How many keywords / phrases can you SEO for?

[RikkiD22]

Might sound like a bit of a daft question to you pro's but here it goes...

I am been doing in house SEO for a company for a short while and since I have been managing it things have moved quickly in the right direction but I find myself limiting our SEO efforts to three key terms. Is this usual?

The reason I am doing this is because I find that on page SEO is only really possible with those amount of terms (with regards to title, description, key word density, seo copy, on page links etc).

I guess that what I trying to stay is:

1. If I push on page opitimastion to more key terms will it be detrimantal to our current efforts?

and

2. Is SEO possible for additional key phrases which are not on page optimised?

[scanlin]

You typically optimize 1 page for 1 phrase. If there are two phrases very close together, like 'widget' and 'widgets' then you can optimize the same page for those 2 phrases. You will have sub-optimal results if you try to rank the same page for 3 or more (or even 2) phrases.

If you have 40 phrases you want to rank for in the SERPs then you'll need 40 different pages on your site. Build a spreadsheet where you map 1 url to 1 phrase to help you keep it straight.

[A_Q]

Hello,

It really depends on what the keywords are to be honest. If the keywords are just variations of the same e.g. caravan insurance and touring caravan insurance then yes it is possible. Although, I always feel it is better to create a dedicated page for each if possible.

Other than that I think you would struggle and could end up not ranking well for all your target keywords on that page as opposed to ranking well for just one.

If the keywords are completely different it may warrant a dedicated landing page for each. You've got to be careful not to duplicate any content though!

I hope this helps. Let me know if you want me to expand on anything.

[DiamondJewelryEmpire]

It's time to work on lading pages and getting some new links.

[RikkiD22]

Thanks for the response, I guess it answers my question in the way that if we want to rank for more key phrases we use a page specifically for the new key terms and SEO that as we have done with the home page.

I know the one page per search term is the general SEO rule and I agree with it, however I have got us from page 3 to page 1 top 5 for 3 very competitive key terms and I am afraid if I optimise the homepage on just one of these terms and 'move' (on page optimise) the other two terms on new pages then we would loose the ranking of these on the main page?

P.S. Thanks Elias for your response too. I guess the same questions apply.

[krissy-cca]

Don't change the keywords targeted on the homepage. If you're wanting extra keywords then you need extra pages that are optimised for those keywords.

DD