SEO Keyword Strategy: How Many to Target?
TweetOne of the biggest mistakes I see people doing SEO make is to jump right in and try to get ranked for 50 keywords at a time. All this does is stretch out your time and resources too thin. You'll end up with 50 keywords that you don't rank very well for and you'll come away thinking about what a big waste of time it all was.
Instead, try going after only a few at a time. If you are short on time, start with one landing page and go hard at the keywords for that page. If you are marketing your site full-time then dig in and go up to three landing pages at one time. If you follow my strategy of targeting only 1-3 keywords per page that means you will be going after anywhere from 1-9 keywords at once. Deciding which keywords to target depends on what kind of site you have.
If you are working with a new site that doesn't have very many backlinks and is low on authority, the first keywords to target should be relatively easy. This will help you get ranked faster and you'll start seeing some traffic come into your site.
When working with an established site that is already seeing some traffic then you can start going after both middle of the range terms, and the high volume, high traffic dream keywords that you would love to be high on the first page for.
For advanced search engine marketers they like to go after the big fish first. You need to realize that is going to take more time and money to get ranked for those before you start seeing the results, but there is a nice payoff. If you can get ranked on the first page for the tough keywords then the authority that you have built up doing so will make it easier for you to get the middle of the road and easy keywords ranked high fast. Then, working on those secondary keywords will help boost your difficult keywords up even higher.