Every page on your website is aiming at something. The question is how tightly you aim.
Over twenty years of doing this, I have found that most keyword strategies fall into one of two camps. I call them the scatter gun approach and the sniper approach. Neither is right or wrong. They solve different problems, and knowing which one a page needs is one of the things that separates a strategy from a guess.
The scatter gun approach
The scatter gun approach targets a cluster of closely related phrases on a single page, rather than one exact term.
Take “SEO” as an example. Instead of writing a page purely around that one word, a scatter gun page would also weave in variations such as:
- SEO services
- Search engine optimisation services
- SEO agency
- SEO consultant
- SEO company
- SEO services company
These phrases all sit close together in intent. Someone searching any of them is broadly after the same thing. By covering the cluster rather than a single term, the page has more doors for people to walk through, and Google has more signals to understand what the page is about.
This works well when:
- The core term has several common variations people search for
- You want one strong page rather than several thin ones competing with each other
- The audience is broad, and their phrasing is not consistent
The risk is dilution. Try to cover too many phrases that do not actually belong together, and the page ends up relevant to nothing in particular. The scatter gun only works when every phrase in the cluster genuinely serves the same searcher.
The sniper approach
The sniper approach does the opposite. It targets one phrase, and builds the entire page around it.
Using the same example, a sniper page would go all in on “SEO” alone. Every heading, every paragraph, every internal link is built to reinforce that single target.
This works well when:
- The term is high value and highly competitive, and needs a dedicated page to stand a chance of ranking
- The phrase has a distinct intent that would get lost if blended with others
- You are building a hub of pages, each one sniping a different term, rather than one page trying to do it all
The risk here is coverage. A sniper page will not pick up the near-miss searches that a scatter gun page would catch. If your audience is not consistent in how they phrase things, a pure sniper approach can leave traffic on the table.
Which one should you use?
Most sites need both, applied deliberately rather than by accident.
Broad, competitive head terms with genuine phrasing variation are usually better served by the scatter gun approach, wrapped into one strong, well-structured page. Specific, high-intent terms, particularly ones tied directly to a service or a conversion, tend to earn a sniper page of their own.
The mistake I see most often is neither of these. It is scatter gunning by accident, where a site ends up with five thin pages all loosely chasing the same cluster of phrases, none of them strong enough to rank, and all of them competing against each other. That is not a strategy. That is a lack of one.
Before you write a word of content, decide which approach the page is taking, and build it accordingly.
Graig Upton
Graig Upton is a UK SEO and Google Ads consultant with 23 years of hands-on digital marketing experience. Google certified in Ads, Analytics and Conversions, he has helped businesses ranging from local providers to national brands — including Nando's and Investors Chronicle — dominate search and scale their leads. Based in Preston, working with clients across the UK.