keyword_secretAlmost every blogger out there has, at one point or time, fretted and stressed over finding good long-tail keywords to use on their site and figuring out clever ways to implement “incredible keywords” that only kind of matched the content they were looking to create.

It’s frustrating, especially because there are so many different opinions out there. In this post I’m going to tell you the keyword secret nobody else wants to tell you:

Keywords are NOT the most important part of your blog.

Keywords are Important

Yes, keywords are important. Finding good long-tail keywords to implement on your blog will help you rank more quickly on search engines for (hopefully) a large number of less-competitive topics.

However, the problem that many bloggers get into comes when they focus exclusively on finding and implementing those keywords.

Search Bots Are People Too

Over time, this obsessive focus makes you, as a blogger, begin to think about your blog more like a computer searching for text than a human being looking for information.

You begin to write post titles that only kind of make sense, or wind up with post titles that do not directly reflect the content provided in the rest of the article. In the end, you wind up with content that looks good to machines but not to people.

In addition to risking the alienation of your readers, you’re also risking the future of your site. Search engines are already incredibly smart, and are getting better everyday. As we approach the semantic web (where computers can actually understand human words and phrases) the search engines will only improve at isolating blogs that focus on keywords and blogs that focus on real content.

How to Implement a Balanced Keyword-Mindset

There are two things I do to make sure I don’t become over-reliant on keywords within my posts.

The first is simple, I only think about keywords for about half of my articles. Oftentimes I realize I just want to write on a topic, and I start writing. The content flows naturally, and it isn’t forced into some ‘pefect’ keyword identifier. I write faster and more effectively.

I find that these “non-keyword” posts are often my best content, get more page views, and rank for keywords I never would have thought to implement anyway.

The other techniques I use is to only think about keywords as the title of the post. In my “keyword-posts” I usually start with a specific topic in mind and use a keyword tool, like Jaaxy, to find a good keyword related to that topic. I use the keyword in the title and maybe 1 more time, and then forget that I’m “writing for” a keyword.

And that’s the shift. For me, it’s easy to forget that I’m “writing for” a keyword…because I’m not. The secret is that keywords are best used to supplement high quality content, not define it.