Focusing on particular keywords and key phrases is short-sighted and counterproductive. Put too much emphasis on one thing and something else is bound to give – in this instance, it will be your search engine rankings for related phrases.

Managed SEO campaigns can often be altogether too clinical. The quest for measurable results can lead to a situation where the SEO professional is chasing those targets at the expense of doing what is really needed, which is optimising the website so that it receives a lot of traffic from the search engines.

Targeting key phrases may seem like it could only ever be a good thing, but ultimately positive results can prove deceptive. A site that ranks well for four or five key phrases may seem strong, but if that is all the traffic that it is receiving, it is not actually well optimised.

If your site ranks well for the terms you are targeting, you might ask ‘why do I need more links?’ The answer is that you could be receiving visitors via a whole host of other search terms that are equally relevant to what you do.

As a test, write a blog post on your site offering some useful information about something related to what you do. A few days later, does it appear high up in search results for any credible search phrases? If not, your site probably needs more links.