Search engine optimization isn’t really old, but relatively speaking, there’s an old-school philosophy for writing SEO content that requires you use exact keyword phrases throughout the text. Today, that’s hooey as far as I’m concerned. Google is like a super smart older brother who graduated top of his class from Harvard. He’s smart.
Through the years, as SEO has developed, some rather unscrupulous and greedy individuals have tried to trick the system. We say that these folks (the dogs) use black hat tactics. They would do things like create pages of text stocked with keywords and no real content just to drive people to a web page. If they get caught, they’re in deep trouble from that smart big brother. They can get black listed so that they don’t show up on the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) anymore.
To keep black hatters in check, Google consistently changes its rules. All Google wants is for people to be on the up and up. The purpose of Google is to provide the world with the most awesome Internet search available. To this end, Google respects and promotes companies that have websites with good information – not trash. Google also loves news. For these reasons, a blog is a great opportunity for businesses to market online. Blogs work.
But back to the hatters. Those good guys, like the cowboys in western flicks, are white hatters.
You don’t have to use a keyword saturation percentage or integrate precise keyword phrases in strategic locations on a page. Some of this helps, but honestly, the content that ranks the highest is original text with keywords mixed in. It has links (with good anchor text) to relevant information. It’s composed with the most important information at the top of the page.
That’s it. Write well, write often, and write good stuff… and Google will love you for it.