In the past, you needed a landing page for every exact term, and it was crucial to have a specific landing page for each word combination if you wanted maximum impact. That’s becoming less and less important.
The earlier common recommendation for keyword landing pages required you to be very precise, creating a dedicated landing page for each phrase or word. It worked best if “Blue boats” was on one page and “Boats blue” on another. That’s no longer the case. Today, those examples perform better on a single page – and this trend goes even further.
There are still reasons to create specific landing pages for certain words or clusters of words, but you don’t need to be nearly as strict as before. Much suggests that this will become even more true in the future. It may very well be that “Cheap boats,” “Blue boats,” and “Boats at sunset” should all be targeted on the same landing page.
How to handle this?
The way forward is not to obsess over individual keywords but instead to work with your entire site. When you optimize a specific page, of course you should keep SEO in mind, but your overall strategy shouldn’t be based on creating one page per keyword. Instead of chasing a top 3 spot for just one search term, aim to rank for many terms, focusing on relevance and profitability.
When it comes to link building, this is especially clear. Forcing links to point to a single page with an exact-match anchor text is no longer the right approach. Build your site’s overall authority and let the internal linking structure guide which pages rank. It’s safer, more effective, and more profitable. Plus, you don’t need to be obsessively precise — it’s better SEO if links point to the most relevant page naturally, rather than only to the one you want to rank.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.