4. Obvious (But Not Clunky) Keyword Usage
Once you have a great title and have clearly defined your audience and your purpose, you now have to dig into the meat of your text. In the past, search engines would scan copy for how much a keyword was used and put together search results based on that number (among other things). Today, search engines are looking less at how much you’re using a keyword and more at how effectively you’re using it.
Not only is keyword stuffing outdated, but it also often leads to terrible writing. Most people aren’t going to read a block of text that repeats the same word or phrase over and over again. Good keyword copy does not sound like keyword copy.
However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use keywords. Take a look at those top 10 results again and read through what those articles and posts say. How many times do you see the keyword repeated? Some tools, like SEMrush or Ahrefs, will give you the average number of keywords used in those 10 results. If you don’t have an SEO tool, or yours doesn’t give you this data, put in the extra work and read through the copy that’s already ranking.