpose. It gives you a clear idea of just how often you’re using your keyword in your web copy. If the percentage is too high (usually anything more than 5%), your copy will likely be difficult to read. Of course, there are exceptions where certain keywords don’t have a lot of synonyms or just naturally lend themselves to being used often.
• Use keyword synonyms—Using keyword synonyms is a good idea for a couple of reasons. First, it breaks up the monotony of your copy. For example, let’s suppose you’re targeting the keyword “internet marketing in Houston.” Rather than saying “internet marketing in Houston” 10 times in your copy, you could mix in “Houston online marketing”, “web marketing in Houston”, “Houston internet marketing”, and so on.  This will make your copy much easier for humans to read.

Another benefit of using keyword synonyms is that it gives the search engines more terms to pull from and to rank you for. This ties into the concept of “latent semantic indexing” where Google brings up pages based on the searcher’s intent rather than just specifically matching the key phrase entered.

Do you check your copy to make sure it isn’t overflowing with keywords? Share your anti-keyword stuffing tips in the replies.

Common in the insurance business you will hear things like the 80/20 plan. What that means is some insurance plans will cover 80% of the bill while leaving you with the remaining 20% balance. With Internet marketing, I have coined my own 80/20 plan and indeed put it into practice.

My business is mainly in developing niche sites that are run using WordPress. I write content that targets very high paying keywords in Google AdWords. My content indeed is very well written, unique, useful, entertaining and informative. The goal in mind though is to monetize it using Google AdSense. Some content I write that targets certain keyword phrases need a little more boost than others. Most of my content targets longtail keywords. However, some do not and need additional love.

The 80/20 plan that I follow is very simple. I invest 20% of my time writing content and 80% of my time marketing it. Depending on the strength of competition of the keyword phrases I am targeting will dictate the level of depth I go into marketing each article or page I create. For me, Internet marketing is a primary method of promoting my content on the Internet. It combines two elements: search engine marketing and social network marketing.

Search engine marketing is really simple if you think about it. All that is required is a search engine optimized web site or blog and your ability to write content in a creative way that caters to both humans as well as search engines. In other words, in order for you to rank well for the keyword phrases you are targeting, you have to carefully write your material in a way that uses the keywords and related terms in your content a certain way and at a certain frequency. All in all though, it’s not difficult but it does take some time to master.

The tricky part is social network marketing. As mentioned above, there are times when I want to rank for more competitive keyword phrases. These terms fall outside from what I would consider being longtail. Long tail keyword marketing does not require backlinks, while targeting more primary keyword phrases do. That is where social network marketing kicks into gear.

Many people look at social network marketing in terms of scoring votes of your submitted content into these various networks. While voting does indeed play its role in the my big picture of social network marketing, it doesn’t take the role you may think it does. Many of these popular social networks NOFOLLOW their links. So even though the page that your submitted content appears on ranks well in the search engines, you dont’ get credit for the links.

What is the point towards getting your content submitted into social networks? Well, really the point and reason why I like my content listed in social netowrks is for the fact that if someone else likes what they read, they may in return write a post about it on their blog which will provide a direct search engine friendly backlink to my content and or home page.

Internet Marketing isn’t just limited to search engine marketing and social network marketing. You also have the element of email list marketing as well as instant messenger marketing. Email list marketing is great because you can send out direct email to your subscribers and inform them of the content you wrote. Depending on how close you are with your subscribers, you can possibly even ask your subscribers to link to your newly publsihed content. In doing so, you are establishing backlinks to your content.

The same is true for instant messenger marketing. If you have about 25 buddies in your instant messenger contacts and speak with them daily. You can easily ask them to check out your newly publsihed article or web page and ask if they wouldn’t mind providing you with a backlink to it.

No matter what you do, always remember the 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan. Once again, use 20% of your free time towards creating content and 80% of your free time marketing and promoting your content. If you do that, you’ll see super huge results.

What are some other ways that you can market and promote your content? If you have some ideas, feel free to share them below in the comments.