Are three keywords enough? Or do you need four? If you’re working on your site’s SEO, you may be asking yourself these questions. The best approach is to create content for people rather than search engines, and not to use more keywords than you have to.
You may also want to optimize every web page on your site or blog for a keyphrase that consists of at least three words. What you really want to avoid is one-word or two-word keywords, as these are too broad, and the competition for them is fierce. Researching keyword popularity is also important.
SEO Considerations
As far as search engines are considered, it’s better for a web page on your site to be relevant to one keyphrase, than moderately relevant to two, three, more keyphrases. It’s easier to get a top Google ranking with one keyword. Also, focusing on a single keyphrase will make content creation a lot easier.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you cannot sprinkle a few other good keywords throughout your Web pages, so long as they appear naturally. If you have the main keyphrase in mind while creating the content, you will encourage other related keywords to surface on their own.
Everything becomes easier if you use analytics software to assess keyword popularity and choose the most relevant keyphrases.
Use Related Keyphrases
Ideally, you want to optimize all your Web pages for different but related keyphrases. Keyword research done by expert SEO services can generate a careful selection of good keywords for you. From these you can choose the ones most relevant and suitable for your business, and build a page around each of them. The other keywords you can sprinkle through the rest of your content.
Keyword suggestion software can also help, especially when you use it in conjunction with web analytics. A good approach is to choose a single keyword that appears in all your keyphrases.
You don’t want that main keyphrase only in your content, though. You want it in the title, headline, URL, image titles, image Alt tags, and video titles and descriptions.
Use Specific Keyphrases
The length of the keyphrase matters. A targeted keyphrase that consists of three or four words is more specific than a single keyword. With a keyprase it’s easier to get a good SEO ranking, as well as to attract targeted visitors who will be more likely to answer your call to action. A search query for the keyword ‘shoe’ will produce many results. But a search for ‘buy cheap tennis shoes for women’ — much fewer.
In conclusion, optimize every Web page for a unique keyphrase, but make sure that all the keyphrases you use are related and share one or two keywords. Do this and your SEO will improve considerably.