Spoiler Alert: The answer is no. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Absolutely, positively, and without reservations, focusing on high-density keyword articles is a bad idea, and if you find one in the wild you should quietly escort it into the woods and put it out of its misery. It\u2019s a mercy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I’d recommend you never, ever, EVER write one yourself. I\u2019d add another \u201cever\u201d, because it\u2019s appropriate, but I don\u2019t want to get dinged for word stuffing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we\u2019re getting ahead of ourselves. In the years book-ending 2000 keyword stuffing was a perfectly valid and widely practiced SEO strategy. SEO experts would write \u201ckeyword articles\u201d, where the bulk of their SEO content <\/a>was keywords and related keyword phrases, barely held together by just enough filler content to vaguely approximate a real article. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Writers active during this time will remember (not so fondly) clients asking for specific keyword densities with their articles. I\u2019ve seen briefs that asked for as high as 15% density. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The result? These articles were often mostly unintelligible. The text would be so stuffed with every permutation of the keywords being targeted that it resembled the English language only in the way that Play-Doh Fun Factory soft serve resembles ice cream or Nickelback resembles music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this worked because search engines\nat the time weren\u2019t savvy enough to realize they were being gamed. And this\nsituation lasted longer than you might expect, but it had an expiration date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the early 2000s wore on search engines, and Google specifically, got incrementally better at recognizing and penalizing keyword stuffing, and as a result keyword stuffing got gradually subtler, but still remained a common strategy for SEO professionals. But in 2011, with Google\u2019s release of their now famous Panda update<\/a>, keyword stuffing and keyword articles were read their last rites and pronounced dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Panda, named for Navneet Panda, the\nGoogle employee responsible for the machine learning breakthrough which\nunderpinned the entire update, allowed Google\u2019s engine to rank pages based on\nhundreds of different metrics, and then cross reference those results with user\nexperiences. And it could do this on a massive scale. In very short order\nGoogle\u2019s search results got orders of magnitude smarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rand Fishkin, founder and former CEO of Moz<\/a>, summed up Panda\u2019s impact this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, Panda kind of means something new and different for SEO. As SEOs, for a long time you’ve been…building good content, making it accessible to search engines, doing good keyword research, putting those keywords in there, and then trying to get some links to it. But you have not, as SEOs, we never really had to think as much or as broadly about, \u2018What is the experience of this website? Is it creating a brand that people are going to love and share and reward and trust?” Now we kind of have to think about that.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n For the first time, in a really meaningful way, Google was able to distinguish a site that people found useful, memorable, and generally likable from pages people found confusing, grating and unhelpful. Suddenly keyword articles and keyword stuffing were a major drag on search rankings, because Google\u2019s machine learning algorithm associated them with low quality sites with poor user experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one thing replaced keyword articles. Instead a whole new way of thinking about creating content for SEO was born. A better question then might be, \u201cWhat\u2019s constitutes good SEO content in 2019?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To start, keywords still play a role, though it\u2019s dramatically deprecated from the heady keyword days of the early 2000s. You want to try and get your target keywords into your page title, meta description, H1 header and somewhere in the body. But once is enough. Unless it organically fits in other places (and it often will) it shouldn\u2019t be wedged in. You can almost guarantee Google will devalue your content if your keywords are stuffed in places that feel spammy and disjointed. And, so will readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, it helps to place semantically connected keywords in your body content as well. These are keywords and keyword phrases that are meaningfully connected to your targeted keywords and help establish that your content is the most semantically complete piece of content for the intent it aims to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ALSO <\/strong>– Why Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords Allow for Better SEO<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n But above all, search intent is the most important part of creating content for SEO, as we\u2019ll soon see. Semantically related words and topics help Google understand the intent of your page. If your target keywords are \u201cgrilling burgers\u201d, is your page about how to cook them or where to buy them? If you add semantically-related phrases and subjects like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n your intent becomes clearer. Tying semantically-related words to your keywords and topics helps Google determine whether your article is the best and most comprehensive article for a given search. And, a semantically complete article is much more valuable for your readers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ALSO <\/strong>– Copywriting for SEO: How to Be Sure Your eCommerce Copy Converts and Ranks<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Google\u2019s search algorithms try and serve up the most relevant results based on what it thinks is the intent of the user’s search phrase. So if someone searches for \u201cgrilled burgers proper temperature\u201d it\u2019s likely Google will guess they\u2019re looking for information about grilling burgers, not locations of restaurants that sell grilled burgers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re likely to get the latter if they were to search for \u201cgrilled burgers restaurants\u201d. The more that you can do to optimize your content to match your targeted searcher intent around the keywords you\u2019re targeting, the better your content will do in search rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Joshua Hardwick, Head of Content at Ahrefs<\/a>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoogle\u2019s entire business model relies on them serving the most appropriate result in the top spot. You can use that fact to your advantage by checking your gut instinct against what currently ranks for your target keyword.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s still important to research what keywords to target.. You need <\/em><\/strong>to see what people are searching for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Note – You don\u2019t always want to optimize for the most competitive words though, because those can be much harder to rank for and are often too broad. Most SEO tools will give you an idea of organic competitiveness. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We won’t get into keyword research too much here except to point you in the direction of several great tools to help. Here are several you might consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our example you wouldn\u2019t optimize for \u201cburgers\u201d because it\u2019s simply too broad a concept. Instead you want to look for words related to burgers that are commonly searched for that more closely fit your page\u2019s intent. \u201cGrilled burgers\u201d or \u201cburger recipes\u201d or \u201cproperly grilling burgers\u201d. And then, you would expand to semantically related keywords and topics that add more depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bear in mind though that optimizing for searcher intent isn\u2019t about cramming in as many semantically-related keywords are you can. You\u2019ll definitely get devalued for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your process should be organic. Think of these keywords as topics that your article should cover. More than anything, keywords should tell you what searchers what you to write about – not which keywords you should include.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You want to work in keywords that fit well with the content you\u2019re creating, and this shouldn\u2019t be difficult because…the content you\u2019re creating is intended to service the specific intent you\u2019re targeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nPanda\nMauls Keyword Articles<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If\nKeyword Articles Are Dead, What Replaced Them?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Keywords\nAre Still Important<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Searcher\nIntent is Where You Focus<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Keyword\nResearch is Key<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n