Some people think that the best keywords are those that are most frequently searched, so they optimize every the terms that have a high search rate. However, this is not always the best option, especially for fresh websites. Choosing a word or phrase that will bring a lot of traffic can be a huge mistake sometimes. Also keep in mind that if you really want to create a healthy and long-lasting online business you should use many keywords and try not to narrow your market by optimizing your pages for one or two keywords. From the search engines perspective, a website that repeatedly uses the same term over and over again is a bad source of information. Using a keyword too often does not have the effect it use to have in the past. If the search engines suspect that you deliberately overuse some words you stand a greater chance of being penalized. The search algorithms have the mission to discover Web sites that contain natural and original content and they do not like the idea of people manipulating the results. If you focus only in one keyword it will be very clear that you are doing search engine optimization and this will certainly have a negative effect for your website.

If you have a new website then the chances are your website will be "sandboxed" for eight months for any popular keywords. So if you target your website solely for the most popular keyword then a) your website won't even appear in Google's search results (due to being sandboxed) and b) the competition for such a popular keyword will be very tough so getting a good ranking will be difficult. It is always better to have some traffic as supposed to no traffic.

The key to successful keyword optimization is to optimize your pages for a relevant keyword pattern, not just a single key phrase. So how do we decide upon these 'Keyword Patterns'? Let's assume you want to rank highly for the terms "Debt" and "Consolidation Loan" - both of which are highly competitive terms as these keywords generate the most traffic. How would I combine these to maximize my success using a single pattern on a single page? Easy, I combine the unique patterns into one: "Debt Consolidation Loans Lender".

These important pattern words should be used in my title, in my description, in my keyword phrases, and in my body text. Using a combination of this phrase in some form within the title/meta tags is good because they are the most competitive for the industry I have chosen and require prominence in my site.

So I now have the potential to rank well for a wide variety of phrases such as Debt, Debt Lender, Consolidation Loan, Consolidation Loans, Consolidation Lender, Debt Loan, Debt Loan, Debt Loans Lender…. and any other combinations of these phrases that you (or people using the search engines) can string together.

So now what we need to do is create page content and an internal linking structure that will compliment my keyword patterns. Remember, I'm not targeting the phrase "Debt Consolidation Loans Lender", but different variations of the words that make up this phrase, so all I need to do is create pages that are optimized to contain these words. Because I'm not targeting one specific phrase there is no chance of the website appearing to be "spammy". Instead, it will make my website appear to be entirely natural to the search engines without any blatant SEO taking place. To do this I must create pages that contain a mixture of these words in the Title, Meta keyword/description tags and the body of the page and also in the anchor text that I use in my internal linking. This will ensure my website is extremely well optimized for any combination of my keyword pattern. In many instances, simply having a good linking structure and well-written content will be enough to get a good ranking for some niche keywords that will bring traffic to your website.

Keyword patterning should not only take place on-page, it should also be off-page as well, primarily in the anchor text of the links that point to your website. As I've already said, the search engines don't like SEO, they want natural results, so if they see that 90% of all anchor text is exactly the same, e.g. "debt consolidation" then it's pretty obvious SEO is taken place.

So, just as you've done with the text on your pages, you need to vary the anchor text of your backlinks using different variations of your keyword pattern. So for example we could use these different anchor texts for our backlinks:

Debt Lender,

Debt Management

Consolidation Loan,

Consolidation Loans,

Consolidation Lender,

Debt Loan,

Debt Loan,

Debt Loans Lender

… Etc. Etc.

and we'd still be targeting our initial key phrases of "Debt" but also our secondary patterns of "lender", "loans", "debt lender", "debt management", "consolidation loans", "debt loan". These are natural patterns that you would expect a website to receive from natural linking and are extremely powerful for getting better search engine results. Ideally, try to create a different, unique anchor text variation for every link you create that will point to your website.

By applying natural linking to your web pages you will avoid many of the pitfalls that websites often fall in to, such as, "why am I ranked 384th when I am 1st for allinanchor?", the reason - unnatural linking, the solution: linking patterns. The reason why a particular website might rank at #1 for a variety of popular search terms is not just a fluke, it's because they use keyword patterns extensively when optimizing their website.