This is probably going to be a heated debate, however, with all the talk of SEO everywhere you go between webmasters, you've got to step back and think about what you are doing to make your site noticeable for the search engine. ** I am not saying forget SEO totally.** I recently wrote a blog post about 3 Things You Should Forget To Make Money Blogging It basically talks about one thing. Your reader. If you have a blog and you want to make money with it, the most important thing is not SEO. You can be ranked the highest on Google and not make any money! Focus on your reader. Like I said before, this doesn't mean to throw SEO out the window...do your on page SEO. make sure your meta tags are right, and your descriptions, because how are they going to find you anyway right? Continue your link building and all the other off page SEO techniques that you do to rank up.
What I am saying is, that when it comes down to your blog post, forget about SEO! Focus on what your reader wants to see. Focus on the content and the material that you are presenting. Have you ever read a blog post that was cluttered with keywords in bold italics all through the post? It is confusing and hard to read! This doesn't do anything but make your reader back out. If you present your posts with informative and helpful words, then your reader is more apt to come back, they are more likely to hit the "subscribe" button.
I have been doing this for awhile now, and I know one thing. Google follow people. People like good content. Google also likes good content too! If you are getting discouraged with your blog becaue you are not ranking up, don't worry and don't give up! Google rewards blogs that have age on them. It took me two years before I started making over $11,000 a month blogging. I didn't do any fancy SEO tricks or secrets...I just kept writing what I thought I would want to read on someone else's blog. If by chance, you come to a point in your blog where your keyword CAN be used, then by all means, use it! If you are wanting to make a career out of blogging, then you need to stop worrying about Google. It will always be there...people may not be.