I thought I used to know the answer to this but google changes too often for me to bother enough trying to learn. I outsource and use quality service providers. That said I believe your best bet is to write for people not for SERPS and use minimal keywords subtly and only where relevant.

Most articles that are written for google instead of for people are un-engaging for the reader hence a waste of time because even if you rank well no one will want to stick around to read it.

This is just my take on it, write for the readers first, google second. Quality content and relevant content is the answer.

Hope this helps.

The basic thing I always look after is actually search for a keyword on google and find similar LSI keywords.

Then fire up adwords keywords tool, good old market samurai and again search for the keywords.

So If I see a keyword and its realated LSI keywords having low/medium competition and more than 400 monthly searches [local] , I get that keyword and get my guys to write articles.

The articles are like:

1. Target 2-4% for your keyword density - This is approximately 10-15
instances of the keyword in a single 500-word article.
You can use SEO pressor for this.

3. Italics/Bold/Underline your keyword at least once - This is another
function that SEOPressor does for you, but if you're not using it then
manually make sure each article you write features the main keyword
bolded, underlined, or italicized at least once within the content.

Title tag- This will be the main title of
your content at the top of the page, No more than 6 or 7 words tops!


use Related Articles at the Bottom which points to internal links.

Personally, I feel the best way is to write with a keyword or phrase that is repeated once in the first paragraph exactly, and then altered in the rest: for instance Cheap Budapest Hotels would occur as such in the first paragraph, but after that could appear as Cheap Hotels in Budapest, for instance.

Next, the density would be 1-5%, sanjon, I think anything more than that and it becomes more difficult to read - and the most important thing with articles is their readability. Split the article into paragraphs with sub headers depending on how the article flows, not arbitrarily, and finish with a closing paragraph with an exact keyword/phrase match again.

Google is able to identify keywords/phrases that have been altered, but it needs a hint first .

It's, of course, all up to personal opinion, but I feel you should get some great readability in there first, and then worry about keywords - they should occur naturally. Oh, and include a link in the last keyword/phrase imo, of course.

I prefer under 3% kw saturation.

I have the content written with LSI in mind.

Usually keyword will be in the first paragraph and then scattered very randomly throughout the rest of the work.

We used to do this article structure before the last panda update. But after that natural writing seemed to rank better.
Its better to write for the humans rathar than the search engines as they say.