One of the most important steps to take to ensure that your site is successful is to have a site that is well-loved by search engines. This is actually fairly easy to do—but also fairly easy not to do. It is a known fact that well-placed keywords and keyword phrases on a piece of content will attract search engine spiders. It is also a well-known fact that keyword stuffing—using keywords way too much—will repel spiders and stop them from putting your site on a search engine.

So what is the delicate balance of having just the right amount of keywords and keyword phrases? How do you achieve it? How do you make sure you aren’t overusing keywords? We will go over all of the above to help make your site keyword optimized.

How do I write content that the search engines love?The easy answer is to make sure that your content has several keywords. But how is this accomplished in a natural way, so not as to hurt your traffic from actual human beings? Well, it all comes down to naturally writing keywords into your content. We’ll briefly go over this process.

#1: Sit down and decide what your content will be about

If your site is all about sports, figure out what kinds of sports content you’ll put on there. Maybe you’ll write about basketball or golf or football or any other sport. Or if you’re running a music site, you could write content about a particular style of music or band/artist. The point is, make sure that whatever content you write is relevant to your site.

#2: Make a list of keywords that are relevant to your content

So if you’re writing a music article, these keywords could be: Rock, Pop, Country, Rap, R&B, Hip Hop, Guitar.

But try to narrow your list down to 2 or 3 keywords. The first keyword should be a primary keyword(used at least 10 times in a 500 word document). The other one or two should be secondary keywords(used a few times each in a 500 word document).

#3: Begin writing the content.

As you write each sentence, try to think about where the primary and secondary keywords might fit in. Wherever it seems natural, use the keywords. However, you should never try to make them fit where they don’t fit. If it looks unnatural, don’t use them.

#4: Read over the content.

When you read over the content, try to read it like a visitor would. Do the keywords you’ve tried to incorporate in the text distract you from the meaning of the content? Do the keywords seem blatant? If they do, rewrite the content to make it flow more naturally.

#5: Count the number of keywords and plain words

If you have a 500 word piece of content, you’ll want to see around 5-15 primary keywords sprinkled throughout the content—a keyword density of at least 1%, but ideally 3%. Keyword density is the number of keywords divided by the total number of words. A keyword density of 1% in a 500 word piece of content would be 5 keywords, while a keyword density of 3% in a 500 word piece of content would be 15 keywords. Strive for 3%.

#6: If you don’t have enough keyword density, or have too much, rewrite the content.

Rewrite your content as necessary to have enough keyword density.

Why is keyword “stuffing" bad for my site? It is bad for your site simply because search engine spiders have been programmed to skip over sites with excessive keywords. These would be sites with keyword densities of at least 10%. Sites like these are known as spam sites—sites created specifically to earn high rankings in a search engine due to high keyword usage. Before, spam sites would be heavily ranked in a search engine, but not anymore. Spiders are smarter than ever, able to detect spam sites from a mile away.

That’s why keyword stuffing is a bad thing for your site—it will actually keep spiders from visiting. Make sure you do not have a keyword density of much more than 5%. Even 5% is considered too high.

Keeping the above things in mind will help you to build a site that search engine spiders love.

Creating and maintaining a site with content that search engine spiders love is easy as long as you follow the guidelines in this article!