Publisher Lesson #1: Do your research after you’ve learned what your community is looking for.
You have to understand what people are looking for when they’re coming to your site. If you don’t know why they’re there, you could establish a keyword strategy that doesn’t actually reach out to the people you want on your site.
Publisher Lesson #2: Work in the long-tail of keywords as much as possible.
Publishers aren’t likely to have a publish-something-groundbreaking-daily type of site–especially as their community is developing. You just aren’t going to be your visitors’ main source of news for the day, so working with the big, general, of-the-moment keywords could put your site in the middle of strong competition for today’s viewership and leave it high and dry with no hope of attention the very next day.
Publisher Lesson #3: Integrate your keyword strategy, but learn how to make it a natural part of what you’re doing.
There’s nothing more off-putting than pages and pages of overly optimized content. You won’t be able to hook every potential reader all the time, so make sure that the readers you do have enjoy the experience.
