Keywords will help the search engines find and rank your content when people search for those keywords, and over time just this one aspect of the writing you do will bring you plenty of new traffic - not to mention potential customers and clients.

But it's not just the keywords themselves that are important - it's how you use them.

Every time you sit down to write an article to send to the online article directories, or to put on your own website, you should be making a list of the keywords you want to include within that article.

The best way to do this is to think about the types of things people will search for, and try to include as many relevant ones as you can in your content. Remember, keywords need to be sprinkled throughout your text and not overused. Somewhere in the region of one to three per cent of any piece of writing should be in the form of keywords and their variations.

So if you are writing a piece on internet marketing, you might use the following keywords:

-Internet marketing

-Online marketing

-Website marketing

People are likely to use these search terms to find the information they are looking for, and you don't want to miss out on all the people who look up -online marketing instead of internet marketing, just because you didn't include those words in your article.

In time and with practice you will be able to write content more quickly. You'll also find it easier to incorporate keywords more readily, without struggling to make it sound natural. Most of the time keywords are fairly easy to insert into your text, as the piece of writing will be about that general subject anyway, but it pays to be aware of how you are using them.

The search engines like and pick up on keywords in general, but if it deems that their inclusion in a piece of writing renders it unreadable - in other words, it makes no sense and is basically gibberish - then it will penalise your site as a result.

Fortunately this isn't something the majority of us need to worry about. The only way you can really do this is if you were to fill a paragraph with nothing but keywords in the hope of getting a higher ranking. This is known as keyword spamming and it won't get you anywhere.

In short, don't just pay attention to keywords when you are writing. Think about the various combinations and variations people use when searching for what they need, and try to accommodate as many of them as possible.

By doing so you will reach far more people and your website will enjoy more traffic as a result. If you do this on a regular basis, your search engine ranking will start going in the right direction - and that's up.