SEO and Keywords

*Originally published on 2/25/09


I'll admit that I am a neophyte when it comes to online article writing. My policy up until now has been to just write what I want and let the chips fall where they may. With the economy as it is, it's important to make every article count. I decided to bite the bullet and look into how this whole keywords thing works with the hope that I could increase my page views. I read the forums here at AC, I browsed articles, and I even searched Wikipedia only to come up with bupkus.

Oh, they all give a similar response, "keywords are the words that search engines use to find your article". It's said that keyword density is vital and you need to choose your keywords carefully. I am operating on the assumption that keywords are those blue, clickable, highlighted words. I may be mistaken in this, if so than this whole rant is pretty much moot and I'm a noob. With that said, what? The few people who do raise the question are met with grunts and groans while the more experienced writers recycle the same answer. You know those people who will draw one thing in a game of pictionary and will just point to it repeatedly even though you have no clue what the thing is supposed to be? That's what it feels like.

First off, I don't choose my keywords. I try to guide them with the tag function, but even that has no real impact on the keywords that come up. Once in a while, they will actually sync up with my article topic, case and point, my Cats vs. Dogs article has "dogs" as a keyword ("dog" for some reason doesn't make the cut), this makes sense as it's about dogs, but what about cats? Shouldn't that be a keyword as well given that it is about both animals? Evidently not because it isn't one. "Pet" is, and that makes sense, but what about "sleep"? How is that, in any way, related to my topic? I'll admit that it might be something people will search, but it has nothing to do with what I'm writing about.

I wrote an article about video games that were coming out not too long ago. "Nintendo" was a keyword, again this makes sense. However, the other keywords were "Indiana", "design", "style", "career", and "songs". These have nothing to do with what I'm writing about. There is no way that I would've even considered them keywords by the definition given to us by other writers.

Maybe there is a list of words that are deemed keywords before hand. "Dog" was deemed a keyword in more than one article so maybe this is the case? Why isn't there a list? And why do people bother describing keywords as relevant to your article when they're selected beforehand regardless of their relevance to your article?

People talk as if you can choose your own keywords, or at the very least have some control, oh if only this were the case. At the very least give me some sign as I'm writing what the keyword is going to be. Shift it to a different font so that I can say "oh, that's a keyword" as I'm writing my article and can adjust my words accordingly. As it is now, it all seems random. How am I supposed to control my keyword density when I don't even know what words are going to become keywords?

One little piece of irony, a bunch of the articles about keywords don't have very many keywords.

People have figured it out so there must be some method to the madness, but in all honesty I flat out just don't get it.