Part 2. How to optimize your article for a given keyword
So you have a great keyword in mind, and you're absolutely sure that you're going to match
the searcher intent with the article that you're about to write.
How do you optimize your article for that keyword?
Well, You don't!
I mean, if your article perfectly matches the searcher intent for that keyword and gives
people exactly what they're looking for, that is nearly 80% of all optimization work.
Yes, Google is just a machine and it is not smart enough to actually read your article
like a human being and understand why it is better than thousands of other articles on the same topic.
But Google isn't dumb either.
Squeezing your target keyword into your article more frequently than your competitors
was a good way to trick Google 10 years ago, but not so much today.
Let's examine the search results for the keyword "how to learn seo."
Our article ranks at position #5, if we count the featured snippet and the "people also ask" box.
How many times do you think we use the phrase "how to learn seo" in that article?
Once! Only in the headline.
So maybe that's why we don't rank #1 for "how to learn seo" search query?
Maybe the competing pages use this keyword more frequently in their content?
Let's see...
And no!
Both articles that rank above us have 0 mentions of that keyword, so why do they rank so high then?
That's because Google has enough technology and enough ranking signals to be able to find
the most relevant page for a certain search query without relying on how many times that
keyword was used on a page.
In fact, we have studied the top 10 ranking pages for 2 Million random search queries.
And what we discovered was quite fun.
75% of all pages that ranked in Google top 10 don't have even a single mention of the search
query that they rank for anywhere on the page.
Back to our example with "how to learn seo" search query.
Google is smart enough to understand that phrases like "seo learning center" or "online
resources for learning seo" are perfectly relevant to what the user is searching for,
even though they don't match the search query word for word.
This is why I suggested that by nailing the searcher intent with your content you
automatically do 80% of all optimization work.
Your article is likely to have enough synonims and relevant words and phrases for Google
to be able to understand what it is about.
So does that mean you should ignore any kind of keyword optimization and write as
you please?
Not really.
The rule of thumb is to use your target keyword, or at least the most important words of your
keyword, in the following places:
URL, title, headline, and contеnt.
Let's go back to the search results for "how to learn seo."
The main words of this keyword are obviously "learn" and "seo".
All of the top 10 ranking pages have the word "seo" in their URLs and titles.
As for the word "learn", some of the pages have it in their URLs and titles, and others
get away with the synonyms and closely related words like "resources," "tutorial," "training," "teach."
So, as you can tell, Google allows you quite some flexibility in keyword targeting.
That is why, by simply matching the searcher intent with the content of your article, you're
already making it 80% relevant to that search query.
Because you are already using all the right words.
I'd say that further refining your URL, title, headline and content will probably move the needle by another 10%.
This percentage is quite arbitrary, there's 0 science behind it, but you get the idea.
And I'm sure you want to learn about the final 10%.
There's a great article by Cyrus Shepard, where he explains rather advanced things, like
TF-IDF (which stands for Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency);
Semantic distance & Term Relationships; Co-occurrence and Phrase-Based Indexing;
Entity Salience, etc.
There's also a great article by Dr. Pete, that shines a bit of light on how Google reads
and understands your search queries, in order to find the most relevant search result.
Both of these posts are absolutely great reads, and I highly reccomend you to check them out
if you're serious about SEO.
But at the same time, they're just scratching the surface of how Google really works.
Their algorithms are much more complicated.
So unless you're a professional SEO, I don't recommend you to get carried away with advanced
on-page SEO tactics, which are quite technical.
The foundation of your success in search is the actual content, not the SEO enhansements
that you apply to it.
To win in the search results today you need to be an authority and expert on the topics
on which you are writing.
And if your article is objectively better than what already ranks in Google top 10,
you should be there soon.