When you begin to learn about search engine optimisation and how important keywords can be in contributing to your success, you may create a great strategy in the hopes of dominating your niche.
But how many target keywords should you focus on? Instead of going for a broad approach, you may want to choose just a handful of keyword phrases to start with.
Targeting a particular set of keyword phrases can help you succeed in internet marketing. And then, as you start to dominate search engines for those first words and phrases and develop a decent conversion rate, you should expand beyond them.
Choosing Target Keywords
There’s no telling how fast you’ll begin to dominate the search engines for your desired target keyword phrases. And, certain efforts could get you to page one for Yahoo and not within the first five pages of Google.
Choosing the right target keywords isn’t always easy and if you pick, say, five, you might choose to abandon one or two eventually because there’s too much competition or because that phrase is not giving you a great conversion rate. Carefully studying your website analytics and doing split testing as well as checking more than just Google can help you in this regard.
Pay Per Click vs. Organic
Some keywords could be really great for a pay per click campaign whereas other phrases work better for organic SEO. Time will tell if you have the right keywords and if the copy on your webpage is powerful enough to compel visitors to buy. Running keyword campaigns simultaneously between organic and pay per click efforts can be very helpful as well because you can test and analyse results.
It might be confusing to someone, new to SEO, to understand why so much effort should be focused on a particular phrase. But once you begin to check your results, you can see that several of your efforts result in page one results.
Beyond phrases, you need to compel people to buy with strong sales copy and a good product. Your website needs to instill faith in visitors and if you work to develop a great online reputation, you can do well. After you’re doing well with several of your target keywords, you can move forward confidently in cornering the market on a few more.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Some great info here Sean, sometimes not enough importance is placed on Keyword Research, i am guilty of that sometimes, but with the help of Market Samuari, it makes the process so much easier.
Great to see you have Market Samurai Belinda. It’s definitely one of the best keyword research tools available. Happy keyword targeting
Hey guys,
I too use Market Samurai so it is good to see others commenting that it is a good tool.
I like the fact that it has a variety of functions in addition to having a keyword research tool which makes internet marketing so much easier!
Some YOTA forum members have had some amazing results with appearing on front page google for their target keywords. They have been very excited, indeed.
This is great to see isn’t it Lina. The YOTA forum has definitely broken some of the myths about ranking in the search engines.
Yes it sure has and it only gets better and better
This is a fascinating and vexing topic. I was coached initially to begin with a large number of keywords and little by little through analysis reduce them to the ones that really get results.
I found that this seemed logical and thought it should work. I spent a lot of time testing and analyzing keywords. The most frustrating thing for me was that what was true one week often wasn’t the following week and what was truly unsuccessful one week could be a major success two weeks later.
I think the advice here, as I read it, to be more selective with keywords and really spend the time choosing with all the criteria that is available and checking them regularly to see how they are performing is a very logical way to go. It certainly will be a lot easier and I think more efficient.
Thanks for the help.
I have found from what I have been taught that it is in fact better to only have a few but mainly long tail keywords.
Market Samurai is a great resource and should be the standard for keyword research. I will be doing whatever I can to achieve this
Would you recommend on a blog to have several posts with exactly the same keyword phrase or rather have the main keyword embedded in a series of different long tail keyword phrases? Eg. like writing a series about self improvement targeting on different longer keyword phrases that all include the main one (self improvement)?
Hi Renee,
This is an excellent question and one I’d like to know the answer to as well. I think it should be to write posts targeting our long tail keywords with one of our main keywords worked in somewhere.
The highest ranking for any of my articles has been number six in Google. There is so much to learn about keyword research and SEO.
Why not write a really strong article on your target keyphrase, then continue to link back to that article with anchor text links on that keyphrase from other articles. Getting backlinks to that article with anchor text will also help you to improve your rankings.
Thanks, Sean, that clarifies it for me too. Writing a great article targeting the keyphrase and then using anchor text to backlink to that article. It’s making more sense now.
Hi Sean
Having read many of your articles now, I keep seeing three things emerge that are the key ingredients for a top ranking blog (correct me if I have this wrong please). You mention the three here and they are:
1. A few really good and select keywords
2. Great copy
3. A top product
I realise that there are many other elements to consider, after learning from you for 13 months that goes without saying, but I would say the product would need to be the first consideration above everything else? ( I didn’t list these in order of priority). Then keywords which I find the most challenging, can be tested out in the market. Using tips like you have given us here is really helpful. Thank you.
You are definitely on the right track there Elly. Of course there are a lot of things to take into consideration, but the 3 you have listed are of vital importance
I must agree that Market Samurai is an excellent tool to assist you in choosing keywords. Analysis of data provided by this tool should help you determine how many keywords to target.
But remember, no matter how strong your keywords, you still need a product that people want to buy and you have to write effective copy to promote it utilising you chosen keywords.