How Many Keywords Should You Target on a Web Page?

Most people know that one of the keys to utilizing SEO and ranking your website in the search engines is the use of keywords. Still, there are many factors you must consider when using keywords if you want to see success. One of the elements that some people get focused is how many keywords they should target on one webpage.

One of the overlooked factors that people don’t give much attention to is how many keywords you should target on a single web page. The truth is that many people want to do too much when they work with SEO. It’s easy to get ahead of yourself and try to cram tons of keywords on one page, assuming that the more you use the better. However, that’s not really the way that it works.

There was a time over a decade or more ago when the use of keywords was first gaining importance where the more you used, the more you ranked for. At this time nobody really knew anything about SEO and how it really worked, and the search engines themselves were still developing their formulas for how to produce high quality rankings.

However, this kind of strategy is no longer effective, and most people try to go after too many keywords on a single page of their website. If you have a huge list of keywords, it’s not smart to try to rank for each of them on every page of your site. You’re only thinning out your association with each individual keyword and wasting your time and effort. Additionally, your content will up looking spammy to both visitors and search engines that see all of those keywords on one page.

However, in actuality the opposite is true. More is less when it comes to SEO and the number of keywords you are trying to target. By targeting too many on a single web page, you aren’t doing anything but thinning out your focus. You’ll also likely be including so many keywords that your content will come across as spam to both the search engines and your visitors.

Now that you know that less is more, what’s the answer for how many keywords should be on a single page for maximum SEO success? There is no guaranteed answer that is going to ensure you a perfect mix, however targeting 2 or 3 keywords on a single web page is usually the best idea. For pages with less content you’ll want to reduce that to 1-2 keywords, and for pages with a great deal of content you can target a few more.

When you break up your site and individual pages like this you will be able to target a complete list of keywords effectively. Each page will have a few keywords that they can rank for and you’ll avoid using anything excessively. It’s the best way to use keywords across your entire site and it will produce great results for you in the search engines.

Of course, use your good judgment when you determine how many keywords you want to target on each individual web page. Think about factors such as what the page deals with and how much content it has. But remember, when in doubt a smart guideline is not to target more than 2 or 3 different keywords per each page of your site.