Keywords used to be the dominant force in the world of SEO. Optimization strategies would live or die by the keywords selected, and daily optimization tasks were all about how best to integrate those keywords, onsite and offsite. Even as updates like Google Panda started trying to weed out the process of keyword-stuffing or writing fluff content, keyword selection and strategy still proved to be a valuable part of the SEO process for any marketer.
Today, keywords are practically dead. Trying to use keywords as the lynchpin of your strategy is sure to work against you, either because you use them too heavily and end up getting penalized, or because your fixation on keywords distracted you from other, far more important strategic elements…
