Either.

It’s entirely up to you.

Sometimes a subject area really interests me. And I’ll write. 15+ hubs about Roman Emperors, 15+ on Greek Philosophers, 15+ on weight training… I’ll write because it interests me. I’ll do a bit of a search on the simplest of keyword phrases, provided there’s at least some kind of activity in people searching for this information I’ll use the most searched terms as tags. Provided of course they are relevant to my content.

Occasionally I’ll write about something that fascinates me and I don’t care whether there are people searching for it, such as my hubs on the “Multimillion Dollar Home For Sale” and “ASCII Art“. With the first one though I did use a URL that is a fairly popular search phrase. But otherwise it doesn’t matter to me at all how many people visit those hubs, I did it for the love of it (actually, I did the “Multimillion Dollar Home For Sale” one because it was an opportunity that fell in my lap and it was such a unique experience I wanted others to have a taste of what I saw). I could also put my How To Hub hubs in that group, they make me $0 Adsense. In fact I’ve switched off ads on all those hubs.

Then there are times where I’ll do a bit of digging with half a clue and the keyword tool and find out what sort of keywords are pulling in high priced CPCs. I’ll then target a keyword phrase and I’ll do research. I’m not talking keyword research, but content research. I’ll hit the books and write an informative and factual piece. You won’t see those in my list of hubs on this account, I have them scattered around over several accounts. Each catering to its own niche.

I hardly ever, in fact 90% of the time I don’t ‘promote’ these hubs. No backlinks, no nothing. I let them get found by the Search Engines on their own merits. It’s slow to start but when they do get found by real humans, they’ll find good solid information. While not as exhaustive as my last two hubs (on Vitamins and Minerals) they’re about 700 or so words in length.

I must be doing something right if I’m using HubScore as an indication of quality, because these hub accounts sit in the high 80s and low 90s and that’s without them having any forum interaction.

So here’s what I suggest:

1) first and foremost, aim to write good, original and useful content. Even before you claim a hub URL. Even before I’ve really started writing, or I’ve just written the introduction (the first text capsule) I’ll write sub-headings for each part of my hub. There will be a whole bunch of questions that I’ll want answered if I were finding out this information myself, in fact I am finding out this information myself, so these headings/questions are like guideposts to me, I have to find the answers to them.

2) do some keyword research, before and during the writing process. I’m often thinking at 110%. Sometimes I’m writing and I see that something I’ve mentioned could be explained further, but to do so in that article will distract from its primary focus. So I’ll save another text document and jot down some notes. I’ll look into it later. While I’m doing this keyword research I’ll be finding out how many people are searching not just the keyword of my article, but the questions/headings. Sometimes I’ll be spot on and have a great results, other times I’ll discover by rewording it differently I’ll go from “Not Enough Data” to at least a few thousand potential searches a month.

3) I might be 50% of the way through writing my hub when I go grab the URL. I like to keep it as short as possible and if not then I like to keep it as simple as possible.

4) I’ll fill the text capsules with my proofed and spell checked content. And of course there’s the photos, Amazon and Ebay capsules and whatnot, but that’s a whole other discussion. Now’s a good time to read it all again once saved in the hub but before its published.

5) I’ll use a combination of the most searched terms and the highest average CPC as the tags.

6) Publish! And then off to satisfy my next whim or whatever tickles my fancy.

Don’t try and dominate keywords that have very little traffic. Or an average CPC of US$0.05. Of course I could also warn against going to the other extreme, but so what if there’s strong competition, have a go at punching above your weight class. Maybe not every time. Mix it up.