An Argument for Content Creation Before Optimization
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"Search engines rank individual pages, not your site as a whole," writes Nick Stamoulis at the Search Engine Optimization Journal. "This means that each page needs to be optimized for itself by choosing the keywords that most accurately reflect the content." As a result, many companies build Web pages around their target keywords.
But Stamoulis believes in reversing that process—incorporating keywords only after you've created high-quality content. Here's why:
Copy written around specific keywords often sounds disjointed or haphazard. It's important to prioritize the experience for your human visitors. You want to rank well so they find you—obviously—but you also want to make a sale. And if potential customers see keyword-laden gobbledygook, the odds of this happening become less likely. Further, as algorithms become more sophisticated, this copywriting style won't even appeal to search engines.
Individual pages might develop away from initial keyword research. If you use certain terms as a foundation for the page, you lose a degree of flexibility as your site evolves. "You may find it beneficial to add new pages while condensing or deleting others," Stamoulis notes. "Choosing your keywords first may limit your creativity and [affect] the overall flow of your site."
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When I first saw this I thought "Really? This has to be said?". Of course it does.
There is only one reason to have a website: Sales no matter how you define it (members, donors, customers, actual sales yea!!). The content has to speak to the reader rather than to the search spiders. They're the only ones buying.
I believe that if set up correctly with your sites content and keywords you can great results either way. If you build keywords around your site you should not keyword stuff. If you build your content before you think about your keywords then you have a better chance of choosing the best keywords for the content you developed
I am in total agreement with the author here. For our corporate website, we in fact had the content ready, launched it, and tracked it for a few months to see the keywords people used to reach our website. Hence along with these keywords and our own, we will be incorporating keywords into our website soon. Hope it works out well :)
Victoria - sometimes those "well, duh!" pieces of information have to be said over and over again before it really sinks in! I can't tell you how many times I've had to fight clients on this one.
New Movement - Just because people shouldn't keyword stuff it doesn't mean they won't!
Gutli3108 - good idea! If you know how people are finding your website, you can hone in what keywords and variations will work best for you.
this was a very timely post! I find myself talking to clients lately about outdated thinking around keyword insertion in website copy and I am trying to make them understand that you don't need to -- or rather, you should not -- stuff those search terms into every paragraph but should incorporate them gracefully into the content for a good user experience, better writing (!), and to avoid spammy practices. Let well-researched title tags and page descriptions help bolster that SEO!