• How Large Is Your Site?

The size of your website as a whole plays a large factor in the decision on which keywords to target and how many to target. A good ratio of keywords to pages is: for every one page, target two keywords.

• How Broad is Your Market?

The broadness of your market can play a role in how many keywords that you target. If your target audience is "Plumbing Services", then this should be the only keyword that you target. Throughout the website you should use this keyword, which will in turn make the website stronger for that particular keyword phrase.

• How Competitive is Your Market?

When your main target keyword is super-competitive, it can have a direct effect on the number of keywords that you target. For a small to medium size site that is attempting to target a super-competitive keyword, the main focus of the site should be directed on this main keyword. This will direct the efforts of the sub-pages to be strength builders of the home-page, which will in turn build the SEO strength of your website for that particular keyword.

• How Do I Decide Which Ones To Drop?

Whether a website has 100 pages or 20 pages, keywords should be variations of the keywords that are used on the main home page. The Home (index) page should contain general or broad keyword terms. The keywords in the sub-topics and pages to follow should be variations of that general keyword that is more specific and defined.

• Why Is This So Important?

The process of choosing the right keyword combinations is vital to a website from multiple aspects. If you target the wrong keyword combinations you risk being penalized by the search engines, and reaching the wrong audience. One more point, the search engines have picked up on the trend that some practice of including keywords in the Meta keyword section that are not in the content, and have begun to either penalize or discard that particular keyword.