Keywords are great; they allow searchers to find your content that contains them.  However, when your content is composed, if the keyword doesn’t make sense in the context, or even grammatically, it can harm your content in two ways.  First of all, keywords that are just placed into content without thought to context will make your content lack sense and therefore readability.  Prospects might think you just put the keyword in there to grab a spot on their search…and then they’ll think you’ve wasted their time.  You’ll have lost that prospect.  If your keyword does not grammatically fit, your prospects will not only think the same as if it doesn’t fit with your context, but also that you haven’t bothered to proof your content.  If you haven’t bothered to do that, how thorough will you be with your customers?

First impressions do count, so let’s look at how those mistakes can harm some sample content.  Suppose you’re selling candied apples, and your keyword is “caramel apples.”  If you write:

“These are bought fresh each day,” and insert your keyword to say “These caramel apples are bought fresh each day,” that might be fine, unless you’re the one making the caramel apples.  Then you’ve just written that they’re bought, not made, which is not correct.

Suppose you insert your keyword so that your content reads, “This caramel apples are made fresh daily.”  If you blindly insert your keyword, you may lose the grammatical logic of your sentence.  The above example does not work because it says “This caramel apples..”  “This” and “apples” are in disagreement.  A better sentence would be “These caramel apples are made fresh daily.”  That way, you retain your keyword.

What about keyword frequency or keyword saturation?  Which of the following examples looks better?

1.  Here at Joe’s Candied Apples, you can rest assured that you’ll receive only the freshest product, because our caramel apples are made fresh daily.  The caramel is mixed each morning and the apples are selected from the best trees in the orchard.

2. Here at Joe’s Candied Apples, you can rest assured that your apples will be the freshest apples, because our caramel apples are made fresh daily.  The caramel for each of the apples is mixed each morning, and the apples themselves are picked from the best apple trees in the best of our apple orchards.

Obviously, number 1 sounds better.  If the keyword is apple(s), you can see that it occurs more than is necessary in number 2, weakening the message.  Quantity does not rule over quality.  If you’re not sure how many keywords should be within your content, for the best results, you should work with an agency on your search engine optimization strategies.