Keyword Targets vs Real World Referrals

[Brett_Tabke]

How any keywords is your site optimized for vs how many it pulls from?

Actual referrals is without stop words - unique keywords.

Site 1:
Pages on site: 75
Targeted kws: 100 kws
Actual referrals: 330 kws

2:
Pages on site: 35
Targeted kws: 90
Actual referrals: 450 kws

3:
Pages on site: 150k (guess)
Targeted kws: unoptimized
Actual referrals: 300+k

[albert]

(Interesting theme. Not quite sure if I interprete you right - maybe my post is somewhat too naive / subjective)

I started at one site of mine (it was the one I've learned most) with one main key phrase (designer's name and first name) and 5 key phrases for objects by him. All well known. Did know nothing about SEO then. - 10 pages. - Nameable traffic over time, and conversions.

Watched logs, found more 'real world referrals', other key phrases. Got links (not asked for that time) w/ nice anchor text.

Began to target those new phrases: 28 pages, kw and phrases not sorted thematically. Targeted: my 6 main key phrases from beginning, added some 20 combinations and some 10 variations, added other content w/o precise kw in mind. - Valuable traffic increase, more conversions.

Found hints concerning SEO. Rebuild site. - Became nervous by looking at changes in SERPs (and I had some ...).

Went back a little bit. Made themes. 35 pages now, about 75 main key words / phrases, and about 20 variations. Referrals doubled first month, same (nearly) next 2 months - until Dominic. Static since: traffic and conversions.

(This is no hidden update stuff:) I'm doing BETTER with Esmeralda for very specific phrases. But many people just search very simple: only designer's name, often w/ 1 word for one of his objects. And there's nameable competition now ... curious to see how things settle.

At time being referrals are about 5x targetted kws.

[skibum]

There's one we work with that gets up to 12,000 different keyword referrals per month and probably close to 50k+ unique terms over the course of a year, actively target a very small fraction of that and then the terms that generate leads are usually very specific oddball terms that are variations of the actual terms targeted.

Avg offline sale = $500k+ in this market.