Is it best to optimize your site for just one or two keywords?

[JAARON]

My company/website makes and sells a product that's not that competitive but still has about 20 key words/phrases that people search for. My site is not a huge site maybe 35 pages after you include the blog posts.We sell samples off the site but it's mostly used as a brochure but we also want it to be a successful tool at bringing in leads.

Should I optimize for the most popular key word phrases focusing on only one or two per page and forget about the rest or should I try to optimize for as many keywords as possible on all pages or should I optimize for just the few (3-5) heavy hitting keywords but on all pages?

Right now I've got it optimized for around 3 keyword phrases for the whole site and only 1 or 2 per page with the most popular phrases on the most important pages.

[JAARON]

Thanks guys. All of this is a big help. I believe what I've done is pretty close to what everyone is saying. I may need to add a few pages to the website and I'll be sure to add some posts optimized with extra terms.

[JAARON]

Great. Checked it out and it helped.

[EGOL]

Before I build a site, or when I do SEO on an existing site, I do keyword research to find all of the terms that I think will be important for my business.  Important means: keywords that will bring in valuable traffic.

Then I develop a content plan that will produce one or two pages for every one of these important keywords and at least two pages for the most important.  These keywords match to products that we sell, services that we offer, information that customers might need, general information that anyone interested in our topic niche might be searching for.

In a small niche the goal is to get pages into every important SERP.

Then there is the long tail.... for that I try to develop detailed articles with substantive content that has a diversity of potential search terms and images that could go into image search.

[evolvingSEO]

Rand had a FANTASTIC flowchart to answer this question: Splitting Keyword Targeting

It was from this post.

-Dan

[kbloemendaal]

I have always found it difficult to try to optimize for more than a few keywords/phrases per page. Most times I will target one per page if at all possible, using content marketing (blogging) to optimize for others, even writing multiple articles about a keyword to gain authority in it.

I am not saying it's impossible, many factors would determine that, like competition, etc... I just personally think it's easier (all the way around) to limit the number of keywords per page...