How Many SEO Keywords Should I Use?

Keywords are a seemingly unavoidable feature of the SEO industry. Although SEO (search engine optimization) specialists (including myself) encourage clients to concentrate on a wider range of metrics beyond their keyword position, the fact remains that ranking highly in Google for keywords with significant search volume will almost certainly result in website traffic.

Of course, keeping track of keywords isn’t cheap. Whether you spend your time manually checking ranks or investing in a keyword rank tracking tool. You must control how many keywords you track on each page and website. So, “how many keywords should you track?” begs the question, “How many keywords can you monitor?”

Keywords are important for the success of any SEO campaign. In reality, keyword-free SEO is simply not conceivable. The reason for this is that keywords describe the topics of your website and web pages to search engines. Keywords are essential for search engines to understand the context of your web pages and so determine which search queries to rank them for.

Since the inception of the modern search engine, keywords have served as the basis for search engine ranking algorithms and have been utilized ever since. Let’s get this party started by discussing how many SEO keywords should be targeted per page.

Begin Your SEO Campaign with Keyword Research

Unfortunately, keywords do not appear out of thin air or come to us in a vision. You can’t just assume you know what terms people use to search for stuff and what you should be ranking for. That is why keyword research should be your first step. There’s a lot of information on how to do keyword research effectively online, but I’ll go through some of my preferred methods and best practices below.

How Many Keywords Should You Target Per Page?

The ideal keywords for a search engine marketing campaign are generally one main keyword or key phrase and two to three keyword stuffing or keyword density variations per page. But, if there are many variants of the same words, you might be asking which one should you choose as your primary keyword.

What Pages Rank for What?

I’m not the first to urge that you begin keyword research in keyword rankings by examining your current ranks. When I get my hands on it, I almost always begin with Google Search Console (GSC). Despite the fact that Search Console data may be incorrect, it is directly from Google, so we must take it into account.

This is a section with information about your site’s most popular queries, which conveniently defaults to showing you the most popular queries that have visited your website in the last three months. The Reports section at the top of the page will show you how well your site is positioned in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). These can assist you to figure out what Google thinks your website should rank for, and whether or not it has improved.

Why Is It Better To Focus On A Smaller Number Of Keywords Per Page?

When it comes to the number of keywords to prioritize per page, less is definitely more. Here are the reasons why you should focus on a single primary SEO term per page.

Increased Targeting

It’s easier to stay on track with one keyword per page since it restricts you to a single topic. How will you organize the content without confusing your visitors or search engines if you only target four to five keywords on each page? Furthermore, how are you going to write title tags and meta descriptions if you’re attempting to target several keywords on each page? SEOs can use this strategy to optimize meta descriptions and title tags for each specific page by limiting their focus to one keyword per page.

Reduce Dilution of Keywords

Keyword dilution is reduced when you limit each page to one keyword. You reduce the strength of each keyword by targeting more than one major term on a single page. Let’s consider an eCommerce business that sells women’s apparel. If you try to rank a page for two distinct keywords like “women’s shoes” and “women’s hats,” the chances of it ranking for both are practically nil. As a result of this, the power of each keyword is “diluted.”

The Downside of the Trickle-Down Effect

The trickle-down effect in SEO refers to when a page ranks for keywords for which it has not been optimized. When a page has a high Google ranking, it implies that the search engine believes it is the greatest source for the term being searched for.

How Many Keywords Should You Target On Your Homepage?

If you own or run a firm that sells several items in many categories, you might be asking, “How many keywords should I aim for on the homepage?” You’ll want to concentrate on the keywords most relevant to your goods or services on the homepage, surely? But it’s not quite that simple, because your homepage is just another page on your website.

This implies that you should not attempt to optimize for 10 separate keywords for each of your ten unique products or services. Instead, focus on the core product or service your company provides and optimize your homepage to target those keywords. This is why, for example, although we have other tools such as our keyword tool and embeddable SEO audit tool, SEOptimer’s homepage is largely concerned with targeting the term “SEO audit.”

Conclusion

The bottom line is this when it comes to SEO keywords, less is more. You should focus on targeting one main keyword per page; if you can naturally mention other related keywords then that’s a bonus. Remember, the goal is to make your pages as relevant as possible for the keywords that you want to rank for.

If you try and target too many keywords on one page, it will only serve to dilute the power of each individual keyword. Focusing on fewer keywords will also allow you to create more targeted and relevant title tags and meta descriptions which will help your pages rank higher on Google.