Using Keyword Suggestion Tools To Refine Search Terms -
A Beginners Guide by Brian Cotsen

In part 3, 'How To Choose The Best Keywords & Search Terms' we saw how to take your initial Keyword & search term list, first developed from your 'seed' list, and turn it into a more useful search term list of keywords & phrases that your target market are likely to use.

This can be a time consuming and slightly hit and miss process when done by hand so thankfully there are tools on the internet that can speed up the process and give you greater accuracy to choose actual search terms that your clients are using to find websites and services like yours.

In part 4 we look at some of the best free and paid for keyword search tools.

 

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Finding the words & search terms your target market use

Although we think that we know what words our target market use to look for our website and services, we often miss many that they are actually using.

Wouldn't it be great if we could look over the shoulders of our target market as they type the search term into the search box?

Well you can!

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a powerful website tool that helps you find keywords & key phrases that your customers are actually using, now, to find websites.

 

Wordtracker do this by analysing millions of searches that are made on the internet and then giving you the following information:

• How often those search terms are used each month
• Similar search terms used
• Whether other websites are using those search terms for their keywords
• Even common misspellings and typos that your target market use

 

All this information can help you find really powerful lists of keywords that you not only know your target market use

But also

You can find keywords & key phrases that have less competition from other websites, helping you to be top of the search results in the search engines.

• Wordtracker is easy to use and offers great tutorials.
• You can pay for just a day, a week, a month or a year.
• You can try it for free.

 

I highly recommend that you take a look at Wordtracker.com to start building your powerful keyword, key phrase and search term list.

And get The Free Email Course worth $29.00

Adwords Keyword Tool

Adwords, Googles Pay-Per-Click advertising system has a very powerful keyword suggestion tool that is complete free to use.

All you need to do is navigate to Googles website and visit the keyword suggestion tool page

Like Wordtracker Google give you useful information :

• Popular search terms.
• The competition targeting those search terms.
• The sort of volume that those search terms are used in the month.

 

The information is useful but there are a number of limitations:

• The information is only based on searches made using Googles search box.
• There are no figures given so you don't know if a term is searched once in a month or 1000 times a month.
• The suggestion options are limited.

But considering that Google are the most important search engine and that they analyse data very efficiently plus it's free, I would definitely try using this tool to generate some valuable search terms for your SEM campaign.

Take a look at Googles Keyword Suggestion Tool

 

Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool

Yahoo, Americas favoured website, offers their own version of a keyword suggestion tool. Formerly known as Overture, Yahoo offer the Keyword Selector Tool.

Similar to Googles Keyword Suggestion tool, Yahoo give you:

• Figures for searches carried out in a month
• Suggestions for other similar search terms
• Is free

However like Google, Yahoo's Selector tool:

• Results limited to Yahoo search data.
• Offers information from months ago and not what is being searched for now.
• Is often cranky and a bit unreliable in operation.
• Doesn't give information on competitors use of the keyword.

 

But again it is free and certainly worth checking out.

To conclude

This has been a brief outline on why and how to choose effective and powerful keywords for your website and SEM campaign.

Keywords are the foundations of everything you do on your website:

• Building Search Engine Friendly sites.
• Developing high performing Pay Per Click Advertising campaign.
• Creating powerful and convincing content for your visitors.
• Converting visitors into action takers.

Keywords can help you to create a successful enterprise on line.

There are many processes in developing your website.

Some can be fitted in 'as and when' or done in a different order without having a major impact on the success of your website and online business.

However choosing keywords MUST happen at the beginning.

I recommend that you spend more time on this element of research than on any other in the development of your website.

I also recommend that you spend some money on building your keyword list whether it's using a paid for search tool like Wordtracker or some of the great tools & ebooks out there like

KeyWord Discovery

 

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