How Many Keywords Do You Try To Rank For?

[CashGrower007]

Is it better to try and rank #1 for one or two keywords... or rank on the first page for many long-tail keywords?

Currently, I'm trying to rank #1 for a super competitive keyword around with 250,000,000 competition and 10k local searches daily. I've been in the number one spot for two months for this keyword but I've just been dropped to 2nd..

So, what would you do? rank #1 for a keyword, then rank #1 for the next keyword and so on or would you go and try to rank a dozen keywords with less traffic on the first page?

 

[miyaki]

what methods did you use to get to rank 1?

 

[olalawal]

this would be good info

 

[becky]

That's really going to depend on your niche, how competitive it is and how much time/money you want to invest to develop content, build seo optimized pages and build backlinks -- either yourself or by outsourcing.

Generally speaking, I'd start out with at least 6 and then focus on strengthening the ones you get traction with, then add others later.

 

[agag2]

When you build backlinks only do it for 1 or 2 keywords not more my experiance

 

[dryheat360]

From my personal experience, long tail keywords arent as effective. Stay with a few good keywords, #1 spot.

If you dont mind me asking, how many visitors do you get per day?

 

[CashGrower007]

what methods did you use to get to rank 1?

Mixture of everything.

From my personal experience, long tail keywords arent as effective. Stay with a few good keywords, #1 spot.

If you dont mind me asking, how many visitors do you get per day?

3k-4k.. mostly from one keyword.

 

[romocop]

Keep your focus on one main keyword. You'll start to rank for longtail keywords soon after that.

 

[aznxmtg]

I'm focus on micro keywords with on domain, so I rank for my domain name (without and with spaces). Based on my traffic, I'm ranking #1 for multiple keywords (different pages of my domain). Also ranking for a lot of other keywords on page 1 (Normally within 4-9 rank).

I'm going to start aiming for competitive keywords soon, but the niche I'm in doesn't have "competitive keywords"

 

[HarYpoS]

Right now I target 4 Keywords at a time, after 3-5 months when im secure at the tops spots, for each, I go after 4 more, rinse and repeat, I build web 2.0 buffers for each keyword, as well as manually post to blogs and forums that are hand selected by me.

seems to work well, all my keywords are search 40k-100k times a day... I love seo

 

[littleg2008]

hmm, people here are advising to target main keywords straight away.

In my experience, if you are new to a niche, you would start off with long tail keywords.

Ones you have these ranking well, the shorter broader terms will rank high.

For example.

If your in the free weights niche, i would start with targeting 2-20kg dumbbell set

the term here which ideally we would want is dumbbell set which would come up faster once you have a long tail keyword ranking high.

This is a pretty awesome SEO tip i have given you guys here. Hope someone listens to it

 

[bertbaby]

I think you get into trouble when you approach SEO in a formulaic manner. Flexibility is the key and if two keywords get the job done fine but if the results are not there it may be time to invest in additional keys words.

 

[pietpatat]

It's better to rank #1 for 1 keyword to rank #8 for 10 keywords.

 

[Barklad]

That chart is really informative. Spells things out pretty clearly.

 

[Barklad]

Do others find that they have to do a lot of maintenance to keep their #1 spot or can you shift your attention to other keywords once you hit it?

 

[captainsmack]

This depends on your niche and your site. With an ecommerce site you are better off ranking for long tail first, which you will rank #1 for more quickly, and slowly building up to the more competitive keywords. This is because you have more "content" to offer a searcher than just that longtail search plus you are building brand recognition. But yes, if your site is very narrow then focus on 1-3 keywords per page depending on competition.

 

[captainsmack]

Do others find that they have to do a lot of maintenance to keep their #1 spot or can you shift your attention to other keywords once you hit it?

I build what I've term "community" sites in which there is an active community that supports the site. Take blackhat world for example, it provides a ton of good content and because of that people voluntarily link to it. So it's linkbuilding is done on autopilot. The same can be achieved with building a really good site that draws a community, be it reviews, a forum, etc. The "blackhat" part comes in trying to rank for a high volume keyword upfront so that you can generate as much "buzz" as quickly as possible.