Keyphrase dilution

optimizing one page for multiple phrases

[metablue]

I found a few discussions about this in the archive, but there didn't seem to be a consensus about whether you can successfully optimize a single page for multiple keyphrases. Has anyone had success doing this?

One of my sites has 4 main keyphrases. Something like this:
widget
big widget
widget fandango
widget stuff

I want my index page to come up in the SERPs for all 4. So far I've been concentrating on "big widget" and "widget stuff", and these are both at #1, while "widget fandango" and "widget" are in the 20s. My anchor text is usually "big widget stuff".

The interesting thing is that even though I have very few incoming "widget fandango" links, and very few mentions in the body text, the page shot up from nowhere to the 20s for both that and "widget". I'd think that if I start getting "widget fandango" links, that should bring the site up to the front page for both "widget" and "widget fandango". But then will the relevance of the other two keyphrases fall?

Has anyone tried this recently? What happened?

[metablue]

So I guess that means that everyone is optimizing each page for a single keyword!

[menton]

Hi Metablue,

I have a page that was optimized for 10 different phrases (although some were similar) Up until last month they came first in 6 phrases and 2nd in 2. I have dropped back this month.

Regards

Menton

[FourDegreez]

I have a couple pages that rank on the first or second page of results on Google for many different keyword combinations. These pages have a lot of external links to them, often with a variety of these keywords as the link text. If you can get a lot of external links, see if you can get the various combinations of keywords you want in the link text. Internal link text might work, too. And of course, optimize the page for the various keywords and phrases.