Before MWI started doing search engine optimization we had an informal partnership with an seo company and I got to sit in on one of their presentations to a mutual client. As keywords were discussed the client said they only had a few keywords they wanted to get ranked for, maybe 20 or 30. Our partner replied by saying that while the client thought they only wanted to be ranked for 20-30 keywords, in reality there might be thousands of keywords they should be ranked for, and identifying those keywords was one of the services that would be provided.

But who's right? Should companies focus on a limited number of keywords, or should they be focusing on a much larger number? The answer is both.

Generally speaking, the purpose of SEO is to make more money. SEO attempts to get a website ranked for those keywords that will make the website owner more money. The problem is that you can't be #1 for every keyword that might work to your benefit, and it is therefore necessary to find out which keywords are going to provide the best ROI. In order to find this out you can do research and see what competitors are doing, find out what keywords are being searched for the most, and make educated guesses, but ultimately you have to start doing SEO and find out by trial and error.

Initially you will focus on a lot of keywords, maybe hundreds or thousands, depending on what type of product or services you're hawking. Over time you will find out which keywords work the best and you will focus on those as the priority while focusing much less on the bulk of the keywords you came up with at first.

I would compare getting started to casting a net into the sea to catch fish. You throw the net out such that it spreads as far as possible, and then you start drawing it in and tightening it down. To get started, you take the research you've done and you optimize your site according to what you think will work best, and then you wait. You might have to wait a few days, a few weeks, or a few months before search engines will pick up your changes. It depends on a multitude of factors. Once you're able to measure the results then you will start to get a feel for which keywords are generating results and which aren't, and you might be surprised with what you find. Sometimes the keyword you think will bring you the most business doesn't perform well while another more obscure keyword results in more revenue than you expected from it. Then start experimenting. If a keyword seems to be showing promise, try getting ranked higher and higher for it and see if you get better and better results.

There are so many factors affecting the ranking of your website and it's various pages that it is difficult to be completely scientific about this process because you can't control for many of the variables. However, the more involved you are, the better you'll develop what I can only call a "feel" for it, and you're ability to predict results will increase with time and experience.

If you spend a reasonable amount of time optimizating a website every month you'll start getting a feel for what's working and what isn't within 2-3 months. Within one year you'll be an expert, although even as an expert you will continue learning, especially if your company sells a variety of products and services.

As your SEO strategy becomes more refined you will focus on smaller numbers of keywords, assuming your business model isn't changing. The specific number will vary based on the number of products/services you provide. A company like Amazon has their work cut out because they want to be #1 for hundreds of thousands if not millions of keywords, whereas my firm provides 30 individual services, maybe 40 if you push it, and we have some clients who only sell four or five products for which there exist a total of maybe 20-30 different keyword combinations that are in any way related.

Even though my firm has 30 different services, we focus on less than five of those. For example, even though we've held the #1 or #2 position for some time for "utah web development" in Google we don't get much business from it. On the other hand, having a #3 or #4 position for "utah web design" has brought in quite a bit of business, and so we focus on our efforts on keeping or improving our position for the latter and we virtually ignore the former, even though you would think that "utah web development" would be a great one for us. That was a lesson we could only have learned through trial and error, however. And as you optimize your own site or work with someone to optimize it you'll learn the same types of lessons that are specific to your company and industry.

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