In days of old, the Google rankings could be easily manipulated by keyword stuffing. However, they soon got wise to the fact nobody wanted to read text with the same word or phrase used multiple times in each sentence.
While most people recognise that keyword stuffing is an SEO tactic to be avoided, there is a more subtle way to approach your copy which I’ll explain in this article.
It’s all about synonyms
What is a synonym?
“Synonyms are words with identical or similar meanings”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym
Why should I use them?
Google certainly doesn’t want you to stuff your articles and web pages with synonyms.
However, it’s good for readability and the search engines if you can use relevant words naturally within your website text.
For example, instead of using the word ‘holiday’ over and over again, you could use ‘vacation’ or ‘break’ as alternatives.
Google’s algorithm is sophisticated enough to recognise synonyms and it’s better for your readers too if they don’t have to keep reading the same word in every sentence.
Synonyms in keyword research
Researching synonyms is also a good idea when it comes to your initial keyword research. There may be instances when people searching online use different terms to find the same thing.
By doing this and including your main keyword as well as a synonym in places such as your meta titles, descriptions and main text, you can optimise a page to cater for more than one term people are searching for.
Using synonyms in this way can help you gain more traffic to each page of your website rather than creating an almost identical page but just with the main keyword changed.
If you liked this article you should also read: How to monitor keywords using Google Analytics
Image credit: xaler
Good post man.
I do try a lot of synonyms as well as long tail keywords.
The thing is I do try to keep my safe not to overdose my articles with keyword and stay safe… but you can still see ppl in review blogs putting like 50-100 keywords in their and still getting strongly in first spots of Google ranking with crappy content ;[
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Thanks Martyn, I noticed something similar myself recently. It’s a shame when people follow Google’s guidelines and others are still breaking the rules and getting away with it.
Hi indeed a very interesting thought. Sometimes it’s not that I do it intentionally but because of my writing style that keeps on stressing and using the words repeatedly, just to make my points clear. But maybe after reading this and watching the videos by Matt, I think the term “naturally” should be the main focus right now. And yeah, that is definitely true and makes sense.