The rush to understand and appreciate cloaking keywords in officially on.

Just as a refresher, cloaking keywords merely involves finding more and more natural ways for your keywords to appear in your articles...thus making them more invisible to the reader and still very visible to the search engine bots.

Not everyone else out there even concerns themselves with the placement of keywords, but I definitely DO because the more and more software people keep coming out with better and more natural content generation software, the more exact the algorithm folks will make their searches for 'real' content. The more they will reward real writing of great content. Diligence will be rewarded.

It's going to happen. (If it hasn't already.)

And although at first glance it might make perfect sense to place your most important keywords at the BEGINNING and at the END of every sentence, those positions certainly have more of a 'spam' quality to them. By leading with or ending on the main points of our sentences, we call a ton of attention to them. And as a reader, it's almost thrown in our faces what the writer is weaving his way AWAY FROM (when the keywords lead off the sentence) and TOWARD (when they appear at the end.)

In advertising, when we see this, we say that 'your creative brief is showing' meaning you're being way too obvious.

Some people want to be obvious. And its fine to be. But I keep looking for better and better ways to write persuasive, content-thick pieces.

Now, what does all of this have to do with the S.A.T.'s? In my professional opinion...a lot.

Did you know that the correct answer on the S.A.T. tests is most usually the letter 'C.' Why? Because if the answer is placed as the first choice (answer 'A') or as the last thing the test taker sees (answer 'E') these answers POP more than they should. They instantly become MORE OBVIOUS in those positions.

So the test writers more often than not 'cloak' the correct answer amid the entire set of possible choices.

By taking a stab at placing your keywords in the middle of certain sentences, you make your keywords POP less. Thus making your keywords and your 'sales messages' far less obvious. Thus making it better.

Just another tool for your writing toolbox. Enjoy.