How many keywords should I target?
-
Hi there
I'm looking for advice from the community on how many keywords to target. What are the pros and cons of:
-
focussing on the 40 keywords that we rank for already, with specific attention paid to those where we are on pages 2-5.
-
Spread our link building / onsite optimisation work a little further - and continue to target all 280 keywords on our list as and when they are appropriate to target.
I'd love to hear what strategies people recommend.
Thanks
-
-
Every day I work to produce new content that will expand my keyword reach. Every day.
-
Thanks everyone for your comments - I will report back in a couple of months!
-
Thanks Chris - I think you're right. I was spreading myself too thin before!
-
Thanks Philipp - makes perfect sense and was the direction I was leaning anyway!
-
The hardest part about what you're proposing is effort dilution. Say you have 10 people working your 40 keywords. That's 4 keywords per person (this is oversimplified for the sake of argument). Now you're proposing by increasing their load 7 times to 28 keywords per person. Do you think that you will get the same quality of work? The answer is a likely "No" and you might not realize that until your rankings tank (which is part of what happened where I work).
The first thing I would do is categorize your 280 words. I use three categories
- Primary - This is an important word to our site. It needs to be prominent in the site (titles, H1, etc). If it's a phrase it should appear together in nearly all circumstances.
- Secondary - This word is less important but still important. If it's a phrase it needs to appear together whenever possible but it does not have to unless there is a page focused on it. In some cases this might be a shorter version of a primary phrase (i.e. "spinning widgets" is encompassed by a page on "spinning blue widgets")
- Tertiary - These are typically long tail words. They have no focus page and are not a primary focus but we want the traffic. The phrase mostly does not appear together but the words should be sprinkled where appropriate. Here we expect the search engine to do the work of pulling the words together
Once you've categorized your keywords you can then look at your site with "SEO glasses" and begin to structure your site and content to use the keywords in a meaningful manner.
-
Hi Heather,
There is no correct answer to this, but personally I would work on a manageable set at a time. Try grouping them and create content and optimise accordingly. The unfortunate thing about working on many keywords at a time is that your effort becomes diluted.
Hope this helps.
Dan
-
Your decision on how many keywords to focus on at one time could depend one how much content your site already has, what time frames your business objectives call for, and how many woman-hours per week you have to put towards it.
Often, it is better to be spending money that you do have than money that you don't, which would lead you towards going after low-hanging fruit first (option 1) so that you're seeing the faster ROI that that can bring. Then prioritize the creation/optimization of content for the rest of the project in segments according to remaining business objectives or product/service profitability,
-
Hi Heather
I think those 2 options are not exclusive. First focus on your top 40 keywords as you suggested. In a next step, by all means target further keywords. The point is that you'll probably have to create extra content so you won't be able to expand to 280 keywords in one go. But try to integrate those in your content planning to prioritize content that promises lots of search traffic.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How can you best use additional domains with important keywords
Currently I have a corporate website that is ranking all right. However, I have some additional domains containing import search terms that I would like to use to get higher rankings for the corporate website, or allow these domains to generate more traffic for the corporate website. What are best practice in using these domains with keyword terms, to make most use of them, for ideally both ranking as well as generating additional traffic. All input is highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | moojoo0 -
Does Google think My main keyword is my Company name due to over use in anchor text?
OK, i have recently noticed google is adding a keyword to my titles... I have attached an image which shows the results from a google site:mywebsite search... 8 out of the 10 results on the screen shot clearly have the keyword ( - CCTV Cameras) added to the end of the title. Now a lot of those pages are support pages i.e "Help & Support", "returns" etc etc.. nothing really to do with cctv cameras. The only thing i can think of, is the most common anchor text used on backlinks to my website (according to siteexplorer) is the keyword cctv cameras... (i am currently working on removing a load of the backlinks to my site due to what i think is some kind of google penalty as the anchor text is all keywords etc...) But it seems strange if google has started to discount these backlinks, that it then uses that keyword to add to my titles - unless of course, google thinks that it is my brand name... Any body have any thoughts on this? FqwooQY.gif
Technical SEO | | isntworkdull1 -
UK and US Targeting Simultaneously - Domain Setup and Duplicate Content?
I have a site that will be targeting the US and the UK. However, it will need to display slightly different content to the two. Should I use a .co.uk and a .com, or uk.themainsite.com for the UK, or themainsite.com/UK? This is of course setting up multiple country targeting within Google Webmaster Tools. Am I likely to run into duplicate content issues?
Technical SEO | | james4060 -
How do i best utilize my exact keyword match domain names as landing pages?
I own mutiple exact keyword match domain names which I would like to utilize as landing pages for my business.I would like to know if it would be best to host each page as a seperte website?or would it be best to simply link the domain name thorugh the domain registrar to an already exisiting page on the main website. example: cheapshoes.com --> www.thebestshoes.com/cheapshoes I would like to do this in the most seo friendly manner so that the exact keyword domain is ranked within google without losing any PR. Which method is best? and what type of linking should be used through the domin registrar?
Technical SEO | | snapbacksmith0 -
Will SEO Moz index our keywords if the site is ALL https?
We have a site coming into beta next week. Playing around with SEO Moz, I had trouble getting the keywords to rank at all. Was this because the site is entirely https? If yes, what else can SEO Moz NOT do if the site is all https? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
Is having too many outgoing external links bad?
I'm currently writing articles for my site Eugene Computer Geeks and remember reading somewhere that having more then 100 outgoing links is a bad idea. I plan on writing lots of guides, and most of them will have several relevant links. Some examples are: a virus removal/prevention guide I want to link to the different antivirus programs I'm recommending. Or on the "Free WIFI in Eugene, OR" guide, I plan on linking to all the businesses' websites that offer free wifi. **Would having too many outgoing links hurt my rankings in anyway? ** If so, should I use the "nofollow" tag to prevent any harm? I always thought that having lots of relevant outgoing links was a good thing, but lately have been reading otherwise. What is all your opinions here at SeoMoz?
Technical SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Diagnostic says too many links on a page and most of the pages are from blog entries. Are tags considered links? How do I decrease links?
I just ran my first diagnostic on my site and the results came back were negative in the area of too many links one a page. There were also quite a few 404 errors. What is the best way to fix these problems? Most of the pages with too many links are from blog posts, are the tags counted as well and is this the reason for too many links?
Technical SEO | | Newport10300 -
Keywords
Hi All, If I had a site about a cartoon character (for example). When I add keywords to the 'keywords' meta tag, would I be best to put specific phrases such as Cartoon Character, Cartoon Character on TV, Cartoon Character on Television or would the following have the same effect: Cartoon Character, Tv, Movie, Television I was wondering if having the above instance might be less effective as the search engines might read TV, Movie, Television as less relevant to Cartoon Character. Hope that makes sense! 🙂
Technical SEO | | wedmonds0