How Many Keywords Is Too Many? Options

[anne999]

I have a business which offer services in multiple areas (ie: 10 cities/towns). In addition to my priority keywords related to the service (ie: service 1, service 2), I am planning to include the 10 target cities/towns in my keyword list. My draft list currently contains about 20 keywords. Is this list too long? I would appreciate any suggestions regarding the number of keywords and any keyword strategy considerations to rank well for this scenario (ie: service 1 city 1, service 2 city 1, service 1 city 2, service 2 city 2, etc.).

Many thanks in advance for your help.
Anne

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/girl_cray2.gif)

[Jill]

The only limit to the number of keywords is the amount of content (number of pages) you have on your site.

Figure about 3 or so phrases per page. But be careful of just creating junk pages so you can add more keywords.

[anne999]

The only limit to the number of keywords is the amount of content (number of pages) you have on your site.

Figure about 3 or so phrases per page. But be careful of just creating junk pages so you can add more keywords.

Thanks for the feedback Jill, much appreciated.

Anne

[dudes]

Figure about 3 or so phrases per page. But be careful of just creating junk pages so you can add more keywords.

Good point. I noticed that many well-SEO'd real estate sites would create blocks of specific/custom content for each location while the subkeywords have 'sublocations' (districts within locations).

[jezwebb]

Anne999

That's an interesting question beyond the number of keywords - the optimal structure of your site to tie together two different variables. In your case they are "city" and "service" but they could be any two or more variables.

I think it's a case of going back to your keyword research and looking at how your audience structure their queries online. I quickly looked at keyword data for "estate agents" and "Glasgow" and the vast majority of people were structuring their queries "service"+"location" not the other way around.

Therefore, I'd structure my site with Service descriptions off the home page, then location pages off the Services. I'd then do incoming link work targeting "service" key phrases, and perhaps some deep linking for "service"+"location" key phrases.

I hope that helps (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Regards,

Jeremy.

[blackirish.ken]

Hi, Jeremy.

Just curious...where are you pulling your data from to determine the majority of queries are "service" + "location?"

I ask because my server logs tell me a different story, that being "location" + "service" or "product" are the query structures people are running to land on my sites.

Thanks,
Ken

[varun]

min 4 to 5 keyword

[vmc]

Hello,

Being new to SEO I'm trying to learn as much as possible.... I'm currently working on honing in each of my pages for targeted keywords.... and from what I see here, 3-5 phases are the max you want to use. Is this correct? To be clear, a phrase can be a group of words, example "large red shirt". so this would be considered one phrase...right? and the format for keywords is:

phrase,phrase,phrase

separated by a comma with no space in between each phrase, though if a phase is more than two words put a space between each word...correct?

lastly...it seems that some say keywords are no longer used while others say it is used...which is right??

Thanks

[Randy]

Welcome vmc ! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hi.gif)

I believe you're confusing two things. The keywords themselves and the Meta Keywords tag.

The Meta Keywords tag is fairly useless. Google hasn't paid attention to it for years. At all. Nor has MSN/Live. Bing doesn't appear to either, though it's so new I'm waiting for some more data to be sure. Yahoo may at least recognize it and see that you've put something in there, but if it's a competitive phrase in the market sector simply having it in the Meta Keywords tag isn't going to do you much good. It might be a viable place to put common misspellings for Yahoo, but that's about it.

Long story short, you can essentially forget about the Meta Keywords tag. It just doesn't hold any value with most of the engines and so little that it's not worth the effort for the one that may still pay a little bit attention to it.

Now the Keywords themselves, and how you use them in the <title> tag of the page and in the visible copy is another matter altogether. There you really do need to write for the consumption of real people, working your targeted keyword phrases into your copy where sensible. Write in a way that your users will understand what you're saying and hopefully connect with it.

If you're just starting out you'll probably want to browse through the Tips for Newbies section. It'll answer an awful lot of questions for you.

[cruise05]

I have a business which offer services in multiple areas (ie: 10 cities/towns). In addition to my priority keywords related to the service (ie: service 1, service 2), I am planning to include the 10 target cities/towns in my keyword list. My draft list currently contains about 20 keywords. Is this list too long? I would appreciate any suggestions regarding the number of keywords and any keyword strategy considerations to rank well for this scenario (ie: service 1 city 1, service 2 city 1, service 1 city 2, service 2 city 2, etc.).

Many thanks in advance for your help.
Anne

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/girl_cray2.gif)

I wouldn't try more the 5-10 in the keyword tag, and not more than 5-10 in the article. IMO

[blackmamba01]

I think number of keywords also depends on the site. Huge sites sometimes target more keywords compare to small ones. For me, 8-10 keywords is best to target for a web page because too many keywords will lessen its effect and also you will be having a hard time ranking high with those keywords.