How Many Keywords Should A Website Have?

How many keywords should your website be optimized for? It sounds like a simple question, but it's a bit more complicated. Discover the answer and some critical dos and don'ts of keyword optimization.

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If you’re like many of our clients you are probably wondering. How many keywords should a website have? Truly an important question worthy of diving into. But it’s not such an easy subject. At least, not as easy as building a Google review link. Truth be told, there are a wide variety of factors that should help you make this decision. Additionally, there are other questions to consider to ensure you really are optimizing your website as well as you can be. Let’s get to it!

How many keywords should my website have?

You should start by optimizing each page of your website for two to four keywords. More specifically, one or two main keywords and one to three related keywords. Meaning keywords that are similar in search intent and topic. But don’t overdo it! Your writing should sound natural and be easy for your visitors to read. While those general rules hold true, there’s a lot more information that should ultimately guide your decision on how many keywords your website should have. Ask yourself these questions:

  • How long are your individual pages of content?
  • How many pages does your website have and/or need?
  • Does my content sound natural?
  • Are there related keywords being searched?

How Many Keywords Can Pages Rank For?

Since we’re suggesting optimizing each page for just two to four keywords, you might be surprised to find out that a single page can actually rank for hundreds or even thousands of keywords. But how?! The secret lies in related keywords and long-tail keywords. While your focus should be on a few main words, there are many other related keywords that your article will likely pick up. Take this article for example. It’s optimized for how many keywords should a website have. However, the related term, how many keywords should you focus on per page, is also an achievable target because of how the article is crafted. Ironically, both of these keywords fall into what we call, long-tail keywords. As Wordstream says here, long-tail keywords are more specific keyword phrases customers typically use closer to the point of purchase. What’s more surprising is the estimate that long-tail keywords on average make up for 70% of page views for a website. Safe to say as you optimize your content you need to keep an eye out for relevant long-tail keywords.

What About Keywords On My Homepage?

Without a doubt, your homepage is the most important page of your website. It’s often the first impression visitors get of your business, products, and services. Needless to say, first impressions count, and you’d hate to mess it up by keyword stuffing or writing for search engines instead of your visitors.

The good news is that your home, at least for SEO sake, should be treated like any other page of your website. Find the two to four most relevant keywords to your business and optimize for those. Now you may be saying to yourself, my homepage doesn’t have as much content as my other pages. You need to fix that! While fewer words can look great for design’s sake, it’s not at all SEO friendly and can often be confusing to users as well. Take some time to craft some carefully worded content that describes your products or services. From there it should be easy to include your keywords.

Can I Optimize for Too Many Keywords?

Absolutely! Unfortunately, it’s easy to do and we see it all the time. But here’s a quick tip to help. Before you publish an article reread it. If it’s overly complicated or difficult to read, you likely tried to fit too many keywords into the text. Google and industry experts actually coined the term, keyword stuffing, to describe this exact problem. What’s worse, if they find you partaking in this practice, you can actually be penalized. So what can you do? Once you’re done writing your content, take another look. Make sure it is optimized for the correct number of keywords, that it is easy to read, and that it is truly focused on helping the visitor and not just an attempt to rank for a keyword.

Time to Start Optimizing Your Content!

I know, it was a lot of information and we breezed through it rather quickly. By now you hopefully have an answer to how many keywords should a website have. And more so, a good idea of how to implement those keywords successfully. Don’t forget to watch out for keyword stuffing or poorly written content that will hurt user experience, or get you penalized. I can promise if you take your time, and follow the suggestions above, you’re sure to see your pages ranking better in no time.

If you start down the path of keyword optimization and you need some assistance, we’re here to help! Don’t hesitate to contact us! We’d love to hear from you.

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