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.

Almost once week I receive an email from a writer explaining that they can provide excellent content that will allow me to rank well in search engines. I am always open minded to evaluating what can be produce, so when I receive email from a writers trying to pitch their service, I typically respond back asking to have a 75 to 100 word example of their work sent to me.

Recently I was contacted by a writer and I asked the writer to provide me with a sample based around the keyword phrase “Cheap Bottled Water.” When I received the email back, my observations motivated me to write this post. Here is a copy of the content that was provided to me.

Cheap Bottled Water

Most people have turned to bottled water as an alternative to tap water since they think it is safer. Cheap bottled water has become a popular item in many people’s shopping carts. However, make sure that the cheap bottled water is up to the set standards before consuming it. There is cheap bottled water from various stores at comparable prices. Remember cheap bottled water may not be ultimately healthy compared to tap water.

Most people think that writing for search engines is nothing more then packing keywords into the writing. In the case of the writer who provided me with this sample above, he felt like he had to use the phrase, “cheap bottled water” constantly, and in fact, he did so almost in every sentence.

Search engines don’t like unnatural writing. The content provided to me was very unnatural. It was clearly and obviously written in a way to trick search engines. There was no pure and inner quality within the work. It was totally superficial and it will not do anything for the end user. In other words, and to put it bluntly, the content was garbage.

So the lesson to learn is when writing content for the purpose of ranking in search engines, there’s more involved than just stuffing keywords. In fact, stuffing keywords isn’t good at all. My advice to you if you are trying to write content for search engines, simply write about the topic at hand in a natural way. Write your copy in a way that is understandable to others, as if you were writing a letter to a friend.

Allow search engines to index the content, and then take some time to study results. Observe and make notes of the different keywords you’re ranking for. Also observe whether you’re ranking for the keywords you intended for. If results are less than what you desire, consider making some changes by editing or re-wording your content and possibly adding more rich content to the page.