How many keywords should be ranked for the homepage?

[privatenetwork]

One of my company’s clients has contracted 50 keywords for just one Web page.

The client wants to rank the 50 keywords for the homepage. I recommended not doing it, but the client insists that it’s necessary to rank all of the keywords for the homepage, and there’s no way to convince him otherwise.

Is it harmful to work this way? Could Google end up penalizing the site?

[ozsubasi]

I have 30 keywords that I target (though not all to the same degree) for my home page and it hasn't done me any harm. Why should it? Google doesn't look at the keyword meta tag any more.
The site was launched last May and I have seven words on page 1 (4 high competition, 1 medium, 2 low), ten on page 2 and five on page 3. The remaining eight are between 36 - 92.

[cclayton12]

To me that is an ambitous number... I generally focus on 4 keywords and that is hard enough work!

[pdrs]

Seems a bit ambitious to me as well. Make sure to optimize internal pages as well to maintain a good balance. If all you're doing is building links to the mainpage and not focusing on the internal pages that can look a little weird to Goog and may cause an issue.

[jimmyn]

Seems like far too many.

[kashyaplakkad]

Amount is too high, I recommend to use 1 or 2 keyword per page. It would be easy to do achieve results.

[jimmyn]

Might have less chance of penalisation actually, because you anchor text will be so varied. Won't be as effective though but could be a good test!

[faysal969]

I think 50 keywords is a large number for me, because it is very hard to maintain 50 keywords at a time. I like to work with 5 to 7 keywords for each my site.

[TBInternetMarketing]

I usually aim for 2 and 3 that I really try to rank for. The rest kind take care of themselves because you would be amazed at the long tail keywords you rank for without even trying. Just check out your Google analytics stats and see where your traffic is coming from. It's truly amazing some of the keywords people find your site with.

[jimmyn]

It's quite funny to look at some of the searches leading to your site as well.

[IJR112]

I think somewhere around 10 is a good number. SEO is a long and arduous process, so having 50 keywords to target just makes your task that much more difficult.

[ldiaz117]

Yea 5-10 I would say

[glock28]

i usually only focus on 2 to 3 keywords for my homepage

[MikeFriedman]

Cannot believe some of the responses. If the client wants 50, you should be targeting 50. End of story. About half of my clients are in the 100-125 range.

The biggest problem with most IM'ers, in my opinion, is they think too small.

[ramdom123]

I usually go for 2-3 home keywords and 1 keyword per post/page

[eurekapsycrille]

That is not a ridiculous number. Like Mike has said, you can even target 100 keywords in the same web page. By proper competition monitoring and implementing a good keyword targeting, you can make those keywords ranked pretty well.

[phpdevelopment]

In my opinion 50 keywords in a page is a large number because it is very hard to maintain 50 keywords at a time. you should only look to target 3 or 4 primary keywords.

[mikest4u]

50 Keywords List seems very Difficult To Rank! How can You rank all of Them at a Time Although Some of Them are High Density keywords while some of them are low density keywords but it is very difficult task to sustain the rankings of Home Page Keywords! Try To Rank 3 to 5 keywords for homepage!

[prcys]

Originally Posted by privatenetwork

One of my company’s clients has contracted 50 keywords for just one Web page.

The client wants to rank the 50 keywords for the homepage. I recommended not doing it, but the client insists that it’s necessary to rank all of the keywords for the homepage, and there’s no way to convince him otherwise.

Is it harmful to work this way? Could Google end up penalizing the site?

As per me what you suggested was right as target such pages with keywords that on which pages of your site has meaningful and unique content and then only one can get more results. So find out some examples of losing results with targeting just one page and then insist them for not to do this.
And though they do not be agree then use the unique and meaningful content for the home page and not whole information but just provide little on home page and then link it to other pages. So this way your client can get better results for their site.

[danlew]

I would not focus on too many keywords to target for my site. Maybe around 3 to 5 keywords will do to help you focused in ranking them.

[vvsingh]

50 seems to be too many to target for home page. How will he adjust the content for 50 keywords on a single page? As an expert don't always listen to clients. Ultimately you are an expert not he or she is. Educate him the pros and cons. Targetting 50 keywords on a single page can get the page penalized as well. If you get links for only his home page not for any other page then it will look more like spamming besides in any unfortunate case if his home page gets penalized ( I pray, it does not happen) he will suffering ranking loss on all 50 keywords. Tell your client that Panda takes into account the overall strength of a site and if a site's one page is very powerful but no links to other pages it will not reflect good on it. Spreading the keywords on on several pages will help.

[3drenderingservices]

I think its too much.. 3 to 4 are enough.

[aardanyul]

3-5 is best, 10 is pushing it. But 50? Wow haha thats overdoing it by a lot.

[Shilpa]

I think 5-10 is a good number. Please ask your client not to do 50 keywords for one web page. 50 is too high....

[killer999]

50 keywords is too much.

1-5 is very good.

[Canal IP]

As our colleagues from the forum well pointed out, even though the customer may always be right, to work 50 keywords for the home page is crazy! Not that it is complicated to do it, but because it can be penalized for spam.
You could propose to your client to optimize the inside pages, and as soon as he has some good landing pages, work on the keywords relevant for each of them...But no more than 10 keywords per page!

[futurepocket]

Generally, I like to focus on three keywords for my home page and all internal pages... which keywords? My main keyword (whatever it is) and 2 top LSI keywords (most of the time).

[diyakapoor]

Sometimes there are long tail keywords which can be easily targeted with the main keywords. But targeting 50 keywords on homepage is somewhat difficult and would be time consuming as well. You must convince your client to create sub-pages to target the number of keywords.

[princee]

first i don't think goggle can penalize for that but if your website is not so popular than i think its too much to target and rank. I seen so many sites ranking on their home page for number of keywords but at initial basis i think target 50 keywords would dilute your focus

[nicktyler]

Why not rank the homepage for 50 KW's? Just explain to the client that it will be more work and take longer than building or targeting other pages for some of them.

[themesplice]

Its not harmful, but this will take a lot of time and effort...

[stevenpayales]

My limit is only 8.. but doing more, I asked for extra charges also You don't have to rank as many keywords that you can. Just select the best ones that can bring in more traffic to the site.

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Cannot believe some of the responses. If the client wants 50, you should be targeting 50. End of story. About half of my clients are in the 100-125 range.

The biggest problem with most IM'ers, in my opinion, is they think too small.

^THIS ... IMO, Biggest problem is they are lazy and don't want to take the time to target more than a few keywords.

I love the responses on this thread ... where do you people pull these numbers from?

[WilliamBlah]

Ditto DeskCoder and MikeFriedman!

You realise this page alone will be ranked (page 1) for 100s and 100s of keywords!

Admittedly lots of them will be 4+ word phrases that aren't searched very much, but this is besides the point.

There is no limit to the number of keywords you can target, other than that more keywords = more resources, and most people have a limit to their resources.

Regards
Will

Edit: In fact, I just went searching for random 4 word phrases that appear on this page once, and this thread is in the top 5-10 on well over half!

[mathewines]

I would recommend no more than 2 or 3. Since many of the major factors in on page optimization are limited, if you're keywords are even a little competitive, you won't be able to rank well for all of them.

[webstralia]

I think targeting 50 keyword in one single page it's too much. because it's not possible to adjust every keyword in content for one page. Convince your client that if we target 50 keyword only for homepage, may search engine penalize our website or may be consider as a spam.

[bnetwork]

Depends on the keywords. Anyone who has given you advice here without knowing the actual keywords is full of it.

[OmarNegron]

Sure it does sound like a lot of keywords BUT it can be done.

Just need to make sure your content is optimized and relevant for the keyword terms that are being searched.

If he wants to rank for "Pink Shoes" and the site is about baseball bats then that will probably not work out.

As long as it's relevant, give it a go. =-)

-Omar

[WilliamBlah]

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Depends on the keywords. Anyone who has given you advice here without knowing the actual keywords is full of it.

Actually, I'm not full of anything. (Haven't had lunch yet, you see!)

If you are thinking of targeting 50 keywords, it is likely that many are going to be at least 2-3 words long. I assumed this, at least. I presume the OP would not embark on attempting to rank a site for 50 single word highly competitive keywords.

If the keywords are related, and - as I also said previously - if your resources won't be spread too thinly, then I don't see any reason why you shouldn't target 50 keywords.

Regards
Will

[raviwatson24]

we can use 3-5 keyword but not more than that.

[uoftenwinny]

It's too much. Unless there are several persons to do this with you. 3~5 keywords is a hard work.

[JohnnyS]

I only have 3 to 5 keywords for my homepage. i don't think it is advisable to use 50 keywords in one page. You can not use all those keywords in one page ( on-page for homepage).

[ghazia]

The optimum number of keywords for a page to be optimized is 3 to 5.

[ozsubasi]

I really don't understand the reasoning behind much of what has been said here. Why would anyone only want to try to rank for a few keywords instead of many?
It doesn't make any sense to me. Someone said that it could be penalized for spam (by having 50 keywords). I could understand thatif it were the same keyword 50 times, but how can 50 different keywords be spam?
By using synonyms, putting the words in a different order, using plurals etc it's perfectly feasible, and I said in an earlier post I target 30 without any problem. To all those who say it shouldn't or couldn't be done, have you actually tried it or are you just repeating what is often said?

Allow me to give you some updated specifics. My target is the UK, and of my keywords 27 are high competition and 3 medium according to Adwords.
16 are two word, 11 are three word, and 3 are four word.
Currently 19 are on page 1, 7 are on page 2 and the remaining 4 are on page 3.

Ok 30 isn't 50 but the principle is the same, and if there were more I wished to target I could do so by adding content to the page.

[appsartechnologies]

Originally Posted by privatenetwork

One of my company’s clients has contracted 50 keywords for just one Web page.

The client wants to rank the 50 keywords for the homepage. I recommended not doing it, but the client insists that it’s necessary to rank all of the keywords for the homepage, and there’s no way to convince him otherwise.

Is it harmful to work this way? Could Google end up penalizing the site?

Hi,

I think you can rank all the 50 keywords in your homepage with "rel=canonical"(for home page). So that your home page will rank well for all the keywords.

Lets hear from you guys as I am right or wrong.

Waiting for response.

[korneld]

one or two at the most

[Dumkist]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Cannot believe some of the responses. If the client wants 50, you should be targeting 50. End of story. About half of my clients are in the 100-125 range.

The biggest problem with most IM'ers, in my opinion, is they think too small.

Hi Mike..I just wanted to ask if you think that it is still possible to rank for 50 + keywords for one single page since the Google panda updates ?

[gilelai]

I only put 4 on my homepage, and also for most pages.

[Dumkist]

what I am talking about is ranking one page for say 50 + keywords.

[bnetwork]

^^ yes. Lots of long-tails (can be hundreds or even thousands) and 2-10 high traffic keywords.