Toxic Green Sex and Secret Fat Cancer

Those of us who love language like to argue that there's power in words. According to an article in today's New York Times, some words are more powerful than others, especially six of the seven found in this entry's title. To get better press pickup and to enhance the findability of their clients' stories on the Web, public relations professionals now use, unsurprisingly, keyword density tools to analyze their press releases.

I found this article disappointing in two ways. First, I'd love to know how the New York Times editions published over the last month or, better yet, year fare in keyword density analysis. How many buzzwords make their way into Times articles or headlines, and how often? And even if the Times successfully avoids keywords, what are their most common words? Such graphics seem ripe for posting as a Web-only adjunct to the article.

Second, it would have been nice to get some analysis on how newer technology is trumping their use of older keyword-based technology. Referral and crowd-sourcing sites, such as Digg, must mitigate some of the effects of targeted keywords. The localization of search renders much of what's not in your immediate vicinity invisible. And semantic tools, which move far beyond simple keyword matching, are getting better and more mainstream every day. How are marketers responding to the inevitability of such technological enhancements?