Introductory paragraph affect keywords?

[georgiek50]

Is it true that the closer to the beginning of an article you place your targeted keyword phrase the better in terms of SEO?

If so, for each articles (dynamically generated) I have an introductory paragraph/section as part of the site layout followed by the actual article.

My question is, is this hurting my search engine rank? Would you recommend I completely remove the introductory paragraph and leave just the article so my keyphrase will actually be mentioned at the beginning?

[HitProf]

Uhm, your keyphrase isn't mentioned in the introduction?

I can make a difference but I wouldn't bother too much unless your rankings don't work out well. But this can't be the only problem nor the only solution.

[Marcia]

It can make a difference, and if all of your introductory paragraphs are identical on every page across the entire site that isn't too good an idea unless there's a big difference between pages without too much of a percentage being the same across the site.

Check how much of a similarity there is when you strip away the global elements on pages, and take it from there.

[georgiek50]

The articles ranked pretty well before, I just ripped the paragraph out of all the pages, I am curious if this will have a big impact or not.