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In researching SEO recently, I noticed that some experts are recommending the use of key phrases over keywords. We all know that keywords should appear in page titles, meta tags and page content, but how best to decide what these should be?

Having watched Eric Dytzel's '600 to 14 in 100 days' video, I had some questions about keywords. In the video, Eric mentions that he uses 8 Primary Search Terms. I wanted to know why he chose 8, and whether there's a recommended number - is it possible to have too few or too many?

I emailed Eric about this, and he replied:

'...there really isn’t a set number of search terms……. I used 8 because of the wide variety of possible searches in my particular case.'

So I decided on some phrases that I wanted to use as primary search terms. Incidentally, I too have 8 of them. I refer to them as phrases because they're all 2 or 3 words long.

In our case, if you type 'paritor' into google, we're top of the list - this is not difficult because we have an unusual brand name. However, nobody is going to be typing Paritor if they're looking for a particular type of product we sell because our brand is not strong enough yet; people will be more attracted by our products' functionality than by our name being on them. For the time being, there's no point in including the company name or our brand anywhere in my list of search phrases.

I know who our competitors are, and I want to be included in search results they appear in - preferably higher, but first things first... A few quick searches soon revealed what my primary search phrases ought to be. Now I need to include these in www.paritor.com within page titles, meta keyword tags, meta description tags, page content and internal links as much as I can.

There's an underlying theme to much of the expert advice that's available: consistency. Establish your search phrases or keywords, stick to them, and apply them wherever you can (without being too aggressive).

In summary, Key Phrases can be more powerful than Key Words, and I think 2 or 3 phrases per page should be enough. With too many phrases, the message can be blurry, unspecific and therefore compromised. With too few, potential visitor numbers can be reduced because their search terms are being overlooked. Check out the search phrases that return your competitors' websites by searching without using their brand names, and put your primary search phrases in your page titles where you can.