Your keywords should serve your readers, not your agenda

SEO blogger Chelsea Adams says: 

When you start looking at keyword suggestions it can be easy to fall into a high-volume drunken haze and forget that relevance means directly descriptive of your content or product — not loosely related to the idea of the content or the general needs of the target demographic. 

Don’t approach your keyword like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  If you identify a keyword phrase that doesn’t describe the topic on your landing page, but is related to your topic, or of related interest to your target demographic, create a new landing page with new content to work in that keyword phrase. Don’t try to fool humans or Google spiders by using phrases that do not exactly describe your content — use keyword research to inform content strategy! 

Think to yourself: When the user searches this query, what are they looking for? What do they want? If they find my site, will their needs be met?

She offers a useful six-point checklist for conducting keyword research.