How many keywords?

[YNWA]

Hi,

I have a client asking if they can target 50-100 keywords.

Has anyone ever heard of this before? In my eyes, 1-7 keywords at any one time is more than enough.

So unless you had a team of 50 people doing the work, is this a reasonable request?

Any advice welcome.

Thanks

[Chris.Menke]

Sure, it's possible, just not for one page.  1-7 keywords per page is a good estimate, but perhaps a bit high but a site can target hundreds, even thousands or tens of thousands with enough pages and enough effort. And your right, the more keywords being targeted the more man hours will have to be put into it.

[YNWA]

Within an e-commerce setting how would you equate that?

Say I have hundreds of different products and want to target 50 of them?

If I have armani jeans, slim fit, straight fit, boot fit etc.. all different products. How do I target 7 for one product? Or would I target 1 for 1 product but then say 50 different products?

In your experience how many hours would you say you put into targeting a keyword?

Thanks

[Chris.Menke]

In the planning phase, ballpark a page of content optimized on-page and -off for each keyword and one page per product.  Your results will differ widely based on a number of criteria. Before moving forward, I recommend digesting the following:

• The SEO Guide From Moz
• A Manifesto of Content Marketing - Moz
• Moz Chap. 7 Growing Popularity & Links
• How To Do Keyword Research - The Beginners Guide to SEO - Moz

[SEO5Team]

You can setup FAQ pages and an info guide on all the products. The key is to create lots of good quality content and each content piece should be focused on one keyword.

[AWCthreads]

Chris, if you can rank for up to 7 keywords on a page in a competitive space I might try to hire you someday.

[irvingw]

totally doable, 1-2 keywords per page, so a 50-100 page site can accomplish this. no problem at all

[KevinBudzynski]

The initial content creation is the big obstacle for 50-100 keywords (focusing on quality). To do this correctly does require a good amount of resources. Continually monitoring, optimization can be done by a one/couple/few people (it all depends on what kw's/what industry & so on).

[david.smith.segarra]

Hey there,

To be honest that doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Although I guess that does depend on the site and what they selling, if anything!

By writing good content around each product will soon see you ranking for each individual product.

What is the company? what are they selling? maybe I can help some more if I know more about the project.

Thanks

[Chris.Menke]

"In a competitive space" as you say, is the key factor. : )

[AWCthreads]

Indeed. I'll keep you on my short list.

[YNWA]

Thanks for response.

What I don't get is the time and effort involved in off site backlinking per keyword.

Sure I can make each page keyword dense with great content and images.

But what about the off site stuff? For a one man band I always think it involves too much work to target that many words off site?

[Chris.Menke]

Your on-page factors provide relevance to the keyword topic, but it's not what gives your site/page the oomph required to rank above other sites. (It used to be that "keyword dense" pages was all that was needed, which is what led to pages with more keywords than information for the visitor.)  Off-site authority building is what lifts your site above other strong competitors.

Part of SEO is understanding where to put your efforts for the best impact with the available time/budge/knowledge resources. To do that, you need to know what the marketing budget is, what the SEO skill level is, what the client goals are, the competitiveness of each potential keyword, the time frame that the client needs to see a return on their investment, and the strength of the page/site being worked on.

For a one man band the more narrowly you define the project and the client's perception, the better off you're going to be--especially early on.

[YNWA]

Yes that's the way I am working. Not committing to too many keywords and defining the project up front.

I'm just strugglin to understand the time involved in each area. I know what it takes me but not sure if I am under selling myself, over selling or not doing enough with the time and resourse I have.

Thanks

[Doc_Sheldon]

I don't think 50-100 KW is that much. I'm rarely targeting less than 30 on a very small site of 20-30 pages, and on an ecomm site, 1000+ KW is nothing out of the ordinary. Resources, as you say, are the governing factor in determining how many KWs you'll be going after simultaneously. I'm usually only focusing on a handful at a time.