Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a terribly frustrating experience, especially for the hobbyist. The web is littered with systems, tools and so-called cheats all angling for the right to move your site to the top of the search results - for a fee, of course. Separating the quality advice from the rubbish is a tall order for the inexperienced and intermediate webmaster alike, and going it on your own seems an even more daunting prospect.
That's where the Google AdWords Keyword tool comes in. It won't handle your SEO for you, but it will give you an excellent idea of which keywords are worth your time and which can be resigned to the SEO dust heap. The tool is free, and available to all users, regardless of whether or not you have a Google AdWords account.
You get a sense immediately of how powerful a tool this is. Drawing on the massive search data set of Google, the tool gives you a rough monthly estimate of the search traffic for various terms, and provides you with a list of potential terms based either on your website or on any keywords you're already considering. Now instead of wondering whether your flower shop should focus on "fresh flowers delivered overnight" or "overnight delivery fresh flowers", you can know - or at least make a more educated decision - based on the data Google provides.
However (it seems like there's always a 'however' in these articles, doesn't it?), the Google Keyword tool (let's just call it GK for short) is saddled with one massive caveat for those who would use it for SEO. It's not intended for that audience - rather, it's intended for people who are running advertising campaigns with Google. That might seem like a small distinction, but it's more significant than you might think, and it leads to my first rule of using GK for SEO:
Rule One: Always Use Exact, Not Broad, to Filter Your Results
Remember, GK was made for advertisers, not webmasters. In Google AdWords speak, 'broad' means searches that come close to a particular word or phrase. 'Exact' means... well, exactly that.
Let's go back to our flower shop example. You're curious about the search volume for "mother's day flowers", so you enter that term into GK. If you have 'broad' selected as your filter (it's the default setting on GK), GK will return a search volume number for "mother's day flowers" that includes the traffic for that term and a host of related terms. Why? Because GK is attempting to tell an advertiser about how many impressions their ad would receive if they targeted that keyword - not how many times that specific term is searched for.
That's interesting data for advertisers, but useless to you as a webmaster. Make sure your searches are filtered by 'exact' match (the setting is located toward the bottom of the left column) and you'll get accurate search data for your specific terms.
Rule Two: Confirm Competition With Common Sense
Here's another quirk of GK that you can chalk up to its advertiser-centric nature. That little bar that displays estimated competition for a keyword looks like a handy tool, and it is. Trouble is, that bar reflects competition among advertisers to purchase said keyword, and not always the difficulty of ranking well for that keyword. While the two often are correlated, it's far from a slam dunk that they will be, so a little cross-checking is in order.
Luckily, it's a simple enough task. Search for the keyword (just click the icon next to the term and Google will launch the search for you) and scroll through the first page or two of results. Evaluate the quality of the quality of the pages and how focused they seem to be on the keyword in question. The junkier the pages and the lower the apparent focus, the more conquerable the keyword.
Rule Three: Remember What Data Google Doesn't Give You
It's very easy to get caught up in the mountain of data provided by GK, but it's almost as important to remember what data GK doesn't provide. This is a lesson I've learned the hard way - I can't count the number of times I've been scouring the data from GK and found what looked to be a juicy keyword - high volume, low competition. Recently, I was researching some poker-related keywords and noticed several seemingly overlooked keywords in the free poker money genre. I immediately jotted them down and began drafting a plan of attack in my mind.
Only a day or two (and several hours of work) later did I stop to think about the inherent quality of the keywords. Suddenly I asked myself all of the questions I should have asked in the first place. What kind of traffic will this keyword bring? What type of conversion percentage is that traffic likely to produce? What's the likely value of those conversions?
Learn from my mistake - remember that the data is only one tool in your arsenal, and that your common sense and logic should always be a preset, active filter when you're evaluating possible keywords.
Visit the Google Keyword Tool
Chris is a writer for various sites, including PartTimePoker.com, an online poker magazine with strategy, humor, news, full tilt rakeback, interviews and a Rush Poker Guide
That's where the Google AdWords Keyword tool comes in. It won't handle your SEO for you, but it will give you an excellent idea of which keywords are worth your time and which can be resigned to the SEO dust heap. The tool is free, and available to all users, regardless of whether or not you have a Google AdWords account.
You get a sense immediately of how powerful a tool this is. Drawing on the massive search data set of Google, the tool gives you a rough monthly estimate of the search traffic for various terms, and provides you with a list of potential terms based either on your website or on any keywords you're already considering. Now instead of wondering whether your flower shop should focus on "fresh flowers delivered overnight" or "overnight delivery fresh flowers", you can know - or at least make a more educated decision - based on the data Google provides.
However (it seems like there's always a 'however' in these articles, doesn't it?), the Google Keyword tool (let's just call it GK for short) is saddled with one massive caveat for those who would use it for SEO. It's not intended for that audience - rather, it's intended for people who are running advertising campaigns with Google. That might seem like a small distinction, but it's more significant than you might think, and it leads to my first rule of using GK for SEO:
Rule One: Always Use Exact, Not Broad, to Filter Your Results
Remember, GK was made for advertisers, not webmasters. In Google AdWords speak, 'broad' means searches that come close to a particular word or phrase. 'Exact' means... well, exactly that.
Let's go back to our flower shop example. You're curious about the search volume for "mother's day flowers", so you enter that term into GK. If you have 'broad' selected as your filter (it's the default setting on GK), GK will return a search volume number for "mother's day flowers" that includes the traffic for that term and a host of related terms. Why? Because GK is attempting to tell an advertiser about how many impressions their ad would receive if they targeted that keyword - not how many times that specific term is searched for.
That's interesting data for advertisers, but useless to you as a webmaster. Make sure your searches are filtered by 'exact' match (the setting is located toward the bottom of the left column) and you'll get accurate search data for your specific terms.
Rule Two: Confirm Competition With Common Sense
Here's another quirk of GK that you can chalk up to its advertiser-centric nature. That little bar that displays estimated competition for a keyword looks like a handy tool, and it is. Trouble is, that bar reflects competition among advertisers to purchase said keyword, and not always the difficulty of ranking well for that keyword. While the two often are correlated, it's far from a slam dunk that they will be, so a little cross-checking is in order.
Luckily, it's a simple enough task. Search for the keyword (just click the icon next to the term and Google will launch the search for you) and scroll through the first page or two of results. Evaluate the quality of the quality of the pages and how focused they seem to be on the keyword in question. The junkier the pages and the lower the apparent focus, the more conquerable the keyword.
Rule Three: Remember What Data Google Doesn't Give You
It's very easy to get caught up in the mountain of data provided by GK, but it's almost as important to remember what data GK doesn't provide. This is a lesson I've learned the hard way - I can't count the number of times I've been scouring the data from GK and found what looked to be a juicy keyword - high volume, low competition. Recently, I was researching some poker-related keywords and noticed several seemingly overlooked keywords in the free poker money genre. I immediately jotted them down and began drafting a plan of attack in my mind.
Only a day or two (and several hours of work) later did I stop to think about the inherent quality of the keywords. Suddenly I asked myself all of the questions I should have asked in the first place. What kind of traffic will this keyword bring? What type of conversion percentage is that traffic likely to produce? What's the likely value of those conversions?
Learn from my mistake - remember that the data is only one tool in your arsenal, and that your common sense and logic should always be a preset, active filter when you're evaluating possible keywords.
Visit the Google Keyword Tool
Chris is a writer for various sites, including PartTimePoker.com, an online poker magazine with strategy, humor, news, full tilt rakeback, interviews and a Rush Poker Guide
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