What Is The Ideal Amount of Keywords for a Web Site?

More than you expect.

Each keyword has a maximum number of visits it can bring to your site but this is only achievable if you are top in all the search engines for this phrase. Often it is not worth putting the effort into building a web site on a keyword because even the maximum amount of traffic possible is still too small to be profitable. However by targeting multiple keywords with one web site you can make a niche subject profitable as long as you know how to get the right keywords.

The second reason to target multiple keywords is that even a well optimized site will take time to reach the top ten and it may never get there. The web is a dynamic place. What seem like good keywords when you start the web site might be either redundant or flooded by competitors in weeks. By targeting multiple keywords you are hedging your bets.

Thirdly, multiple keywords allow you to spread your net wider. The window displays of shops always feature more than one product so that there is a chance, no matter who walks by, there will be something to catch their eye. Keywords work the same way.

Having multiple keywords doesn’t mean that your web site loses its focus. In fact it helps with the focus.

Pick your target keyword and make it ambitious but not too ambitious. Something between 100 - 500 searches a day than is amongst the least competitive keywords. This is your major keyword, your home page keyword, the sun at the center of your solar system. Now pick five related keywords that ideally include your home page keyword (e.g. "Left Handed Widgets" and "Red Widget", assuming your major keyword is "Widget"). These should be 50 - 100 searches a day. These are your planets orbiting your sun. Finally pick ten related keywords with 10 - 20 searches a day to be your minor keywords, the moons around your planets.

You now have to generate content for each of these keywords, putting the same amount of effort into each one, regardless of how many searches it gets. This will quickly bring you results on the minor keywords, getting what a new web site is desperate for, visitors. More importantly, links from the minor pages to the medium and major keywords will help boost those keywords up Google’s rankings.

You can use these minor and medium keywords to build an effective internal linking strategy where each page of content supports other pages by carefully placed links.