Keywords are typically what lets different sites and search engines know what to display to users who are searching for or browsing content.

For information marketing purposes, they have a couple of purposes:

• Getting search engines and search algorithms to display your content
• Catching the eye of your target audience, especially in results where the words searched on are highlighted

While they are a critical component of information marketing, they mean nothing if your title, summary, resource box, or content is weak.

When creating your content, the following guidelines on keyword placement will generally help to get your content displayed:

Title:

Use your primary keyword as close to the front of your title as you can.

If you can fit them in, use secondary keywords later in your title.

If you cannot create a good title with your keywords, do without them or keep working on your title.

Summary:

Use your primary keyword close to the front of your summary.

Use a couple of your secondary keywords throughout your summary.

Avoid packing your summary too full of keywords.

If you cannot fit more than one keyword into your summary and still make it sound natural, do without further keywords or keep working on your summary.

Resource Box:

If you can use your primary keyword in your resource box while keeping it tidy and sounding good, do so.

If not, don’t worry about it. The primary work of keywords should be done by your title, summary, and content.

Content:

Try to use your primary keyword as close to the start of your content as possible.

Use it a couple more times in the body of your content, but not at the expense of sounding unnatural or spam-like.

Use secondary keywords in your content where it makes sense to do so.

The main thing is to make the individual parts of your article strong, while using your primary keyword near the beginning of the most important parts if possible.

However, I am of the opinion that you should always go for strong content before keyword placement.

If you cannot manage to create strong content with decent keyword placement, I’d typically recommend continuing to work on your article until you get both.

You content will be online for a long time to come (unless you pull it), so it is worth taking a bit of extra time to get it right.