Keyword optimization is an essential part of online digital marketing and should not be overlooked. As a crucial tool for success, using SEO focus keywords on your web pages should be your primary focus when creating content online for your business. Once you optimize your webpages, you will see improved traffic and conversion to sales happen right before your eyes.

But you may be wondering, how many SEO keywords should I use per page? If SEO keywords are so important, shouldn’t I use them as many times as humanly possible? Shouldn’t I pick as many SEO keywords as I can and throw them all on my web pages? Well, the answer to this question is a little more complicated than you might think.

Let’s discuss how to properly use SEO keywords on your web pages to optimize them for search engines and just how many SEO keywords you should be using.

What is SEO?

As we quickly went over, SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. Using SEO on your website is a method of including specialized keywords in your online content that will then appear in the algorithms of search engines. This method applies to search engines like Google as well as social media platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

Search engines need to find out a way to categorize your content that you are uploading onto the internet. By using keywords with high search volume that are relevant to your business and your brand, you are telling them what category that they should put your content in. Within that category, your website (which houses your products and services) will then have the opportunity to climb up the page ranks of search engine results for those keywords.

Why Using the Wrong Keywords is Harmful to Your Brand

Using SEO target keywords that encompass your brand image and the products or services that you are selling is the root of using SEO for your webpages. If you choose to ignore these keywords, you will be missing out on many prospective purchasers.

By using improper SEO keywords for your business, you are likely missing out on a lot of potential site visitors and customers that may be looking for your products. Ensuring that you are using the right SEO keywords is almost more important than knowing when and how often to use them on your webpages.

For example, if your website is for your business that sells shoes and you do not include the word ‘shoes’ anywhere in your website content, Google will not know where your website should rank in the lengthy list of websites that feature shoes on them. Instead, you may be improperly ranked along with other websites that address other accessory options for shoppers. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it will mean that you will be less likely to have web traffic that will convert into sales.

Now, let’s discuss another practice that is directly harmful to your business strategies.

What is Keyword Stuffing?

This used to be something that was fairly popular in the world of online marketing, but now is strongly discouraged by SEO and digital marketing experts alike. The practice of keyword stuffing involves using SEO target keywords as many times as humanly possible within an article.

Many people would even include irrelevant keywords in their content to try to cast a wider net. While including some adjacent keywords might be an agreeable practice, keyword stuffers are not doing this in good faith to drive customers to their sites. Instead, this strategy focuses more on just general web traffic.

However, Google and other search engines noticed this and realized that this practice does not exactly support the whole point of search engine optimization. The goal of search engine optimization is to point consumers in the direction of the content that they are looking for.

Why Should You Avoid Keyword Stuffing?

Since Google and other search engines have established that keyword stuffing is harmful to the user experience that people have on the internet, punitive measures have now been in place for keyword stuffers.

In fact, you even may need to be careful about the amount of times that you are using keywords in your own articles and web pages. Google does not reward keyword stuffing by allowing these websites to climb the ranks for keywords.

As well, people are less likely to trust your web pages if your keywords are used in a way that is not organic. They will find your content to be confusing and overloaded with buzzwords.

So, back to our original question, let’s discuss how many keywords are too many to have on a single webpage.

How Many SEO Keywords Should I Have?

This may come as a surprise to you, but you should try to narrow down your keyword to one singular target keyword. Using keywords sparingly on your website is a great way to avoid the pitfalls of keyword stuffing and to give you a break when it comes to online marketing.

The truth of the matter is, you will have many keywords that are applicable to your brand or business, but these keywords will come up on their own through normal use on your web pages. In this way, you will find yourself ranking for many keywords, not just the ones that you are targeting.

By doing this, you will improve your keyword rankings and improve the overall user experience on your website by improving the readability of your web pages.

Should I Use More Than One SEO Keyword for the Rest of My Website?

Your website may cover more than one topic and you may feel the need to assign a certain keyword to each web page. However, this strategy would have you making the same errors that we discussed in the paragraph above. We assure you that there really should only be one keyword that you should be targeting through SEO.

This is because your overall website should have a theme, message, or purpose. Even if your website is catering to a multitude of topics, it likely already has a focus. Let’s take an example into consideration.

News outlets cover an incredible amount of topics on a day to day basis. You may be thinking, how on earth do they narrow down all of that content into one, bite-sized and marketable word? They cover politics, weather, traffic reports, crime updates, and even celebrity gossip. However, at the end of the day what are they?

A news outlet.

News is the target keyword that a news website should be using for their content. The other terms that we mentioned here would be naturally occurring keywords that will still likely rank for them on search engines. However, instead of intentional SEO usage, this would be organic usage.

You can simplify your approach to SEO by staying focused and the rest will all fall into place. Trust that your website content appropriately approaches your topics, products, services, and sales pitches enough to rank on their own.

How Many Keywords Can I Have Overall?

You can have as many keywords as you want to, however, our advice is that you do not focus on them as much. If you are targeting too many keywords with your content, that is where you will fall into the harmful zone that we discussed above.

Your keywords can populate organically through normal use on your websites. For example, if you are selling hats and one of your most popular products is a straw hat, the SEO keyword “straw hat” may be one that you rank for.

Our advice to focus on less keywords is to take the less is more approach. Search engines and users alike can be confused by too many keywords.

Using our straw hat example, if you also try to use the keyword “cowboy boots” on this page because your brand also sells cowboy boots, this might be fine if you use it only once. However, for SEO you should be using this keyword more than once. Your user will quickly get confused why cowboy boots are being mentioned so many times on a web page that is supposed to be all about your hats! The same thing will happen with your Google search rankings.

Conclusion and Wrap Up

This article gave you a lot of information on the world of search engine optimization, keywords, and how to properly optimize your web pages. By focusing on just one target keyword when adding search engine optimization to your website, you will find yourself with less stress about SEO and a better user experience on your website.

The key to SEO is to allow your website to exist where it should exist on the hierarchy of keyword ranking. Overdoing SEO can degrade your website and negatively affect your website and potential for visitors and sales. Allow your content to speak for itself while focusing in on one target keyword that sums up your overall message and intent.