The Google Adwords Keyword Tool (sometimes referred to as the Adwords External Keyword Tool) is perhaps the most popular free keyword research tool online. Another option you might consider is a keyword research software like IMeye. Though the was originally designed for Adwords pay-per-click advertisers, it is not only PPC advertisers who can benefit from this tool. A wide range of Internet marketers and publishers use this external keyword tool. Among these online marketers are content publishers, niche marketers, and SEO specialists.
If you’re new to this keyword research tool, you’re in for a treat. I’ve been using this tool for years, for various market research purposes, and have learned some great tips that can really help you. Market (and niche) research is, without a doubt, one of the critically most important activities you’ll undertake.
Having a solid understanding of exactly how to maximize the use of this simple (but amazingly deep) tool will help you tremendously with your keyword research. The promise of this 2-part article is that by the time you’re done reading it, you’ll know enough about the tool to get keyword research results you can feel confident in. Not only will this 2-part feature function as a review (highlights of it’s key features), it’ll also serve as a how-to introduction to the Adwords Keyword Tool.
Since you’re reading this 2-part article, chances are you’re involved in some sort of e-commerce or content publishing. You might be a brick-and-mortar business that aims to do local advertising, a very high-end software firm that offers a suite of digital products, or anything in between. However, to really make these 2 articles appeal to as many people as possible, we’ve identified 4 groups of people who are most likely to be involved with this tool:
1.Adwords marketers
2.Niche marketers
3.Content publishers, and
4.SEO specialists
Of course, there’s bound to be overlap among these groups, and if you’re a one-person show, you’ll find that you have to play all 4 of these roles. That’s fine. The reason why we’ve identified 4 groups of people is because, while preparing these 2 articles, we saw that there are specific features of the Google Adwords keyword research tool that apply differently to each of these 4. Where appropriate, we’ll try to describe how you can best benefit from each of the tool’s features we’ll list below.
Overview of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
One note to keep in mind is that this tool (and keyword research in general), isn’t an exact science. That is, don’t take the numbers it returns you as set-in-stone figures, but rather, as good general estimates to go by.
The way the Adwords external keyword research tool works is simple. There are a few ways to use it (which we’ll get into below), but the main way involves a simple 7-step process:
1.Open up the tool in your web browser
2.Make sure your results are tailored to the specific language and country you want
3.Enter one or more keywords, or keyword phrases into the text box. One word (or phrase) per line. (If you happen to have phrases that are longer than one line, that’s fine. The tool separates different phrases with line/Enter breaks, so just make sure you tap the Enter or Return key after each phrase.)
4.Keep the “use synonyms” box checked (it is by default)
5.Enter the captcha code
6.Click “Get keyword ideas”
7.Wait for Google to analyze, and then, work with the data it presents you.
Using Adwords offers specific advantages and benefits to different people:
If you’re an Adwords advertiser, you can discover how many times particular keyword phrases are typed into Google’s search network each month.
If you’re a content publisher, your discovery of synonyms and keywords that are related to your subject can allow you to cover more areas of what you write about. You can also create more targeted, relevant content.
If you’re an Adsense publisher, you can discover the higher-paying keywords in your market, and create content around those keywords.
For niche marketers, the keyword tool can be a great help at determining whether a possible niche market is worth going into.
For SEO specialists, you can use the Adwords tool in conjunction with other keyword research tools to assess SEO competition and create content and SEO campaigns around keyword-relevant content. (It’s noteworthy to know that there are many keyword tools that use the Google API. That means that with the Adwords tool, you’re really working with one of the key sources of keyword research data.)
Alright, having said that, let’s dive in. If there’s one major concept that you need to understand, it’s…
Broad, Phrase, Exact, and Negative Match-Types:
Understand this, and you’ll have a solid idea of what it takes to do excellent keyword research…
Let’s say that you’re a business (or at least have a website) that offers garden furniture. So, you use the 7-step process above to do keyword research on the phrase, garden furniture.
You see on the Adwords Tool’s results page that there were 4,090,000 for the keyword phrase garden furniture last month. But what does that really mean?
Does that really mean that 4,090,000 searches were done for the phrase, garden furniture? What about garden furniture sets, or aluminum garden furniture, or garden patio furniture?
You see, by default, the Google keyword tool is set to the broad match type. To the best of our understanding, that means that when you do keyword research on a given keyword phrase (garden furniture) the tool will not only return the results of your main keyword phrase, but also include the numbers of other, related keyword queries in this figure.
Confused or lost? Okay, let’s step back a bit and consider exactly what a searcher might type if they were looking for what you have to offer.
A person who’s looking for garden furniture may not just type the words garden furniture. They may type in variations of that phrase, or related phrases, such as garden furniture set, garden furniture sets, aluminum garden furniture, garden patio furniture, and so on.
The list can be seemingly endless.
So what does the tool try to do? It accommodates for this by attempting to include the numbers of all the searches of terms that it deems are broadly related to your initial keyword in it’s results.
That was a bit of a mouthful, so let’s state that a little differently:
Let’s go back to our 4,090,000 figure for the keyword phrase garden furniture. The number 4,090,000 doesn’t just include the numbers of queries done for the phrase garden furniture, it also includes all the related (broad) terms, such as garden patio furniture and garden furniture sets.
That’s the broad match-type.
So, what if you want a bit of a narrower figure? What if you want the results of people who type in the phrase garden furniture?
Phrase Match Type of the Adwords Keyword Tool
Well, that’s where the phrase match-type comes in.
NOTE: In order to avoid confusion, let it be known that when I use the term, keyword phrase, I don’t mean the phrase match type setting. The term, keyword phrase is an industry-wide term that’s not restricted to this tool, much less the phrase match type setting.
In other words, a keyword phrase is a keyword phrase, regardless of whether the setting is broad, phrase, exact, or negative. The word phrase in the term, keyword phrase has a different meaning that the same word in phrase match type.
When you ask the tool to return phrase match-type results (as opposed to the default broad) the figure that the tool will return to your for the keyword phrase is representative of the number of queries that had the phrase garden furniture in it. These results differ from the broad ones in that these queries have “garden furniture” in them, in that order.
Whereas a broad match can indicate “garden patio furniture” or “furniture for garden,” the phrase match would be representative of the queries that had “garden furniture” in them. These could be “outdoor garden furniture,” “garden furniture sets” or “garden furniture sale,” but the words garden and furniture would be in those queries, in that order. There may have been other words in those queries, but those words would have been typed either before or after the phrase, “garden furniture.”
That’s what phrase match is about.
If you’re a little lost, maybe it’ll help if we contrast this with the exact match type.
Exact match, Adwords Keyword Tool
The exact match type setting returns the numbers of queries done for your keyword phrase, and your keyword phrase alone.
If your main keyword phrase was garden furniture, and you set the match type to garden furniture, the result the tool returns to you is representative of the number of queries done for the words “garden furniture”, in that order, and that order alone. No extra words before or after (as is the case with phrase match), and no semantically-related words that could’ve been typed in any combination (as is the case with broad match).
And, if your keyword phrase has a plural or different potential prefixes or suffixes, those aren’t counted. Just the keyword phrase. Nothing more, nothing less (although the figures that the tool returns are just estimates).
Negative Match, Adwords Keyword Tool
Finally, we come to the negative match type. This is more within the domain of Adwords advertisers. Basically, when you negative keywords for an ad group or campaign, you’re saying to Google Adwords “Don’t show my ad when this keyword phrase is typed.”
It’s basically what you don’t want to show up for. This can save clicks and impressions for Adwords advertisers.
Why would an advertiser want to set negative keywords?
Well, let’s say that you’re in a market where customers may mistake your product for something else. Instead of having people click on your ads and come to your site, only to find that what you have isn’t what they were looking for, you can save money by just saying, “Hey, Google, this keyword phrase is for a product that belongs to my competitor, not me, so don’t show my ad for it.”
That’s a lot you just read. Here are a few ways this knowledge can benefit you:
1.Adwords marketers: Now that you know the 4 match types, you can, at one extreme, cast a wide net and go broad, or, if you either have a limited budget or want better targeting, go the exact match-type route. Remember, you also have the negative match type at your disposal, too.
You can start your campaign by going broad. Then, as you find your better-converting keywords, go more narrow by setting phrase- and eventually, exact-match settings throughout your campaign. On another note, you can also increase your Adwords campaign’s reach and effectiveness is to Google Searched Based Keyword Tool.
2.Niche marketers: Broad match is a good indicator that a market is present, but phrase is a better indicator of exactly what people are typing in. In fact, within the broad setting, there may be several sub-markets at the phrase- and exact-match levels that you might never have realized had you taken the time to “dig deeper” into those. Depending on the methods you follow, it might be beneficial to also asses the phrase and exact match figures of your main keywords.
3.Content publishers and writers: One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that the tool also returns keywords that are relevant and related to your main keyword. By keeping those in mind, you can write articles that don’t just focus on one keyword, but also on related keyword phrases. By keeping a general idea of the broad- and phrase-match ratios in mind, you can take a more balanced approach to your writing.
Plus, your writing will look more natural.
4.SEO specialists: This information, along with other SEO-specific data, can be used to assess SEO competition and determine not only which keywords are worthy of ranking for, but also, which ones are easiest to rank for. If you’re willing to dig and use the tool over and over, doing deeper and deeper inquiries into a keyword phrase, you can find some great long-tail keywords to rank for.
The Way Most People Use The Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Quite frankly, we don’t have to spend much time exploring the way most marketers try to use this tool: they just use the 7 steps above.
They don’t even do the work as diligently as they should. That’s one reason why a lot of marketers try to optimize for a keyword…only to find that the competition for the keyword is too tough, the keyword is too expensive (cost-per-click too high), there aren’t enough queries for that keyword to make it worthwhile, or a whole host of problems that occur because of rushed keyword research.
I doubt they even pay much attention to the differences between the different match types. By virtue of reading this 2-part article, you already possess much more knowledge than they do.
Another Way To Use The Adwords Keyword Tool
First, look at the screenshot below. It’s basically a default setting for the Adwords tool.
Google Adwords Tool Default Setting
It’s basically set to “Descriptive words or phrases”
Well, instead of having to do a lot of the initial seed work, why not take a page that’s already online (or some text, like an article), and ask the tool to come up with the most appropriate keywords for that page?
Well, as you can see below, you can do that:
Adwords Keyword Tool: Website Content Setting
When you set the tool to “Website Content” you can input the url of any accessible page on the Internet and find out the keywords that the tool sees that page as being best optimized for. (You can do this for your web pages, or…a competitor’s!)
An alternative to using a url is to use text. If you click on the optional “Or, enter your own text in the box below” link, a text area field will appear, and you can paste in an article or some other text, and the same thing happens: the tool will tell you the keywords that that article is optimized for.
I urge you to try this for yourself. The tool returns many keywords, neatly grouped into categories. I’ve found at least a handful of keywords that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
So, here’s how this benefits different types of marketers
1. Adwords marketers: You can find new keywords to add to your campaigns.
2.Niche marketers: If you have an e-book to offer, you can find out the total search count of queries pertaining to the subject of your e-book. You can also write a piece of content describing your niche or expertise, and find out if there are enough searches to justify establishing yourself.
2. Content publishers: You can know what keywords your content is most likely to rank for…before you publish it.
3. SEO specialists: You can take the top 10 pages of a certain keyword phrase, put them in this tool, and see how well optimized they are. Plus, you can find other keywords that you can try to rank for, while going for the bigger, harder keywords.
So, there you have it. Bookmark this page and come to it often. I think you’ll benefit a lot if you actually use what I’ve laid out for you here. Go out and don’t just do “good” keyword research…do some excellent keyword research that sets the foundation of a thriving business that knows what it’s customers type into the search engines!
Similar Posts:
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- How to Use Adwords Editor for Keyword Grouping
- Pssstt… Your Ad Group Structure Is Killing Your Campaign!
- IMEye Keyword Research Tool
- IMEye: New Exact-Match Domain Feature
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