You may be surprised to learn most website owners underrate the importance of keyword research and do not know how many keywords they should target.

Keywords and key phrases are the lifeblood of any website. It is these keywords and phrases the search engines look for when returning information after a search.

So How Many Keywords Should You Target?

The answer is start with approximately 100 for a typical website of 10 pages. Surprised? Here is the breakdown. Come up with 40 one to two word key phrases and 60 three words or more key phrases. The goal is to find key phrases that are used by your customers, but under used by your competitors.

The first step is to do the research. Look at your competitors websites and write down the keywords and phrases they are using. Then use them in a search to see who else comes up and look at their websites. Next, check with Google’s free keyword tool to determine how many searches each combination receives on a monthly basis and pick the ones that receive less than 5,000 monthly searches. Then place those keywords or phrases in Google’s address bar to determine how many competing web pages come up.

Think about it this way, if a particular keyword or phrase is searched hundreds of thousands or millions of times each month, the competition for those keywords will be high. You can take a combination of those keywords to create a key phrase that will give you the best return. By going after keywords and phrases that will give you the best chance of ranking in the top three on Google, those keywords and phrases will give you customers that will buy from you.

The opposite is true too, if your favorite keyword or phrase only gets 100 searches each month, you know you cannot make money with it.

Choosing the correct keywords and key phrases should be your number one priority in determining how many keywords you should target.

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