~~~Successful Online Writing~~~
From: Mark
Hi,
I hope you two can help me. I followed your advice and found 3 keyphrases for my home page. My question is can I use more than 3 phrases? Some other leftover phrases get good hits and relate to our business, so I'd like to use them. Am I out of luck?
~~~Heather's Response~~~
Hi, Mark-
Good question - and there are two answers to this, depending on what you mean.
You may want to carefully consider whether you *really* want to add additional keyphrases to your home page. After about three keyphrases (four if you can make it work), it's very difficult to include additional keyphrases and still keep your writing persuasive and powerful. If you figure that your home page copy is around 250-300 words, adding another keyphrase may break your flow and make *every* keyphrase stand out like a sore thumb. And I'm sure you don't want that outcome.
HOWEVER, you can still use your remaining keyphrases for your inner pages. In fact, it's a very smart thing for you to do. As Jill so eloquently writes in her article, "The Myth of Gateway Pages," [http://www.rankwrite.com/gatewaymyth.htm] "all major inside pages should also be edited as necessary to ensure that each key area of your business is well represented in the search engines." So, if you have four distinct profit centers and services, create optimized text and tags for all four pages. That way, you're driving targeted traffic to the exact information your prospects want to see - and you have more opportunities to rank high on a number of different keyphrases. For more information, we discussed this in-depth in Rank Write 022 [http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue022.htm].
You can also be creative and comb your site for other pages that would benefit from keyphrase-rich copy. As an example, we'll typically optimize the "about us" page, since all the copy is directly related to the business and it's easy (or easier) to optimize the text and tags for keyphrases. So, if you used, say, the keyphrase "Italy vacations" on your home page,and "trips to Italy" on the "about us" page, you'll benefit from the best of both worlds.
Thanks for your question! Keep those online writing questions coming!
~~~Jill's unsolicited 2 cents~~~
I know how much you all look forward to my unsolicited 2 cents, so I didn't want to disappoint you. However, since I'll be on vacation by the time you are reading this, I didn't actually get to see Heather's Q&A before I left. I'll just make an educated guess and say, "Wow, Heather, once again, you're right on the money! Everybody be sure and
heed her wisdom!" and leave it at that.
Jill
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