How to structure site around your keywords

Hi to everyone,
I am completely new to SEO but looking for to getting a handle on it. I recently bought some keyword soft ware which also came with heaps of video tutorials.
Basically the trainer is saying when you find your product or niche to sell- you should then concentrate on optimising for only 8 to 10 keywords. The videos go on to explain and show link building, and how you should get your keyword into the anchor text of the link that points back to your site. He used examples in the videos and in this case, it was search engine optimisation. The link then points back to his site which, of course is optimised for 'search engine optimisation' and it was the index page.
What I am wondering is how can you optimise the page for 8 - 10 keywords. Do / can you have 8-10 index pages for the same site, with each page optimised for each keyword?
I am very confused on how to structure a site to optimise for 8-10 keywords. Could someone explain this to me or draw a diagram?
Any help greatly appreciated.
Crystal

firs of all welcome to SEO Chat...

here are my 2 cents... im sure youll end up with about $500 worth by time you are done here...

never again buy SEO keyword software. you can find all you need to find here in seo chat. i have been here for 2 years and have found everything i need.

dont focus one page on 8-10 keywords. focus your site on your customers and what they can find from your site. optimize your site for your customers first, then implement SEO techniques.

you can have an index.html page for every page...just make a directory for each subject... i.e.

site.com/red-widgets/index.html
site.com/blue-widgets-v2/index.html
site.com/hot-pink-widgets/index.html

i can give you some basics that i ALWAYS IMPLEMENT...

unique title tags on every page - toss in a keyword or two (if necessary) if not, dont worry.

use header <h1> tags as necessary as well as <h2> dont over use them.

use alt="" tags on every image. and optimize every image to the smallest file size while still keeping decent resolution.

use clean code. my preference is CSS over tables.

if you focus too much on trying to optimize a single page for 8-10 keywords for search engines, you are going to lose your customers... they dont read your page content like search engines do.

again, just my 2 cents.

Hello Tony
Thanks for your quick reply. I agree that trying to optimise one
page for 8-10 keywords is not a good thing. I am sorry, but I am having a 'blonde moment' It is probably going to be one of those things that I have to hear 50 different times, 50 different ways before the penny drops and I finally understand this.
Let's say I want to build a site on lakes resorts and my site name is xxx.lakeresorts.com. So I go and build a 100 page site
all themed around lake resorts.

I then find 8 keywords with high search volume, e.g.: lake resorts, lake resort, family lake resort, summer resort, family vacations, fishing resorts, cheap resorts, and summer family resort.

Would I then go and make an index page for each of those keywords, and then point that index page to the rest of the 100 pages in my site xxx.lakesresorts.com, that is themed around lake resorts and family vacations?
Or do I make a complete and seperate site of say, 20-30 pages for each keyword.

I understand what you were saying in your last post, but because you were talking about red widgets, blue widgets, hot pink widgets, I assume in that case the customer was looking for either a blue, red, or pink widget, whereas my keywords basically mean the same thing- somewhere to go on vacation-, but just different ways of saying that same thing?

I'm getting to the point where I don't even know what I'm trying to ask..LOL!

if these are your KW's: lake resorts, lake resort, family lake resort, summer resort, family vacations, fishing resorts, cheap resorts, and summer family resort.


my opinion, i would go with:

***.lakeresorts.com/family-lake-resort/
***.lakeresorts.com/summer-resort/
***.lakeresorts.com/fishing-resort/

have an index page for each.

then create links to the various pages in those directories.
i.e.
***.lakeresorts.com/family-lake-resort/lake-tahoe-resort.html
***.lakeresorts.com/family-lake-resort/lake-num-num-resort.html
***.lakeresorts.com/summer-resort/hot-times-resort.html

etc...etc..

then create the content for each of those pages and drop some keywords and key phrases in there.

my 2 cents.

The approach I've always taken is writing out your content as clearly and descriptively as possible. Pretend you're writing to a prospective client that has no knowledge about the products/services you're offering. The keywords will naturally come out in your content and will also help your visitors a ton.

You need only one index page, but then it should split to categories as tonynoriega has suggested with each own index page and set of particular pages. Actually, 8-10 keywords per page is a bit too much. I would say 2-3 for a product page, 4-5 for category index pages and 5-6 for the main index. Maybe even less. Depends.

Thank you Tony and all others who took the time to answer my post.
This forum is sooo great. I asked the same question on the forum that came with the software I wasted my money on, and twoo weeks later it is still unanswered, and the forum help was part of the purchase price!!!
Never mind, I have learnt so much here already, and I know I will learn lots more.
Thanks again.
Crystal

P.S 420 is the way to go Tony!

good luck....

and remember dont get stuck on trying to completly and utterly design your site for search engines and keywords, and tags, and such...

your viewers come first. make a clean layout, nice design, easy readability, complimentary images and your viewers will be more incline to rent a resort than a search engine crawler ever will.

p.s.s. nothing better than designing mock up site in photoshop after a good toke.

Im confused over the bit about the index page. You say just use the one, then use categories with index pages. Can you re-explain that bit again?