Using Google as a Free Keyword Research Tool

In the internet marketing world nowadays finding the right keywords - well searched but not too competitive - can seem a bit like prospecting for gold! As any of the top marketers online will tell you, deciding on the keywords you wish to use for your website (or the keywords for your AC article to promote) is a an absolutely crucial step in your campaign. If you choose keywords which are heavily searched on the web but are ultra competitive with millions of websites all competing for the same phrases, then the likelihood is you will receive no traffic as you will not be able to rank for those words on the search engines. However, if you choose an uncompetitive word that is rarely searched for online but has little competition, you probably will be able to get your site into the top positions on the search engines for those terms, but as nobody is actually searching for those keywords or phrases, the end result will be the same - no traffic or pageviews!
There are a multitude of tools available for webmasters, which can give information on keywords and more importantly keyphrases. This information normally includes estimates on number of searches per month or year along with the "competition" (the total number of other websites competing for that search term). So when deciding on the keyphrases to use in your marketing campaign, these free sources are a good first port of call to create a shortlist of possible terms. Good free keyword resources include the overture keyword suggestion tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) and the google sandbox tool (recently renamed as the "google keyword tool external" at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). There is also a free downloadable tool you can use from your windows desktop called Goodkeywords which can be downloaded for free at http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/gkw/ and will run in both XP and Vista.

The tools above all work in a similar fashion, you simply enter your main search term or phrase and they will return potentially hundreds of similar words or phrases along with some useful information about them and, as previously stated, are useful for creating a shortlist or even brainstorming some keyword ideas. However all of the free tools are somewhat "skewed" due to the number of webmasters using them heavily on a daily basis ( sometimes on an automated basis carrying out hundreds/ thousands of queries a day in particular niches).

So, we now have our shortlist, how do we refine it further? Well, when it comes to search engines, its Google most webmasters are really interested in as Google can provide more free search engine traffic (sometimes referred to as "organic traffic") than all the other search engines and directories put together. So if Google has more traffic/searches than the other engines it follows that it also must have more information on those searches than any other source. OK, so we want to rank on Google for good search keywords and Google has more information on those keywords than anyone else, if only we could simply ask Google which terms are searched more often and how "difficult" they are in terms of competition - how cool would that be?

Well, as you probably gathered from the title of this article, you can! This is a simple - and therefore often overlooked - facility provided by Google, and like other SEO or marketing techniques there are a number of different ways to query Google for the information you desire. My personal favorite is a two prong approach. Firstly use Google to provide a list of heavily searched key phrases by going to the external keyword tool as above. Enter a key phrase or even an existing website and this tool will provide a list of keywords/phrases along with fairly accurate estimate of traffic ( much more accurate than any of the free tools mentioned). Now take this list of popular keywords use Google advanced search operators to find out just how competitive they really are, simply cut and paste the following into Google search ( without brackets) [intitle:"key word phrase" +inanchor:"key word phrase" +intext:"key word phrase"] obviously replacing "key word phrase" with your own keywords or phrases. This gives a very accurate picture of the competition as this search is returning results only for those sites that have the exact phrase in the html title of the page, the exact phrase in the body text of the page and the exact phrase in anchor text links pointing back at the page. In other words this search will tell you how many other pages are already "optimized" for the keyword/phrase in Google. For example at the time of writing this article a search on Google for the phrase "home mortgage loans" (in quotes to match exact phrase) returned 1,170,000 results! This would seem to be an impossible task, how can we compete with over a million websites? However, using advanced search as above we find that there are only 49,100 results returned, still a competitive key phrase for sure but definitely achievable with some hard work. Although, generally you really should be looking for words or phrases that return less than 1000 on this advanced search to ensure success. Check it out now and find all the keyword you need for Free!