keywords

how many keywords

[etraffic4u]

I keep hearing of people gathering around 5000 keywords and phrases for their web site. My question is what do they do with all these keywords. How many keywords is too many?

[redzone]

Keywords are proportional to amount of content, and market...

Very horizontal markets such as Automotive and Travel, will have more potential keyword phrases for relevant traffic, than a site that sells customized steel tubing...

It's not a "one size fits all" thing...

[etraffic4u]

Thanks for that. I am new to SEO and have been looking at so many articles, ebooks ads etc my head is spinning and don't know where to start.

[storevalley]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld etraffic4u :)

my head is spinning and don't know where to start

This is a pretty good place ...

Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com]

[redzone]

etraffic4u,

My opinion (7 years worth of SEO/SEM), is to not try and go into information overload.

Most ebooks are outdated even when they finally publish.

You found WebmasterWorld, and I don't think you will have to venture outside of this community too often to get answers to your questions, learn proper techniques that are successful, etc...

SearchEngineWatch is a good publication to subscribe to, because it covers "current" events in the SEM/SE world..

PlanetOcean also has a good publication.

Outside of those two, I read/contribute only here.... :)

[ogletree]

We have 16,000 keywords for one site.

[redzone]

ogletree,
don't confuse etraffic4u any further.

Explain why you have 16K, how much content, vertical market.. He/She is trying to learn the business, not have blind numbers thrown at him/her.

Your comment reminds of the Post Google update threads - a long line of "Drive By's"... :)

[ogletree]

Actually we have 16,000 keywords that we added to OV and AdWords. some of them will never be typed in. The best way to do it is come up with your core words. Then come up with words that get anywhere from 5 to 100 hits a month. Next you come up with the 1 to 5 hits a month then the large list of possible words that may com up once a year to once every 2 months. You make as many pages as you can with the words you have. If you get tired or it is just not worth it to create that many pages then just start adding the words to your existing pages. Also you need to have a misspelling list. I have seen some people that just have misspelling pages where they have the word misspelled incorrectly 3 different ways in the title. It depends on how hard it is to rank for that misspelling. I started out with a line at the bottom that says common misspelling of the word "keyword" then a list of the misspellings. I waited a few days and checked how well that ranked. The ones that were not number one I then made a special page for them. I had one word that was the most common misspelling of my word and I even got a backlink for it. I love kw lists it is what I am the best at doing. We have an access DB that we put a bunch of words into and it creates a huge list of words. (It is more complicated than that I just kept it simple).

[Michael Anthony]

etraffic4u - do you want keywords to put into your HTML tags code or to run a PPC campaign. I think most people here are referring to the number of keywords that they use for PPC campaigns (such as Google Adwords) when they talk in thousands.

If it's for your tags, then 10-20 is about right. If it's for PPC, the more (relevant) keywords the better.

[redzone]

etraffic4u,

It's basically the:
"Does the chicken come before the egg, or the egg before the chicken" Syndrome...

If you develop content first, without doing a thorough keyword analysis, you end up with great content, that will miss part of your target audience.

If you do the keyword analysis first, then you end up developing content around the keywords, rather than on the subject matter of your site.

You have to find the balance.

[etraffic4u]

I was more interested in the keyword content for my html pages. What would be an acceptable amount of keywords in the html? Does it effect the chances of the page getting a good listing if the keywords are repeated in key phrases?

Thank you for all your replies, very helpful.

[redzone]

etraff4u:

Think of "themes" when you are designing a site map. Each page centralized around a specific product/service/etc.. The body text should be focused on the broadest/most searched keyword phrases associated to the "theme".. Then after your first draft of your body text, go back and "sprinkle" in lesser searched keyword phrases that are still relevant to the product/service.

The key is to keep the body text readable to the consumer, and balanced.

There are many posts here with discussion of keyword density, etc... You have to experiment, and track your progress. Organization is everything!