Some basic keywords questions

[sitemeister]

I am in a very competitive field and trying to build an initial list of keywords to target for my site, but I have some general questions:

1. How many keywords in general should I target? In another thread, someone suggested 20-200. That's a pretty wide range. I'll put in the work if I have to, to target 200 keywords, but I don't want to be spinning my wheels.

2. How many keywords should I be targeting per page?

3. Does it make sense to try and target some highly competitive keywords, since I might get lucky and rank highly for them or is this a waste of time?


By the way, thanks everybody for your help so far..... :)

[jimbeetle]

This question comes up regularly on many search-related forums. I now find it hard to answer because I think the question itself is a few years out of date. Search engines have come a long way since we used to build individual pages for each of our targeted keywords and key phrases: [red widgets], [widgets red], [small red widgets], etc. Many of today's alogrithms appear to look for word relationships on page and relationships among clusters of pages.

So now I prefer to think in terms of "key concepts" that help the engines answer the questions "What is this page about?" and "What is this site (or cluster of pages) about?" In that sense then, I target one key concept per page, then weave in two or three (however many is appropriate), related and supporting concepts. A general "Red widgets" page might include references to "How to use red widgets" and "Red widget safety features" pages.

Using this Columbia U (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=columbia+u) search as an example, I ideally want my red widget site to show up in Google as something like:

Red Widgetville
--History of Red Widgets
--Red Widgets Uses
--Red Widget Safety
--Red Widget Sales

Not really a direct answer to your question, just a snapshot of my thinking at the moment.

[SkyLite]

Jim is correct on all counts. Its not the same as it used to be and more factors are being added daily.

But when the rubber meets the road....more than one keyword in the title tag dilutes the strength, but not by as much anymore. And adding in the plural version seems to help a bit.

#1 Keep the theme as tight as possible....one keyword per page if possible.
#2 #1
#3 Target one keyword for the site, and you'll get lucky.

[ewc21]

It would be difficult to set number of keywords to use in a specific page or for a whole site.

The number of keywords to use varies according to how you organize your pages on a particular subject. Which is why it's not surprising to see that range you mentioned (20-200). For me, I'd choose to target a fewer set of keywords per page, say around 1-5 but on many occasions I go beyond the range.

Jim's example is a good one to ponder upon.