Early in the dark ages SEO was pretty simple. You found a keyword, you used it, your audience found you. And once you found that keyword, you went about stuffing the heck out of your pages to signal search engines “come find me.” Then, there was a point where you don’t want to appear to be stuffing so you used hidden text (BTW, huge no-no).
The problem is that many SEO professionals still treat keywords like they are the magic key that will open any door. Don’t misunderstand, keywords are important! But if you want to beat the SEO machine, you have to consider more than finding the right word to punch in and wallah!
You have to consider not just the keyword but the intent that people have when they do a search to really understand a word’s importance and then make sure that you write content that is targeted toward the intent.
Google is Google because Google knows what Google is doing…am I right? Their entire success relies on people having a good experience using their search engine. So if someone does a search and they don’t get what they want, that isn’t going to make them happy or leave a good impression.
If you can make content based around exactly what the intention of the viewer is looking for, then they will stay put on your site. And when they do, Google counts it as a very low “bounce rate,” which means how long someone stays on your page because you had the information they needed instead of bouncing to another page. The lower your bounce rate, the higher your ranking.
So keywords are enough to get them there, but to keep them there you have to provide what a consumer is researching or looking for. So, keywords are still necessary but only to the extent that they point you in the right direction as well as the internet browser.