Doing Keyword Research Using Google Tools

Introduction:

Keyword research is vital part of the digital marketing process – it enables a marketer to predict demand for different keywords, and to also gauge how easy or difficult it is going to be to rank for these keywords. With keyword research you can really tap into your target market, and begin to produce content, good and services that your customers really want to find. It’s the equivalent of market research in traditional marketing. It’s about fact finding.

Google Tools:

With Google being the gatekeeper to the internet, they really hold all the keys when it comes to keyword research since the keyword data everyone wants is theirs. There was a time when they were very reticent to give out their keyword data to marketers. This way, SEOs were reduced to using such fringe tools such as WordTracker, which used data feeds from other, smaller, much less relevant search engines, such as Dogpile.

Then a few years ago Google released 3 tools that have revolutionised Keyword Research in the SEO world: The Keyword Tool, Insights for Search and Google Suggest. These three have become of vital importance to the average SEO as they use real data from by far the biggest search engine out there – Google.

Google Keyword Tool:

This tool is pretty self explanatory – you just plug in a keyword that you think you might want to rank for, then the tool spits out a range of related suggestions, plus the number of searches for those suggestions. Alternatively, you can put in a URL and the tool will give you a list of suggestions based on the content on that page. Data also provided in the tool – the level of competition (low, medium or high). This indicates how hard it would be to rank for a given keyword. Tip no.1 – always select “exact match from the left hand side of the tool screen – this will mean you only have the exact number of searches shown for one keyword – not the number of searches from related searches also. Tip no.2 – always use the “local monthly searches” number rather than “Global monthly searches” – this means that you will be using the UK data, not .com.

Google Insights For Search:

This useful tool allows you to see the interest in a term or terms over a period of time, in a graph. The graph then shows where major stories in the news were visible at various times, so you can try to gauge what causes the fluctuations in the graph.

Google Insights for search also gives more info – it shows the overall worldwide interest, as shown on a colour map. From this you can see the regional interest in a search term globally.

The main benefit of Google Insights for Search For keyword research is that it provides the ability to see how search terms are rising or falling in popularity over time. This allows you to make better decisions regarding keyword selection and targeting.

Google Suggest:

Using Google suggest for keyword research is just about using common sense – to do it, just start typing the first few letters of your keyword(S) in a Google search bar, and see what comes up first. The terms that are at the top of the suggest screen are going to be the more popular ones, according to Google. Using Google suggest in this way allows SEOs to widen their target keyword net, for free!!

Author Bio: 

Steppes Travel specialise in Galapagos Holidays. Visit Steppes for the best in tailor made and luxury holidays.

Posted in: Google,Guest Post,SEO