The free keyword tool provides keyword ideas based on actual Google search queries. It allows you to build extensive, relevant keyword lists by simply entering either a word or a phrase or a URL of a website/page in the interface. For example, if you put “office supplies” in the word or phrase text box (see the below screenshot), the tool returns the following list of keywords based on relevance (relevance is the default option). In addition to relevance, you can sort keywords by search volume (popularity), competition and CPC (cost per click) and filter out any irrelevant keyword categories.
In this example, "reliable office supplies" is almost as popular as "cheap or discount office supplies". So incorporating "reliable office supplies" into your content and your headline can be an effective way to drive qualified traffic.
The tool is built as part of the Google Adwords platform to support paid search marketing specialists; however, interactive copywriters, SEO strategists, Public Relations specialists and even traditional copywriters can greatly benefit from it as well.
Regardless of your task (e.g, building a keyword list for your PPC campaign, writing content for a web page, putting a press release together), start your project by performing keyword research. Use this tool is to determine what keywords and exact phrases people use when they look for information on a certain product or topic. And determine what variations of keywords are popular and relevant that can be used throughout your content, headline and meta tags. Remember optimizing your content with the most popular keyword(s) might not always be the best solution. It is harder for you to build visibility in search engines with the most popular keywords since it is difficult to compete with websites that already have achieved authority for those keywords. So do take time to analyze long tail keywords (keywords that are niche and less competitive).
Role | Use case | Benefits |
SEO specialist | Use targeted keywords in meta tags including page title, description and keywords tags and make your content keyword-rich by including selected keywords throughout your content For YouTube videos, use the YouTube keyword tool to determine the most popular video queries. Incorporate targeted keywords in the title of your video, your video tags and description | Higher visibility on Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search Higher visibility on YouTube.com |
PR specialist | Place targeted keywords into your headlines and throughout your press releases | Higher visibility on Google and other news search sites |
Creative Copywriter | If you are working on an ad or a direct mail piece, use this tool to understand search patterns around a topic and utilize popular keywords in your ad copy so that your ad may resonate with consumers better | Ads that are working harder to generate responses |
Small business owner with Google Places Profile | Make your categories and your business description keyword-rich by including targeted, popular keywords For more details, see my post about Google Places | Higher visibility on local search results |
PPC specialist | Use this tool to generate keyword ideas, review traffic estimations, determine budget/CPC, understand competition and find long-tail keywords and potential negative keywords | More efficient paid search campaigns by including more targeted keywords and excluding irrelevant keywords |
You can access the tool from https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. By performing keyword research and optimizing your content/video or building your paid search campaign accordingly, you can gain a competitive advantage and increase your search visibility, which in turn will increase your brand awareness and deliver more qualified leads.
Great tool and great article. How does this stack up against some of the "paid for" tools like Keyword Elite and such?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Sherman. You might want to consider paid keyword tools for large, complex PPC campaigns. I am not familiar with Keyword Elite but I used Wordtracker in the past. They do a good job including long tail keywords, misspellings, pluralization and other word forms that you might not easily find with Google keyword tool. Also, you can organize/group your keywords while you are in the tool conducting your keyword research, which might save you a lot of time.
ReplyDeleteIf you are considering a paid tool, my recommendation would be to first get familiar with Google's keyword tool so you can have a good understanding of what you can get free and what other features/functionalities you wish to have. And then sign up for free-trials from one or two paid-keyword tools (most of them offer free trials for a week or so) to see whether any of the paid tools deliver what you are looking for.
It is truly a nice and useful piece of information. I am satisfied that you simply shared this useful info with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed. You're truly well informed and very intelligent. You wrote something that people could understand and made the subject intriguing for everyone. I'm saving this for future use.
ReplyDelete