The Top 3 Tools for Keyword Research on the Fly

This is a quick Tidbit for SEO Keyword Research: Utilizing Keyword Search Tools on the Fly.

One thing we often do with clients is track terms in conversations about potential new directions and goals. In doing this we often use our knowledge of the system and the goals of the client to determine the best choice of terms. Sometimes we have to change prior selected terms as the data the trackers provides can change if the industry is a seasonal business, or if the needs of the client change, or if terms that we researched on one tracker do not produce the traffic expectations of the client.

All of these reasons can cause different terms to be the target.

Here’s a few research tools we like to use:

Wordtracker:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Overture (Yahoo- still works though Overture is Officially closed)

Google:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Let’s take a term like “Used Diamonds” which shows up as a poor term in Wordtracker with a count of 3 searches in the last 3 months and Overture with 151 times in the lat 30 days. Yet Google Shows us this may be a good term that people are paying for.

Keep in mind some data is for Adwords here and does NOT match Wordtracker or Overture data, so it leads me to believe that the terms are associated with more “long-tail” terms or what Google calls “Broad Match”, so a term like “Used Diamonds” is not searched well as an exact phrase, but is searched as a broad match term in Adwords, so it will calculate the search to users as “Used Diamonds” but it really is calculating the searches of terms like; words used to describe diamonds, buy used diamonds, used diamond rings, used diamond, what are diamonds used for, how are diamonds used. For some reason this term shows the same for Broad, Phrase and Exact matches, leading us to have to speculate the real value of the term.

A simple search on Google for the term shows No Natural sites with the exact phrase in the title on the first 2 pages, we do see “How are diamonds used” which has the phrase backward. This is obviously an issue with semantics and phrase matching, so the search engine believes it has found the best match.

Despite Adwords advertisers showing competition for bidding on this term, we have declined this as a major term for the client. Feeling that just the word diamonds being added to the phrase has produced too much broad data and the results of targeting this term would not be in the clients best interest.

So use caution with Google Adwords tools for keyword research as it reports under the “Broad Match” guise and not the accurate term searched. For some reason, Google hides that data.

Keep in mind, what happens in the world of Adwords does not exactly represent the world of Natural Search, as Adwords clicks make up less than 30% of all Google Searches.

When we research search terms, we look at the traffic and always compare results as Wordtracker, Overture and Google will produce different results but still give us a way to analyze terms that can benefit our research campaigns. It is the job of the consultant to define the right terms and weed out the weaker ones through all tools at his disposal.