Maybe it’s me? I recently was asked to write some articles for a fair quality website, and after accepting the project, I realised that the client only wanted SEO rich articles, with the focus being more on keywords than quality. The client received what they asked for, but I wasn't happy at all with the style or quality required. I try to steer away from less quality articles but it happens to us all from time to time I guess, but what I cannot understand is why anyone in their right mind would want to waste their hard earned cash on pure SEO, high density, keyword rubbish? Surely if you are willing to pay the money, isn't quality content, which is sensitively keyword optimised of better value? Gone are the days of keyword density to fool the search engines, its all about quality, informative, useful articles isn't it?
On the internet most people never go past the first page of Google and almost no one goes past the 2nd. Maybe a certain keyword term 3 times in an article will land the article on page 5 of Google that means no one will ever read it. maybe that term used 6 times will land it on page 1 and 4000 people a day will read that article. It is part of a web copy writers job to write for the internet (serch engines are a big part of that) and if they can't then they produce stuff that will never be read=worthless content.
I agree that all content needs keywords to help its relevance in the search engines, but there are some customers who still swear by, high density keyword articles, rather than quality informative, interesting articles. This in my opinion doesn't help the page rank, and can sometimes hinder it!
I agree that high density keyword are not what a lot of people think they are, keywords are just a piece of the SEO puzzle. A lot of times webmasters have SEO strategies and they want high density keywords ? If it is what they order, then,,? it's what they want. A lot of high density keyword rankings I see don't last probably for a mixture of reasons. They usually read like crap so they will get a bounce rate and get sent further back in the SEs people that are relying on too much key word density probably have a weak over all SEO strategy to begin with. I'll admit i sometimes hack into an article to add keywords if I see hits start coming in on certain terms but the terms are low in density and it really can help sometimes. Sometimes I feel a little bad because it makes an article not read as nice but I would rather have 10,000 people read an article with a few too many key words then no one.
Sad to say that there are way too many who are misinformed, or they are just plain stupid when it comes to SEO. They honestly think that it doesn't matter if the article is crap or not because they think that the visitors will poke around more in their site. It's a safe bet that a few will, but practically all will not. They also seem to think that if they have fully optimized articles, along with a fully optimized site, page, they will rank high. Not necessarily. I tell anyone who wants to hire me that the term, "SEO writer" is prety much of a joke, because the keywords are put in naturally anyway. It's backlinks and the age of the site that mainly ranks a site high. If they don't listen, I say screw 'em. I'll quickly write out their crap article, and then take their money, and run. I know they have wasted their money. They might as well flush it down the toilet. Call me cold hearted, but I have no sympathy for them. Thankfully, they are far and in between.
The reason people want junk like that is all about Google, not the SERPs, but Adsense. The strategy is to attract someone looking for information but not actually answer their question. The visitor, after reading the keyword stuffed monstrosity, is still looking for information and often will click on the Adsense ads to find it. Ideally, the article is well-written and has good grammar, it just doesn't say anything. If done right, the click through rate is fairly high as the visitor isn't turned off by spun gibberish and continues to explore the site looking for the information they need. The ads are placed in such a way as to appear like the site's navigation or so well-blended as to look like content. I've experimented with this on one of my sites. The click through rate is crazy high. It's harder to gain backlinks for an MFA (made for Adsense) site and make that site rank well in the SERPs but if it's in the right niche, it can be quite profitable. Build a number of these sites, in the right high-paying niches, interconnect them for SEO purposes and I'd imagine you could make quite a nice income each month. The trick is not putting up spun gibberish but well-written fluff pieces. Julie, I have little doubt that whatever site your work is now posted on is covered in Adsense or some other program that pays for each click. If you've found a buyer willing to pay you fair rates to write articles that say nothing, I'd keep them. Sure, it's not as sexy as writing a well-researched piece, but these articles are usually fairly easy to write and most folks running these sorts of sites are going to continually want more content.
Keyword stuffing is going the way of the dinosaurs. You need to really think about what Google is looking for now; LSI (or "latent semantic indexing"). I am finding that if I use the keyword in the title, once in the opening paragraph, and once in the closing I'm good but.... If I include the LSI words that Google suggests, my stuff is ranking higher than with keyword stuffing. I have had to explain this to a few different webmasters, but once they understand it, their requests for keyword stuffing goes away. I think there is a video on LSI in the Google Tools section that gets more in depth on this; might want to send it over to your clients so they know what you're trying to do.
Get your own back on those pesky clients who insist on paying your bills etc. Simply insert the word 'arse' in the article enough times to make it rank for that word instead of what the client wanted. They'll never notice because they will simply check it for 'credit card', not 'arse', and the joke's on them. Do it enough times, and your rep will spread as the 'arse' man, and clients will stop bothering you. Problem solved.
Yeah, totally agree, Natorob. Search YouTube for Latent Semantic Indexing and the irrelevance of keyword stuffing is properly revealed.
It's much better to use properly written articles with synonyms and good grammer than just keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffed and rubbish don't HAVE to go hand in hand. You can write keyword-rich articles that are also informative; that will make your clients looking for Google rank much happier. Peace, Stephanie