How Many Keywords Do I Need to Find and Use?

How Many Keywords Do I Need to Find and Use?

How Many Keywords Do I Need for My Website?

You’ve been reading about doing keyword research – great! So now you want to know how many keywords do I need? Well that’s a tricky one: how long is a piece of string. The range of keywords, the words and phrases people use to find your products or services, is enormous! It’s a matter of sifting through the keywords you found and then picking the best ones to use. But how many is too many? How few is not enough? Let’s find out …

Best Number of Keywords Per Web Page

If you use the free Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll only be able to specify one keyword per website page or blog. The premium version offers you the chance to state more. But is one enough? Yes and no.

Every page on your website needs at least one specific keyword. Don’t forget that by keyword, I mean a word or phrase. Then each keyword needs supplementary keywords. These may be words which mean the same, or a different way of explaining the same thing. You also can have other keywords which fit nicely within that page, but don’t have anything at all to do with the main keyword. In regards to your question, how many keywords do I need for my website, at least one per page! If your website has seven pages, you need seven keywords. A 100 page site needs 100 words and so on.

One Keyword Per Page, Not Per Website

I did say one per page, not one per website. Some website owners really want to rank for a specific keyword. They figure if they use it for every page on their site, they’ll rank for it. Wrong. This is not something you would see occur naturally on a website. It’s called keyword stuffing or keyword overuse and will get you slammed by Google. There’s more bad news too. Just say you were successful and did rank well for that one keyword. What happens when someone searches using a different phrase? You wouldn’t be found. By focusing on one word per site, chances are you won’t attract enough visitors to your site to meet your business goals.

Remember, you don’t have to find totally off bat and weird keywords. Subtle variations will do just fine, like these:

  • Main keyword – buy chocolate cupcakes
  • Supplementary keywords – eat chocolate cupcakes, yummy chocolate cupcakes, buy cupcakes made with chocolate, cocoa based cupcakes, order chocolate cupcakes online

So you see, your supplementary keywords can be related to your main keyword. While there’s nothing wrong with using these as supplementary keyword to your main keyword on that specific page, you can also use them as a main keyword on another page. It’s a win all round!

If you’re just about to start your keyword research, check out our articles on How Do I Use Keyword Planner? and What Are the Best Free Keyword Research Tools? for some help!

Tags: keywords  seo  

Posted: Monday 18 December 2017