Thu 26 Feb 2009
In SEO How Many Words Maximum Can I Optimize A Page For?
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)
How many words maximum do you optimize a page for? I was asked this today at a meeting and, as it’s something I have pondered for a long time, I had to come up with an answer that made sense to someone not seo-literate.
I optimise a page for as many words as I think I can get in a title that makes sense. If Google displays @70 characters in a title in SERPS, I sort of think those 70 characters are the most important, wether or not Google reads more words in the title. I also weigh this up with my theory there is a limit on the actual amount of anchor text Google will count as a link (55 characters?).
When making my titles, if I think the page won’t be linked to, I’ll use the 70 characters. If I think it’s an article likely to be linked to, I’ll also ensure my main keywords are within the first 55 characters to ensure I am getting all the anchor text ranking benefits.
So with those thoughts in mind, how many words can you fit in 55-70 characters? That is the maximum amount of key words I would optimise any one page for. Of course there could me many phrases made up with those words beyond that and you can use the content and organic links to capture for long tail searches, but on a page to page basis, seo for me revolves around those 55-70 characters.
If it’s not in the title, links and content, I don’t expect to rank high for it in competitive or saturated niches.
I always look to optimise for phrases too, not words, and always geared to satisfy the intent of a search engine user and visitor. The actual amount of text on a page for seo purposes is kind of irrelevant and totally dependant on the site and what I am aiming to achieve.
Any thoughts, please share.
Update – Here is the sort of results you get with this strategy 
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I tend to agree with you in most cases. However, I sometimes get cocky depending on the competitiveness in certain industries and really take a shot at a few other semantically related terms that seem attainable. If I don’t see results fairly quickly, however, I abandon ship. If I do, it can be a major victory…again, just a matter of picking your shots.
Yup agreed. I also aim primarily for related terms
Really appreciate this insight, Shaun – good explanation of a rather confusing and oft-debated part of site design. Will mention this on another forum I belong to.
Am glad I discovered your site a week or two ago!
I always put my major keyword in the title. Because I use long-tailed key phrases a lot, often that is all of the title.
I also put the key phrase in each subheading, and then just use the phrase naturally throughout the content.
I’m experiencing steady growth in my search traffic so I guess it’s working.
Thanks for this post.
Warmly,
Linda P. Morton
It makes logical sense to me to optimise the page for the keywords in the title. I also try to use keyword phrases and variations, but when checking my site stats I sometimes notice that I have picked up traffic from searches people have made that have included a single word from my page content. If I think this particular word might have some mileage in it, I may do a bit of optimising on this word as well, even though it doesn’t appear in my title.
This is one of the most asked questions in SEO industry. But nobody can give perfect answer, but you gave almost perfect answer.
Thanks for posting. I totally agree with you and believe this to be the essence of good SEO.
yes i am also agree with your sentence so if you can try to optimization for any 1 page so you can try to make it sour and perfect details and also like key work meta tag and Description and content for the page then you have to check all after 1 week then you will get perfect marketing
Rahul Patel
Sr.SEO Experts
Ahmedabad
links@websitedesignerindia.com
And you can try to maxim 12 key word target on page optimization but before you can prepare on the check all pages content and then start then then i be make it sour you will get result
The title tag is a primary spot for keywords, if you want to rank for core terms you need to have them in the title tag for sure. I’m not sure on the actual positioning importance of the keywords within the title tag, but my guess would be that Google would index every character within the 70 character limit, giving prominence to the words closest to the start.
Would be interesting to note the ranking affect (if any) of having a term within the middle of the title tag, to a term at the end of the title tag, bearing in mind the presumed 70 character limit. Could be a tester for some of those experimentalists!
Yes I agree but remember the text must be of a high standard, I’ve seen too many sites that aim for the 70 characters but try to ram in just the key words and areas
The title needs to make grammatical sense and not just be key word rich!
I generally keep it to 2 or 3 key phrases per page or derivatives or each phrase so SEO maybe one but it is easy enough to add SEO Scotland to it as well.
I think focussing on to many keyterms per page tends to lead to you overstuffing the title etc with the key words. It is better to have a nice flowing sentence as the title with a couple of keyterms in it over keyterm : keyterm : keyterm etc
Good tips, I don’t think it has to be in the title, as long as it’s related and not that competitive. Also, it depends how highly searched the keyword is. The better it is, the more I would be prone to doing a separate page for it.