It’s important that the keywords you use are significant with your sites content. You do not want keywords that have little or no relevance to your site.

Your most significant keywords should reflect the subject matter of your site.

I try to use at least one of my top five significant keywords in my content. This tells Google that these keywords are the most relevant. You should always optimize your web pages for a targeted keyword that consists of many words. A keyword that consists of many words is called “keyword phrase”. By optimizing your web page for a keyword phrase, you automatically optimize your web page for the parts of that phrase.

Example: People interested in music may search for “Free iTunes Music”. In this phrase there are two keywords – iTunes and Music. I would not try to optimize for Free, it is too competitive.

How many keywords should I use?

The fact is there is no right number of keywords for every situation. A site that sells movies will more than likely have tens of thousands of keywords compared to a site that sells services. You can optimize for 1, 5, 10, 20, or even 100 keywords. If your list is large, it will require a lot of maintenance to maintain keyword optimization. I am not suggesting that you keep your keyword list small, but make it manageable to optimize.

How to check the most common keywords on your site

  1. Login to Google
  2. Go to Google Webmaster Tools
  3. Click on Your site on the web
  4. Click on Keywords

keyword-optimization

The Keywords page lists the most significant keywords Google found when crawling your site. The significance of each keyword reflects how often it’s found on your site’s pages. This tool can also tell you about unexpected keywords. An unexpected keyword such as “Viagra” could be a sign that your site might have been hijacked or it still is.

How many keywords are you trying to optimize for?