http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
When people talk about SEO and optimizing your site and social media, this should be your starting place.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is probably the tool that I use most often for:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO), to ensure that I am targeting popular, relevant phrases on specific pages of a website; and
- Market Research, to see what content is relevant to a specific target audience
The keyword tool provides average monthly numbers of searches for keyphrases and you can note if you want to see data for a particular country or language. As I am based in Ireland, this facility is what made me chose the Google Keyword Tool over other premium tools that didn’t have good international data.
It’s important to thoroughly research your target keyphrases when setting up a new website or generating a large amount of new content for a site or social media channel, but it is also good to do a quick search when you are doing an individual blog post to get ideas for Titles, page description and content.
The benefits of using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool
- It’s free.
- You don’t need to have an AdWords account, but you get access to more data if you do. You can sign up for an account with out running and paying for ads, just to do this research.
- You can get data specific to a country or language.
- You can download to further analyse the data.
- You are getting data from Google, to most widely used search engine, so it’s certain to be relevant for most audiences you’d be targeting.
My post on Keyword Research from 2009 will still have some very relevant information and tips.
Do you use any keyword analysis tools? Do you have any other tips on researching and using key phrases?
If you use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool please let me know how you get on or ask any questions you have here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook.
