How Many Keywords & How Will They Take to Rank?

[GaryVictory]

Hi Guys

Just taken on a new site with around 80 keywords with no links because the site is new. Each page is optimised correctly, very user friendly with completely unique content for each and every page.

I'm interested to know what would be your online marketing "plan" for such site to begin ranking.

Thanks

Gary

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gary!

You've categorized this question as Local Strategy. Is this a local business? B&M or SAB? How many physical locations? How tough is the competition? The more information you can provide, the better answer you'll receive from the community.

[GaryVictory]

Hi Miriam

The company is for Hardwood Flooring.

One business location in central London. Competition is fairly tough. All keywords on the site have been targeted to target specific wood colours, types and locations in London.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gary!

Thanks for the additional info! So, for a local business like this, the marketing plan would typically look something like this:

1. Invest most effort in the quality of the website's UX, on-site Local SEO and content. Sounds like the company is well on the way to this. Just to be sure, though, go through the site to double check that contact information is highly prominent on the site and that the basic city+product/service terms are well represented.

2. Do a citation audit to check for both current and old versions of the name, address, phone number and website. Where citations are lacking, build them. Where they feature any incorrect information, edit them. Check for duplicate listings, too. Build both generic citations and industry-specific citations.

3. Develop a strategy for ongoing content development on the site or site-based blog.

4. Implement a review acquisition strategy that will be utilized on a monthly basis.

5. Gather testimonials on an on-going basis and post them on the website.

6. Research social opportunities that are a good fit for the business model. Create profiles there and begin participating.

7. Research non-structured sources for additional citations/mentions of the business, such as news articles and blogs.

8. Research industry-specific offline participation opportunities, like trade association conferences, expos and workshops. Participation in these can then develop content opportunities for the site, new people to network with socially on SM platforms and new business.

9. Audit the client's link profile and begin combing through all of the above to discover where opportunities may lie to develop content, outreach, news opportunities, etc., that can lead to natural links

This is a very general outline, applicable to most local businesses. Hope it helps!

[GaryVictory]

Thanks Miriam

For a new start up business, would you place a limit on the number of unique key words used for the website?

We're two months live with around 40 key words ranking in the top 50. The other 50 key words are more competitive and are yet to appear in the top 50.

[max.favilli]

What make you believe limiting the number of keyword you are targeting would bring any SEO value?

unless you are stuffing to much keywords into the same pages I strongly believe it doesn't matter how many keyword you target

what it really matter is the backlink profile supporting those keywords

assuming you don't have unlimited resources, of course you cannot focus on unlimited number of keyword from the very beginning

make a list of all the potential keywords, filter by conversion rate and competition and choose a reasonable set of keyword to focus on at beginning

focus on agroup doesn't mean ignore the others, I mean I would still monitor other groups and I would still generate good content for those keywords if it make sense, if source materia is available if the topic is hot, etc...

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gary!

It's never really been my mindset to think of these things in terms of raw numbers. I've always thought more along the lines of possible topics than numbers of keywords. If I had a brand new business to work with, I would likely do keyword research as an aid to helping me brainstorm both my basic pages (for product/service terms) and then my interesting possible topics beyond that. So, a basic page would be something like water heater repair and an interesting page or blog post beyond that might revolve around how to best choose water heater settings to save on your energy bill. Something like that.

There really is no limit to the number of keywords a website can aim to rank for - limits tend to revolve around how you stage accomplishing the work, based on the available resources or funds. Once the website is launched, you must determine how frequently the business is capable of producing or funding its on-going publication efforts. For many small businesses, a single blog post a week is a major achievement. For larger companies, that might be 5 posts a week. Sustainable growth is the ideal here.

[EGOL]

I'd say that the number of unique keywords that a website can go after is limited only by how much unique, substantive and valuable-to-the-visitor content that you can produce.

Now, once you bring ROI into the equation, you are limited by the number that can either pull in a few conversions per year or make a meaningful contribution to the popularity of the website.

[GaryVictory]

Thanks for your feedback.

We have around 80-100 researched keywords which are completely relevant to each page, and have produced the necessary content to improve UX for these specific pages.

The question is, do we cut out around 40-50 keywords or more? Would this have a more positive impact on the keywords we choose to use that are deemed by us as very important?  Or should we now just concentrate on developing great content that is relevant to our products and services..?

[max.favilli]

How many words per page?

[GaryVictory]

Just the one keyword per page

[max.favilli]

I must be misunderstanding something, how can you have 80-100 completely relevant keywords for each page?

they cannot be relevant for each page if each page is targeting only one keyword

of course each page will have other semantically near keywords in it, but 100? Doesn't make sense.

anyway, if you are targeting 100 keywords, and you have 100 pages, each page with content designed around one keyword

given that little information you are fine and I don't see any reason to cut the number of keywords/page, I don't see any logic in it and I am wondering why are you in doubt, what have you experienced or read to think otherwise?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Gary,

I may be getting a bit confused here, as well. Are you saying you want to create 80-100 pages with one keyword to be focused on per page or are you saying you are trying to optimize single pages for 80-100 keywords? Something about this isn't quite clear.

[GaryVictory]

Hi Guys

I apologise for not responding sooner. Attached are "most" of our keywords we are ranking for (for individual pages) since launching in Feb this year. We're now starting to execute a marketing plan that will contribute to earning links. Hopefully this will begin to rank our more "competitive" keywords.

Have you guys worked with many start ups? How quickly were they able to rank for non competitive/competitive keywords?

Would really like to hear from you regarding your experiences, to ensure I get everything right from the get go. Thanks.

Gary

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