How Many Keywords Should You Optimize For?
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This post was written over at Noble Samurai and touches on a topic that I am asked regularly. With their permission, I am re-posting this here as it is a very relevant topic in today’s web marketing world.
There is a common misconception that in order to develop a successful online business you need to be targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords.
This perception often causes a great deal of confusion and can lead to ‘Analysis Paralysis’ as people spend months analyzing keywords looking for the perfect opportunity. As a result they never follow through to create a complete and profitable business.
Last week, a group of us were discussing this problem and came to the conclusion that the reason this misconception is still so prevalent is that in the past, focusing on quantity versus quality DID actually work.
In the early days of Internet marketing, if you placed a large number of related keywords on a page or included them in Meta and Alt tags you could often get rankings that led to traffic.
Similarly, in the early days of Google Adwords, it was possible to load your account with thousands of keywords and generate a steady stream of traffic to your site.
However, while this may have been the case in 2003, it is very important to realize that THINGS HAVE CHANGED.
The old approach was a ‘shotgun strategy’ in which you targeted a large number of keywords, took a shot and hoped for the best.
With the continuous improvements in search engine algorithms and the development of quality metrics such as Google’s Quality score, this approach is no longer effective.
The mantra of “The more keywords the better” is a thing of the past.
The alternative to the old shotgun strategy is a new ‘laser like’ approach in which you explore your market carefully and then zero in on a small subset of specific keywords.
To understand why this laser focused approach is so important we need to examine something we call the ‘Iceberg Principle’.
According to the Iceberg Principle, finding a good keyword is just the tip of the Iceberg.
In order to transform a keyword into a genuine asset for your business, you need to undertake a range of tasks that most people unfortunately never get around to.
These tasks include:
On-page optimisation
Off-page optimisation
Obtaining high quality backlinks
Writing articles
Conducting targeted PPC campaigns
Etc.
The truth is that every one of these activities requires time and effort. Clearly, if you are trying to target thousands of keywords, following through on these activities becomes virtually impossible.
So, instead of generating lists containing thousands of semantically related keywords, here is the laser focused strategy that we recommend in today’s SEO environment.
To get started, use Market Samurai to generate a sample of keywords in your niche and then continually refine and filter these keywords until you find 5-10 keywords that have the following characteristics:
(1) They are highly relevant to your niche
(2) They have reasonable levels of traffic eg. 100 visitors per day
(3) They have acceptable levels of competition eg. Less than 30000 competing web pages
(4) They have low strength of competition ie. The top 10 sites in Google are not well optimized
Once you have identified and selected your target keywords, redirect your focus to the on-page and off-page SEO tasks necessary to transform your keywords into genuine traffic-generating assets for your business.
Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates! Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients.
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I agree with you, but sometimes it is impossible to find such keywords as you mentioned. There are many niches that contain more than a several hundred thousands of competing web pages, and if some of them are really popular it becomes almost impossible to get into the top 10. But generally you have 100% right.
It isn’t impossible:) Just need to do your due diligence in the analysis aspect of things.
There are many niches that contain more than a several hundred thousands of companies are into the fact.
really wonderful to read, written wonderfully and i appreciate it that you shared so useful and helpful with the readers of this blog
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Yeah I’ve been wondering a lot if how many keywords are essential for a site to come up, been doing a lot of research but haven’t land in the index page yet.
You said visitor counter script. I am assuming you mean a visible counter. Google actually has an analytical service which is a snippet of code that can be added to the site and this Google collects very detailed data about where the users came from, browser they were using, etc.
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Apart from this, you can also use Google Analytic and your Google personalized search history to check how many number of times the particular keyword / phrase is searched for.
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Too many keywords are not good for a site, you can choose some most useful and importent words, do some seo can better.
You can always create more pages and target at max 2-3 keywords on each page
I don’t think there is a set amount it varies by different niches and situations. To believe you can assign a set number to each site will leave you behind very quickly.
To optimize your website you are just going to take your current website and use certain words in certain places a certain amount of times to tell the indexes like Google, Yahoo, etc what your site is about so that you can get index properly in the indexes….
Been looking around for a good article on this, but you have hit the nail. Its precise and to the point.
I just listed some products on my site with over 30 keywords each!!!!
I would also recommend this article to some of the readers here … both of them compliment each other to create a ‘complete’ article on keywords.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization
Thanks again for this article. Much appreciated.
the idea that in order to develop a successful online business you need to be targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords is very misunderstanging.
at first, thought the more key word,the battert your business will be. however, i found it is useless .
choose some import key words to optimize is available.
Wow!!It is really a great info of Keywords Should that Optimize For business. I know which keywords I should optimize for buiness my wewb site for? How do I find out which keywords have hits?
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You’re definitely right about a focused approach being the new way to do things, rather than the shotgun approach that was so common a few years ago. It’s not just that keywords are only the tip of the iceberg but also it’s the fact that you want highly targeted visitors, not just any visitors. In the past, people measured performance by how many hits they got on their sites. But now we measure performance by actual performance measures like conversions, and hits don’t really matter so much anymore unless they’re converting.
You can go HERE. They have a dependable system that gives you accurate search volume numbers. My proprietary toolset is not yet available.
If you in it for money like I was then you should check out this guys site….he tells you everything you ever wanted to know about how to get traffic, make money through affliates, etc….his name is courtney tuttle and his web site is:
http://www.courtneytuttle.com
I think that the number of keywords you do optimise for should not be limited but a correctly formed keyword map of the website needs to be done after potential keywords have been selected.
A keyword map consists of all the keywords your site would like to have rankings for-each keyword should have a target page, which page within your site is most powerful and relevant for that particular keyword.
This technique requires much time and big budgets for deep site linking-but the effects for getting broad exact and long tail keyword search traffic through the above method work a charm.
Really it is very nice tip for optimizing a website that how many keywords choose for a website & please keep sharing such type of nice & informative post regularly.
I do not know how many keywords that I am SEOing for but I need to limit and prioritise them now
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to use to many Keyword is tough to get high rank or its give negative effect also.use only some selected keyword with low competition rate is good to use in article,pr and others
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I target 2 or 3 keywords. The laser technique is what I think will be the best in my case. I don’t even know how to seo for hundreds of phrases. Automated link building? Manually it isn’t possible I think…
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Thanks for sharing such a great tips regarding SEO & it is very necessary to know how many keyword optimize & if we will choose more then 15 keywords at a time then these all keywords produce self competition & that is very negative point for seo & really post is very useful please keep sharing these type of informative posts.
It seems to me the trend is leaning toward fewer keywords but more variety in anchor text links coming into the site.
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Thanks mate! I was looking for something pretty much along the lines of this the entire day. Do you guys offer a subscription service? If so, how can I subscribe?
I can definitely testify to the affect of analysis paralysis. I also discovered the cure: action. If you find yourself planning and researching and more planning and more researching, stop, take a deep breath, and pick a keyword and start optimizing.
Good article. As has been said before: less is more. Choose up to 5 keywords carefully and focus on them.
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That is a very good post. it cleared up a lot of things for me. good research tactics.
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Subscriber content? No – the content is made available on the blog. However, subscribers do get access to PDF’s and White papers. Not sure if that answers your question.
I do not know how many keywords that I am SEOing for but I need to limit and prioritise them now
I think it is important to find the right keyword, the rest isn’t a big deal. So these strategies are great.
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I try to limit myself to 3-4 keywords for most sites. For larger, broader topic ones, 5-6.
I wonder why you recommend focusing on just 5-10 keywords. In my experience at least 20-25 keywords have a much better chance of getting you the kind of traffic that you want. Of course, once you have built pages on these keywords, and the site shows promise, it only goes without saying that you need to keep expanding and build more pages for keywords that you can win for, get backlinks, etc.
But your advice on staying focused on a limited number of keywords to be able to win is great.
We decided on 4 keyword phrases to begin with, then expanded to cover 9-10 total. I do like market samurai also. It’s a great program that helps a lot.
For an entire site, it’s different. This is regarding a per page basis. You shouldn’t target more than 2 to 4 keywords per PAGE of your website.
yeah it is based on the page and in the site that you promote whether you put more and less keyword, thanks for the post and other suggestions.
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It’s much better if a web page is highly relevant to one keyword than somewhat relevant to many search terms.
Los Angeles plumber
That’s an impressive post. I was trying a similar strategy for my website and now feel that “Iceberg Principle” is better! Do you think LSI words also matter or Google bots are too smart to detect them?
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In response to Laura, I do believe that LSI is important. Googles bots are more intelligent all the time and so doing everything you can to get an edge is a big deal. I personally always focus on a maximum of about 2 keyword phrases per page – this approach seems to work well for me.
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I am willing to bet that in 2010 goes on, factors of on-page and off-page search engine optimization are going to change as we think it. I think we will see a transition towards client metrics in determining ranking results. That combined with increased personalized SERP results and we’ll be seeing a large molding of the searchers experience with Google and the other SEs. Every search result won’t be created alike, take a look at things like user interaction, bounce rate, bounce time, etc… Focus on a better user experience all around, and I think you’ll see better results in 2010.
I would have to say that it was indeed the case that in the old days you could stuff your good old meta keywords tag full of keywords and related keywords and generate a decent amount of traffic this way, although how relivent this traffic was was a different question. Modern methods favor a more quality of quantity aproach and I can help but feel that this is the way forward. Great read – thanks
In regards to LSI, yeah I think it’s very important to put LSI keywords into your website. Using keywords that are relevant or congruent with your main keyword shows that your site is more relevant to the topic.
I personally place LSI keywords in header tags as well as through the website… As for a magic number, well just let it make sense. Putting them in 2 times or 10 times, as long as it makes sense, right?
In response to rankpay’s comment, I think adding bounce times etc would be a great thing to add into SERP algorithms. It’s all about user experience right?
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I love the training Dojo that the guys from MS put out. The training is always right on the mark and it always makes me go away and re-think the best way to do things. But back to the question. I always optimise for one or at the most two KWs and then throw in some related words. Each subsequent post will be also be optimised for a single related KW as well. Sometimes it takes time, but the results are generally pretty good.
I think that it is best to target 2 or 3 keywords and no more just focus on them and you will go far
Thanks Great article
The exact strategy I use as well!
For me you should only focus on few keywords like 2 or 3 and it must be relevant to your site. It’s depending on you on how to promote that site with the chosen keyword. Anyways I want to thank for this informative post.
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I would certainly agree on the hypothesis that focusing on a limited number of key phrases for the majority of smaller sites. For organisations with larger sites or even a blog it is possible to target larger ranges of key phrases taking advantage of long tail SEO, Yes i appreciate that this is usually a phrase used for PPC however these longer tail phrases are generally much easier to target and can deliver traffic volumes equal to or greater than the higher volume phrases.
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Longtail are the best from a niche that has moderate to low competition. I like to target about a dozen keywords that has a potential to bring about 10k visitors a month in spot one of google.
To be able to get the greatest search engine ranking you will have to do a keyword research analysis to find what keyphrases people type in for when they are researching online. A great keyword tool will produce results easier. It also helps if the niche you are exploring is one that you are passionate about.
Exploiting the longer tail or keyword phrase is another way to target very effectively. Instead of single keywords you have a keyphrase of approx 3 words. People seldomly type in one single keyword when using search engines. Usually the search query is from three to five words long and by targeting this kind of human behaviour much success can be had.
The rest of the method still holds true. You have to look at two (max three) keyphrases per page on your website, where those individual pages get optimised for their specific keyphrases. As your website grows, so you grow your total targeted keyphrases, page by page.