Target multiple keywords on homepage?

[EduardoRuiz]

Hello. I've got a situation in which I could use some help.

A client is in the business of auto parts for European cars. He is VERY stubborn in wanting his homepage to rank 1st page for a keyword for each car brand, for example:

• audi autoparts
• bmw autoparts
• mercedes benz autoparts
• jaguar autoparts

Basically, 15 keywords (one per brand) in total. How would you guys handle this? I can't seem to find a natural way to optimize a homepage for all these keywords at once. I've suggested landing pages for each brand/keyword, but he won't accept it.

Is there anyway to do this or will this be a dispute with my client to convince him about the landing pages idea?

Thanks a lot!

[EduardoRuiz]

Thank you guys for your answers! You just confirmed what I always had in mind.

Honestly, his budget is VERY low for what he wants and his expectations of what SEO can do are completely out of proportion (he believes SEO could put his homepage on the first page in a couple months).

I guess I will continue to push the idea of different landing pages per brand, or ultimately, be brutally honest and make it clear that his expectations don't match his budget and he'll never get the results he wants without a huge investment.

Thanks again!

[Chris.Menke]

As Matt said, "the client can want whatever the client wants" but it doesn't mean anything unless they have the budget to make it a reality.  Off hand, I'd say a project entailing a super-substantial  investment in content and publicity and a minimal time frame expectation of at 24 months should be what the client is being told to expect.

If they're your client already, your job would be to give them some sort of estimate of the cost to achieve their goal.  Run a OSE report for the client that compares his site with those of the top competitors for one of the keywords, then do the same for each of the keywords.  Cut and past the reports into a document and lay them out in front of the client and show them the investment his/her competitors have made in their sites. Then explain that he's probably going to have to exceed their investments if he's going to move above them in the search results.

[MattAntonino]

The client can want whatever the client wants but in this case, there's almost no way you're going to rank 15 moderately difficult keywords on a single homepage.  You can try with a variety of anchors & content, lots of good internal linking, etc. but no, you're right about the multiple landing pages - it would be better for ranking, better for CTR, better for CRO ...

It's better to explain and have this out early than later.  It's going to be a dispute either way because you can either attempt it (and not likely achieve those sort of rankings) or you can argue with them now, point out that titles should only be a MAX 70 characters (65 better) and how you can't even get all the brands into that title, let alone naturally or without spamming.