• Targeting one keyword per page--controversial?
• Data beats opinions in any decision
• One keyword per page: once more with feeling
• Where should I host my blog?

Agreed. I've always maintained that any page should target a single keyword - especially the more competitive terms. I think that many miss the point when I say a single keyword that I expect only that keyword to drive traffic. But by the nature of the web by optimising for a single keyword, the longtail will automatically come into play at some point.

On the flip side due to some pretty neat LSI by the larger search engines "certified public accountant" and CPA could very easily be recognised as being the same thing. I've seen this to be true in local search where city names have been abbreviated (why is abbreviated such a long word ;). That said, I wouldn't stake my business on the hope that the search engines get the LSI 100% correct so may even create separate landing pages for them anyhow.

Great content is focused content.

Posted by: Robert on May 21, 2009

It's fine for you make some of those phrases secondary targets, and there are situations, when keywords are not highly competitive.

Posted by: Resveratrol on May 21, 2009

That's all well and good, but what about the homepage, if you want a double whammy in the SERP's. Considering it's usually the strongest page on the site, it's much easier if your HP is focussed on several keywords.

Posted by: steve on May 21, 2009

Hey, glad my question gave you some fodder for a post ;-)

Good answer and thanks for the further explanation beyond what we could discuss int he chat. We'll definitely take this approach moving forward.

Posted by: Chris on May 21, 2009

Personally, I generally recommend trying to optimize for no more than 3 words on a page. This is not saying that your theory of 1 is wrong by any means, in fact it is probably optimal to only target one keyword per page.

However, when you target 1 keyword, you must also consider the variations that can be derived from that keyword. For instance, if you target "car dealer columbus," it is pretty much a safe bet that "columbus car dealer" is also target.

Posted by: Agent SEO on May 21, 2009

Agent SEO brings up a good point. Using that example... are you suggesting that we only optimize the page for "car dealer columbus" and then a separate page for "columbus car dealer" and then another for "car dealer in columbus", etc?

What about the plural of those terms - "car dealers columbus"? Seperate pages?

Posted by: Dave on May 21, 2009

How do you arrange your kewords thought out your site.structure, i belive that the structure of the keyword arrangement on the pages should be like an inverted paramid,
as you go deeper the pages must be more refined in terms kewords.

but i don't get how to arrange the keywords in the upper broad level of home pages and other lower pages 1-2 click away.

Posted by: durgesh on May 21, 2009

I know some people get very structured about this subject, durgesh, but I think you treat every page the same. The home page of your site is probably destined to be optimized for your company name. Your list of all products in a category is optimized for the category name. The product page is optimized for its name. The product detail page can be potimized for the product name plus the word "detail" or "specs." maybe I am too simple-minded about his, but I think that we should spend more time writing the content for the keywords that we don't have pages for then worrying about getting the structure perfect.

Posted by: Mike Moran on May 21, 2009

AgentSEO and Dave,

All of those are so close that they amount to exactly the same thing anyway. So, no, you wouldn't need a different page just to account for word order or plurals. Thanks for poining out something that I should have in the original article.

Posted by: Mike Moran on May 21, 2009

I totally agree with your post. I have started optimizing one key word phrase per page and it is paying off. It's definitely the way to go if you are serious about SEO. Fleur Brown

Posted by: Resume Templates on May 21, 2009

I'm totally on board with this concept. In fact, as I build "niche" affiliate sites, blogs, and e-commerce sites, I'll often build an entire SITE around one keyword.

Depending on the competition for that keyword, it can still be difficult to get your stuff ranked for that particular phrase without some significant off-page work. Sometimes even that doesn't seem to help (or help fast enough) and only time can cure your ranking woes.

Brian Kurtz - I'm a veteran of the United States Marine Corps who sells real estate, builds websites, and runs an online Airsoft Sniper Rifle shop in my spare time.

Posted by: Brian Kurtz on May 23, 2009

Agree with the post. After introduction of such concept and other innovative SEO technics in our e-commerce applications, our clients have also started improving the natural search results of their Web sites. This significantly saves them marketing budgets.

Posted by: E-commerce on May 24, 2009

I think that it's possible to optimize for several keywords: if they are related. If your main keyword is "real estate" then you can have a few variations such as "affordable real estate" "real estate in Churchlands" etc.

Posted by: Synergy Planet on May 24, 2009

Of course you can do that, Synergy Planet. The question is whether it will work. If you have keywords that are not very competitive, then it might work. But if many others are vying for that top spot, it's far less likely that such a strategy would work. In your example, the top spot for "real estate" would undoubtedly be a journalistic article that describes what real estate is, how you use it as a n investment, the differences between commercial and private real estate--none of this sounds like the same page as "affordable real estate" or "real estate in Churchlands."

On the other hand, if you wanted to optimize for "affordable real estate in Churchlands," that might work. And if very few companies are trying for "real estate in Churchlands," it would probably work for that keyword, too. But I'd be very surprised if it came up for "affordable real estate," which seems to be a broad keyword with many competitors that requires a different focus.

In my opinion, what matters is whether the approach you take has the chance of getting a top five or even top ten ranking for your keyword. If, over time, you don't get such a ranking, then the fact that "you optimized for it" isn't all that important. I know that what I am saying sounds rather extreme to some, but my point is that you are better off thinking about building the perfect page for each keyword (and then finding out you got lucky with a few related keywords) then you are thinking that you can optimize each page for several keywords.

Posted by: Mike Moran on May 25, 2009

Well I think there is merit in what Synergy Planet says. It could very well be a tactic to optimise a page around a base keyword that is competitive with the aim of ranking for the longer tail variations of this keyword - something that is likely to happen when aiming for most keywords.

On the flip side, what use is ranking for a very board search term? Usually these don't convert very well.

Posted by: Robert on May 25, 2009

I agree, Robert. I'm expressing my opinion on the best way to approach this. Not everyone agrees and their opinions certainly have merit. I agree with you that looking for rankings on broad terms is not only difficult but often unsatisfying in terms of conversion--I just wanted to use the examples that Synergy Planet used to make my opinion clearer.

Again, you can certainly try to make one landing page do the work for several related terms. Sometimes it will even work. But you're more likely to be disappointed, in my experience.

Posted by: Mike Moran on May 25, 2009

Hi,

I am also testing this with several blogs I am trying to promote in search engines. I started this process recently and it will take time for me to come up with some results. I'm constantly changing things around to see what's happening to my blogs rankings. One thing I know for sure is, Meta keywords don't mean anything for Google.

Posted by: Ellwynda on May 25, 2009

I understand limiting the keyword down, but what about multiple service areas? This is typically more problematic for real estate agents, who's services are geographically defined, but at the same time serve a large number of communities? How can you promote them as a vendor of services for all their communities without diluting your promotion of a single keyword?

Posted by: Foot In Mouth on May 26, 2009

It's pretty easy, Foot. One page focuses on the service and others focus on the service in a particular community. If you try it, I think it will seem easier than it does now.

Posted by: Mike Moran on May 26, 2009

Thanks Mike Moran, I enjoy reading your article and all the comments and learning what works and new things to apply to my website. I appreciate all the information and will check back for more.

Posted by: Duralee on May 27, 2009

At first I will only optimize my page for one phrase. After a few weeks I check the webmastertools and analytics to look for other phrases visitors have used to find the page. Sometimes one of those phrases is better than the one I targetted before.

Posted by: Goedkoop Weg on May 28, 2009

I agree whole-heartedly, Mike. Great post! We optimize travel & tourism websites that are located in specific areas of the US. We ONLY use one keyword phrase per page and we have good results with this tactic.

There are other terms that our pages rank for thorugh Latent Semantic Indexing, but we dont consciously optimize ONE page for a list of terms such as "orlando vacation rentals, rentals in orlando, vacation home in orlando, condo rentals in orlando."

When you're looking at ranking for competitive terms, you need to realize that the more you put on the page, the more you're diluting the "good" you're doing with links and supportive content. If a page has to rank well for all of those terms, feasibly you probably need to quadruple your linkbuilding and supportive content efforts. Instead use one per page, drive targeted and valuable text links to those pages, and watch them rise through the competition.

Great post!

~Carrie

Posted by: Carrie Hill on May 28, 2009

Noooooo! I strongly take issue with this article, and would in fact suggest the exact opposite.

Why shoot for one keyword phrase, when you can get 3 or even 5?

Not to mention that it's much easier to write natural copy when you are focusing on multiple phrases per page.

Sorry, Mike, just really hate to see this sort of advice given. That said, I know we all have our different methods and there are more than one way to skin the SEO cat, but I wanted to be sure that others here didn't take this article as the absolute way of optimizing.

Posted by: Jill Whalen on May 28, 2009

I completely agree Jill!

Posted by: Jaan Kanellis on May 28, 2009

I think using single keyword is good for some time but not all the because because if you type CPA rather than certified public accountant than it's going to be a problem for the reader. So if you think the topic on the page is easy, simple to understand than you can use single keywords. However, if the topic is complex like politics than you should use different keywords to make others understand.

Posted by: Jane on May 29, 2009

Thanks for this. Agree with you that the keywords on each page to more accurately reflect the page rather that going for the machine gun approach.

Posted by: Bob on June 1, 2009

Nice post, Mike. I think part of the problem here is that people aren't defining what a unique keyword is. I think "real estate agent in Indianapolis" and "Real Estate agents in Indianapolis" are close enough that one page can be optimized serve to convert both kinds of site visitors effectively. However, "Real estate agents in Indianapolis" and "real estate agents in Indiana" are very different and will do better with each having its own optimized page.

Posted by: ejly on June 2, 2009

For me, I play it safe and target one keyword phrase and place in title and a couple of times in the body of the article.

Sprinkle in some lsi keywords also.

Posted by: Andrew on June 3, 2009

Yes nice post. I do my keyword research on the particular subject I want to write on then once I have found a relatively high traffic keyword phrase thats not overly competitive I try to target that phrase using it as the title of my post and a few times in the blog post. I never try and optimize for too many keywords.

Posted by: Michael on June 7, 2009

I agree with this. I think you could target more than one keyword per page if you really want, but I have been targeting one keyword per page and it has been working pretty well for me.

Posted by: Fiona on June 19, 2009

Hi all,

Good article, yes its good thing to use one keywords, but many times what happen people search one thing by different different wording. So it is better to give two or three keywords and should be user friendly means what common person thinks for the particular word.

Pune India

Posted by: Pune on July 7, 2009

Nice Blog. Personally, I recommend trying to optimize for no more than 3 or 4 keywords on a page. Should be user friendly and content related keywords. Especially keyword density is important thing for your web page.

Posted by: Email Marketing Software on August 5, 2009

I too kind of lean towards just targetting one keyword per page, at least for awhile anyways. I beleive that if you target to many keywords for a single page, that google may end up putting you in the sand box (penalty for building to many links to fast basically). However, I think that over time (IE: a few months), it is ok to start targetting a few other keywords for 1 page. Just my 2 cents.

Posted by: MRB on August 6, 2009

Great Article, I know what you mean and personally I feel the same, normally I adhere to the fewer the better as a rule, BUT this is not aways the case, I have a customer (I run an seo company) who has a site focussed on the pc repair niche, all of his keywords are longtail locality based keywords, and he wanted the homepage to rank for all 16 of his keywords! I did the onsite optimisation, the site was fortunately designed, by someone who to be honest, for a web designer didnt do a half bad job at all on the on site optimisation, (though there was plenty room for improvement). And with just a few adjustments I managed to get optimal density and prominance for all 16 keywords whilst retaining the natural look and readabiliy of the page. It now ranks first page for ALL of these keywords on google, most at position 1. I think the number of keywords is to a great extent controlled by the nature of the site itself and how closely related the keywords are, this has a big impact on how natural and "unstuffed" the finished optimised page will be, My prime concern when optimising a site is always to keep the text looking natural.

Posted by: High Impact SEO on August 7, 2009

You need to be very confident with your contents and your website while targetting a single keyword. it requires a long term plan and clear strategy to get optimised for a single keyword. The real problem starts when there are other websites which has better structure, contents and are there in online longer than yours then this process of targetting the single keywords takes lot of time and effort.

happy days

Posted by: bala on August 23, 2009

This was very helpful. I been trying to understand this better for some time. I really need to sit down and figure out my plan for my site when it come to keywords.

Lots of good comments here also very helpful thanks again.

Posted by: Jared P Little on August 30, 2009

Some times client does not agree on one page one keyword although i requested to one of my client for try one keyword based page i got descent result.
Thanks for clearing the concept of using one keyword.

Posted by: Dhiraj on September 1, 2009

I have read through most of everyones comments here and everybody makes a fair point. But lets remember one thing, search engines revolve around words and on the one hand are storing lots of different keyword search terms in one database. Then take a SE like Google and look at Google's other job - indexing pages. Think of Google as a hotel with a room for each page. If a page is focused on a primary and secondary keyword and the page is properly optimised and achieving votes from both internal site links and getting inbound links from other websites, then there is more chance that page in the long term will do well for an organic listing. Whereas a page that is 'to busy' with lots of words that are not prioritised, then the page surely is a) not going to perform as well, and b) can't really be answering the query of the person searching for something specific as the visitor would have to 'wade' through text that then might not be relevant! Lets get people carrying out ecommerce excellence best practice - every day people responsible for page performance should take an SEO driving test and understand the tools they are meant to be working with.

Posted by: Ecommerce Excellence on September 13, 2009

One keyword strategy per page is most preferable in my humble opinion but having a secondary keyword might be equally good to be satisfied with the increasingly unique quality of the page leaving more fierce competition at the top for others at the same time relying for traffic on search engine people that are more targeted in the definition of the searches.

Posted by: peoples' person on October 14, 2009