Too many key words, too little pages

Much of what I've seen taking place lately in the area of search marketing is the amount of key words and key phrases being used on home pages relative to other pages on the site. All who are involved in search engine marketing have been guilty of this practice at one time or another. Many sites fall into the habit of refining key words on their home page to gain SERP placement on Google, Yahoo or MSN.

While home pages are very effective in getting listed on most major search engines, a beginner or intermediate SEO would look at the home page as the primary way to get placement. The down side to this approach is flexibility and visibility. Why have one "super performing" search page when you can have tens or even hundreds of well placed pages that can collectively out-perform that "super page"? By developing focused content for other areas of your web site, you can effectively gain more traffic than could previously be attained.