Best SEO Keyword research Tool
The Google Keyword Tool is probably the most important tool when it comes to choosing the best keywords for your website. The simple fact that Google dominates the search market, (because 8/10 searches are done using Google), means that this tool is pretty accurate at showing you how a large majority of people are using search. Here’s how to use it to get your best keywords.
- Type in a keyword you think you want one page of your website to be about
- keep the “synonyms” box checked and click “Get Keyword Ideas”
- View your keyword results
The nice thing about this tool is that Google lists the search results for the specific keyword you entered at the top. Then underneath that, there is a list of many synonyms for that keyword. So if the keyword you typed in doesn’t have a lot of searches, you can see which ones do. For example, when doing this SEO tutorial, I first thought about using the keyword: “right keywords.” The Google Keyword Tool research showed these results (NOTE: these results will change over time as people’s search patterns vary):
Only 480 searches for right keywords in the global search results. Those results span over a year of Google search and it’s search network. That may not be bad, but it’s not great either. Now look at this:
Best keywords had 9900 monthly searches in May and 8100 monthly searches on average over the last year. It doesn’t take a mathematician to understand that these results are much better than my first pick, over 20x better. So in this instance, using the best keywords may be a good keyword choice.
Another Keyword Selection Tool
You may not want to rely completely on Google’s keyword selector tool, or maybe you just want to see how people are searching all over the web. In this case, you may want to look at another keyword selector tool called WordTracker. WordTracker compiles search results from Dogpile, which includes Yahoo, Bing, Google and other search engies. This gives you a different perspective on how people are using search across multiple search engines, and helps balance your research. You can use a limited version of WordTracker for free, or sign up for a seven day trial. After that, it’s $59/month. For most people, it’s not necessary, but this SEO tutorial wouldn’t be complete without mentioning it.
