How many keywords it too much?

keywords

[manuelhp42]

I was wondering about people's experience with the amount of keywords to target for. It is my impression, from my experience with smaller and midsize sites, that the Pareto rule holds true with keywords as well (80% of the traffic tends to derive from 20% of the keywords/referring sites).

Considering this, how many keywords would you guys say (as a rule of thumb) is a reasonable number to try to optimize for and target for in Search Engines, assuming it is another of a Product manager's tasks for a PR4 web site of with a midsize traffic?

Thanks for your inputs,

[photonstudios]

unlimited

[bufferzone]

In my world keywords and content are to connected and dependent. The number of keywords your site will successfully carry depends on the content. Do your keyword analysis with care and discipline, list the keywords and keyphrases that are relevant for your area of business and create the necessary content to match your keywords. I normally create one page/article pr. keyword/phrase. Be ware of dublicatet content and link your site together carefully.

[neuron]

bufferzone and photonstudios are both right. you choices for kewords and phrases can be limitless, yet you should limit yourself to those that will bring you the most targeted traffic.

for instance, I sell widgets, but I only sell widgets in quanities of 500 or more. a lot of people who would like to buy widgets from me search for "cheap widgets" and "discount widgets", but most of the people searching on those terms are really only looking to buy 1 or 2 widgets. Still, if a bulk buyer of widgets searches on one of those terms, I'd like my site to be listed there for him to at least have the opportunity to look at my site by finding ranked high for those search terms. However, someone searching for "bulk discount widgets" or "cheap widget truckloads" is much more likely to be in my target audience.

We also sell edible and poisonious widgets, hot and cold widgets, heavy and light widgets, kryptonite widgets and gold widgets, funny widgets, serious widgets, widgets for senior citizens, toy widgets, authentic widgets, fake widgets, glass widgets, organic widgets, nagging widgets, dangerous widgets, carbon fiber widgets, bulletproof widgets, self-cleaning widgets, disposable widgets, recyclable widgets, dancing widgets, travel widgets, and home-shopping widgets, and those are to just to name a few. We also make dangerously funny dancing widgets, bulletproof nagging self-cleaning widgets and every other variation you can think of. These widgets come in a variety of colors and are rated at 10 or more levels for such specifications as toxicity, complexity, simplicity, sincerity, duplicity, hemogony, economy, indecency, and constitutionality.

I can combine all these descriptors into a massive set of keywords and phrases. So, I have to limit it to the terms that are searched on the most, combined wisely with those terms that bring the most highly targeted traffic.

Once you do that, build your site, publish it and wait for about 3 months to get fully indexed by the search engines, then start going into your logs to find out what the search phrases are that people are actually using to get to your site. This begins the 2nd phase of infinite possibilities. I've got people coming to my sites searching on 7, 8, 9, and 10 word text stings, that just a year to six months ago never showed up.

[photonstudios]

Personally, I categorize the keywords in two categories: content keywords and product keywords. Product keywords are the keywords for product you're selling only the ones users actually type - research those at WT. Content keywords - anything related to your products...suppose you sell "widgets" so the conetnet keyword will be "history of widgets" and more..Even though content keywords will not bring you as many sales as product keywords you should still have them, in my opinion, they're not as competitive as the actual product keywords so there is a better chance of getting traffic from content keywords then product keywords. ;)

[deejay]

*gives neuron a gold star for the best widget list ever*

[manuelhp42]

Thanks to all for your replies and comments! So, based on this, would you say shooting for 1,200 or more keywords, would make sense for such a site?

All the comments make sense to me, but the figure of 1,200 seems a bit out of proportion.