How many keywords??

[mike_sif]

Hello everybody! Quick question. How many keywords is a healthy amount to begin an SEO campaign? I'm getting ready for link building and content writing. I have a list of about 50 keywords (with long tails mostly). Is that too much?? Or should I increase the list?? What are your thoughts?? Thanks

[mike_sif]

Thanks Dana! I have 50 keywords because this a very local campaign. The audience i want to reach are local. Thanks again!

[danatanseo]

Hi Mike,

I don' t think 50 keywords is too many at all, but of course it depends on the scope of your campaign. I have one niche site that I run a campaign for and it has about 250 keywords. That pretty much covers every possible nook and cranny broad and longtaiil search term for the whole site. On the other hand, I have another campaign containing about 750 keywords for a much larger site, and it doesn't even come close to covering the whole site. It maybe covers two main categories.

One thing I will caution you on is SEOMoz campaign keywords are case-sensitive. I don't really know why. They just are. So, if you have one keyword listed as "This Is My Keyword" and another as "this is my keyword" SEOMoz is going to count that as 2 keywords. So just to be on the safe side make sure all of your keywords are lower case before you upload them to your campaign.

My only other piece of advice is that if you have a long tail keyword, or perhaps even a branded search term that you know you are going to rank #1 in Google for (or perhaps already do), it might be worth leaving that one out and tracking other keywords that are more challenging to rank for.

Oh, one more thing, use the tagging capabilities to breakdown your campaign keywords into more specific groups. It makes reporting on specifics way easier later. For example, if you have several different specific brands inside your campaign, break it down by brand.

Hope this is helpful!

Dana