If you plan on your website relying on search engine traffic or you just want to get a nice chunk of ‘free’ visitors, it’s a good idea to know what you are up against. One aspect of SEO is keyword research. Keyword research is defined as finding keywords to use on your website to gain search engine rankings.
Luckily, there are several ways to go about finding the right keywords. Although each way may give different keywords, it’s a great way to find ideas for other articles.
Keyword Research Tools
- Google Sets
- Type in a few words, then Google finishes the set. If you have a few keywords already, type them in and it spits out others related to it.
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool
- Helps you find both expensive keywords, local keywords and some long-tail keywords. It is a great tool that is highly under-utilized.
- WordTracker / SEOTools from SEOBook
- Gives a general idea of what is being searched for and the frequency they are searched. SEOBook’s SEOTools is similar to WordTracker, with a few tweaks here and there, although they aren’t necessarily visible.
- Overture Keyword Tool
- Gives a rough estimate of the amount of times a word is searched for within a random month. You can find quality general terms using Overture, but don’t try to look for anything holiday or trends because the numbers will be way off.
- NicheBot
- Uses several different tools, including WordTracker and Overture.
- Google (the ~ search)
- Use tilde (~) before a word and Google will find synonyms for it within the search results. It is a great way to find related keywords that the other tools might have overlooked.
- Your own stats
- Find what others are searching for and how they are reaching your site. You can easily find words that you can improve upon. The best part about this is the more pages you have, the more keywords you will be able to see (if you can rank).
- Google Trends
- Compare two or more keywords to find what is most searched for throughout the past few years and related news articles. This is a great way to find what users are searching for and what keywords to use in titles, headers, etc.
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Written: Mar 13, 2008Tags: finding keywords, keywords, search engine optimization, sem, seo
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Careful with wordtracker. Lately I’m not satisfied with their services any more. Besides being quite expensive ($350 a year), it’s full with irrelevant and spammy search queries. A new comer could be easily fooled by them, when searching for good KEI combinations
Yeah, I agree about Wordtracker. Although for different reasons, I have had adequate luck with the one of the alternatives, which suit my purpose just fine. But then Im not anal about it, and nothing wrong in being anal either.
But going to give the other’s a try on a new site I am putting together. It’s a business I have no experience of, so having to rely on the clients ideas of what are good keywords then finding alternatives using the above services.
Sometime I think it’s easier to find keywords for a profession or business you don’t know c
because you are not tied in with the same old familiar terms that you are convinced are what everyone else must use. YOu are having to start from scratch, almost like someone who is going to be searching for that new site… If that makes sense. Doing your own keywords I feel can be, in some cases, counerproductive if you don’t allow yourself to think outside the box.
Hence why these services are so valuable.
Have I just stated the obvious here?