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 does a keywords difficulty increases? what are main factors?
for wxamp keyword A has difficulty of 40 and monthly volume of 100 keyword B has difficulty of 30 and monthly volume of 500
Technical SEO | | calvinkj0 -
Keyword ranking fluctuations
Hi For last month my website was ranking to 5 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company). But recently (28-nov) it's out of 100, some time it's showing on 25 position but not showing in top 5 position. Here is my url (for analysis): https://magnetoitsolutions.com/services/magento-development/ Please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings. Note: There are some other keywords of different pages start getting ranking drop. please let me know is there anything i need to change. Thank
Technical SEO | | harrysamson0 -
Keywords, when are you overdoing it in the URL?
Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer 20 cancer compensation 10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims 20 cancer claims 10 misdiagnosis of cancer 50 cancer misdiagnosis 70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Avoid Keyword Cannibalization For Geo Terms?
I'm dealing with some geographical keywords that may cause me problems. If I target a county and a city inside that county that share part of a name, will I be at risk for cannibalization? For example, if I want to target "Jasper County Adoption Attorneys" and "Jasper Park Adoption Attorneys," will I be at risk just based on cannibalization? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Keyword Difficulty Tool
Hi, When can we expect the keyword difficulty tool to be operational again? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dt18072 -
Is it better to have URLs of internal pages that are geo-targeted or point geo-targeted links to the homepage?
For example... Having links that are geo-targeted and pointing to this URL www.test.com/state-service/ or Not having any geo-targeted internal pages and just having links that are geo-targeted and pointing to this URL www.test.com Eventually the site will be a national campaign, so I am concerned about having so many geo-targeted internal pages. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Cyclone0 -
Does a TM in the keyword have effect?
If I include TM in a keyword string, does this make it another keyword or does Google ignore that? Example: Kentucky Hot Sauce vs Kentucky Hot (TM) sauce. Of course the TM would be done properly via ™ Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0 -
We have a decent keyword rich URL domain that's not being used - what to do with it?
We're an ecommerce site and we have a second, older domain with a better keyword match URL than our main domain (I know, you may be wondering why we didn't use it, but that's beside the point now). It currently ranks fairly poorly as there's very few links pointing to it. However, the exact match URL means it has some value, if we were to build a few links to it. What would you do with it: 301 product/category pages to current site's equivalent page Link product/category pages to current site's equivalent page Not bother using it at all Something else
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0