It used to be that search engines could only read an exact keyword match in order to understand what a site was about. That is no longer the case.

Instead, Google, Bing and Yahoo! all have the ability – some more than others – of recognizing the context of a keyword; they are capable of understanding that “SEO Services Washington” is basically the same as “Washington SEO Services.” Not only that, but they’re even so smart as to understand that the two above are basically equal to “Washington Search Engine Optimization Services.”

All of this is fairly new, which is why a lot of the plugins and other tools that you can use to keep track of how many keywords you’ve used in a post are not always accurate. Although the Yoast plugin for WordPress is incredibly helpful, it does not yet have the capability of seeing that “SEO service” and “SEO services” are basically one in the same.

It didn’t used to be this way. It used to be that you had to have an exact keyword in a text a proscribed number of times before you could say that you actually targeted that keyword – things like keyword density were numbers to live and die by. Now, however, the algorithms that the search engines use are much more sophisticated, and much more able to spot what they’re hoping for and looking for: readable text that isn’t stuffed with keywords.

This means that you can take a keyword and turn it into a concept instead. Think back to your high school English class. If the assignment was to write 500 words on the plot of Gone with the Wind, you didn’t get any points for how many times you actually used the book’s title. At the same time, it made sense to naturally include the title where it fit, as well as the author’s name, and the main characters’ names. The same is now true with writing quality SEO content. It is the same as writing quality content, period: if you are writing about a topic, you will naturally the terms that apply to the topic, and variations of the topic, without needing to needlessly try to bend sentences around a keyword that doesn’t quite fit.

“Frankly, my dear, “ said Gone with the Wind main character Rhett in Gone with the Wind,” I don’t give a damn.”

So lay off on crafting paragraphs around keywords and simply write quality content that somehow helps your potential and existing customers. Not only will they thank you for it, so will Google – with higher rankings.