How To Use Google Adwords For Keyword Research

KEYWORD RESEARCH TO INCREASE WEBSITE TRAFFIC

Is your page not ranking in Google for the right keywords? Are you spending too much money on expensive and under-performing advertising in Google Adwords? Are you looking for a cost effective way you can drive more traffic to your website?

Well, your organic website traffic levels will still be very much influenced by the actual keywords that are on your web pages – regardless if Google has somewhat moved past simply matching keyword searches to keywords found on pages.

Keyword Research is one topic, which every blogger should learn from day one. Probably, every Blogging or SEO blog you have read till now, I’m sure Google Keyword Planner (previously Keyword Tool) and “Keyword research” are not a new term for you. But if not, you are missing out the basic of any Blog SEO.

Blogging has evolved from just quality content to SEO optimized social content. Writing quality content is a must, but at the same time, it’s good to have the properly optimized article to rank well in search engines. This is where on page SEO comes into the picture. On the page, SEO starts with selecting the right keyword for your post, and the keyword should be one which have search volume. That means people are searching for that particular keyword.

Here is one question you should ask yourself: Even though I’m writing quality content, why I’m unable to drive enough traffic from search engine? Well, I’m sure Google doesn’t have anything against you until unless you are doing Black Hat SEO. The reason is, you are not writing on topics that people are searching for. Or even you are writing on a topic that is trending, but you are making it hard for search engine bots to understand your content. I have already covered how to write SEO optimized articles in WordPress, and today you will learn how to use Keyword Planner tool for researching Keyword.

What is Keyword research?

In the offline world companies spend millions of dollars doing market research to try to understand market demand and market opportunities.

Well with search consumers are telling marketers exactly what they are looking for – through the use of keywords.

And there are tons of free and paid SEO tools out there to help you understand your market. In addition to those types of tools lots of other data points can be included as part of your strategy, including:

• data from your web analytics tools (if you already have a website)
• running test AdWords campaigns (to buy data and exposure directly from Google…and they have a broad
• match option where if you bid on auto insurance it will match queries like cheap detroit auto insurance)
• competitive research tools (to get a basic idea of what is working for the established competition)
• customer interactions and feedback

mining and monitoring forums and question and answer type websites (to find common issues and areas of opportunity)

Let’s get to know the basics first. In layman language, Keyword research is the process of identifying Keywords, which get the good amount of search volume/month. For example, Keyword: “KeywordSpy”, “Android Smartphone Tips and Tricks” and so on. The idea behind performing a research is to, find the keywords that can give maximum traffic and comes with less competition. I will discuss competition part later in this post. For example: When you do an exact match search: “Android Tips”, “Smartphone Tips” both gives the entirely different picture in terms of traffic.

By doing a complete Keyword search, you will be able to find keywords to drive targeted traffic, more revenue and more niche traffic. Moreover, when you are planning to target a small niche, for example, “Hacking News”, doing a Keyword search will help you to find many new Keywords that you might be missing out. You can also analyze competitor site and find keywords which they were ranking for. Doing a comprehensive Keyword research based on the data can drive immense traffic to your site. And by the end, the sale happens only when you are getting targeted traffic. Isn’t it?

Just how important is it in the mix for a successful SEO campaign?

• Keywords are huge.
• Without doing keyword research most projects don’t create much traction (unless they happen to be something surprisingly original and/or viral and/or of amazing value).
• If you are one of those remarkable businesses that to some degree creates a new category (say an iPhone) then SEO is not critical to success.
• But those types of businesses are rare.
• The truth is most businesses are pretty much average, or a little bit away from it, with a couple unique specialties and/or marketing hooks.
• SEO helps you discover and cater to existing market demand and helps you attach your business to growing trends through linguistics.
• You can think of SEO implications for everything from what you name your business, which domain names you buy, how you name your content, which page titles you use, and the on page variation you work into page content.
• Keyword research is not a destination, but an iterative process.
• For large authority sites that are well trusted you do not have to be perfect to compete and build a business, but if your site is thin or new in a saturated field then keyword research is absolutely crucial.
• And even if your website is well trusted then using effective keyword strategy helps create what essentially amounts to free profits and expanded business margins because the cost of additional relevant search exposure is cheap, but the returns can be great because the traffic is so targeted.
• And since a number one ranking in Google gets many multiples of traffic that a #3 or #4 ranking would get, the additional returns of improving rankings typically far exceed the cost of doing so (at least for now, but as more people figure this out the margins will shrink to more normal levels.)

What is Google Keyword Planner tool ?

Google Keyword tool is an official product from Google, which gives us a traffic estimation of our target Keywords and also help in finding more relevant and related Keywords for your niche. Few Important things to know:

1. You need to have a Google Adwords account to use Google Keyword Planner tool. It’s free, and you don’t need to spend any money to use this tool. You can simply create an Adwords tool and start using it.
2. You can also search for existing Google Adwords coupons to create one free account for yourself, and start using Keyword Planner tool.
3. This tool is created to target Adwords advertisers, but it still gives a great deal of information when it comes to finding the right keyword for your blog and articles.

This is what the homepage of Keyword Planner tool looks like. All you need to do is enter your target Keyword that you want to start searching for. After that, you can add filters such as for which country you want to target your keywords (In below example, All location is selected).

What does the research involve?

• Keyword research can be done in many different stages of the SEO process – everything from domain name selection, to planning out an initial site map, to working it into the day to day content creation process for editorial staff of periodical content producers.
• And you can use your conversion, ranking, and traffic data to help you discover
  1. new topics to write about
  2. ways to better optimize your existing site and strategy
  3. anchor text to target when link building
• Keyword research helps define everything from what site hosts the content, to the page title, right on through to what anchor text to use when cross linking into hot news.
• Google has the best overall keyword data because of their huge search market share. Due to that selective and random filtering of Google’s data, it also makes it important to use other keyword research tools to help fill in the gaps.
• In addition, many search engines recommend search queries to searchers via search suggest options that drop down from the search box.
• Such search suggest tools are typically driven by search query volume with popular keyword variations rising to the top.

1) Enter your product or services:

This is the place where you will put your target Keywords. For example, my next post in on Keyword research, and I’m not sure what keyword I should be targeting that post for, I will do some searches based on my knowledge like you see in the example, and it shows me results globally and local search. The idea here is to find a Keyword that has good traffic but low competition. If you are working on a blog for the long-term goal, you can also target high competition Keyword, using resource pages. For ex: WordPress guide. It makes take time before you see your keyword ranking at the good position. Below image illustrates the difference between Broad search, Exact search and phrase search.

How much research do you do on a project?

• It depends on How serious of a commitment the project is. Sometimes we put up test sites that are start off far from perfect and then iteratively improve and reinvest in the ones that perform the best.
• If we know a site is going to be core to our overall strategy I wouldn’t be against using 10 different keyword tools to create a monster list of terms, and then run that list through the Google AdWords API to get a bit more data about each. (EDIT – Shaun – That’s how I do it, too.)
• On one site I know we ended up making a list of 100,000+ keywords, sorted by value, then started checking off the relevant keywords.

2) Search type:

This is one important column that you should be taking care of. There are three options for search type:

• Broad
• Exact
• Phrase

Exact Match: Exact searches, shows the traffic for exact match Keyword. For example, if you search for WordPress SEO in exact match, it will be different from broad search in a great way. My suggestion, prefer Exact search when you are doing research for your micro-niche site and broad search when you are writing on the personal blog. Ex: Keyword Research Broad Match: Broad Match is my favorite, as it let me target long-tail keyword, and your traffic is not limited to exact match words. For Bloggers, broad match is useful, but that again depends on your blog type and target. Ex: “Keyword-based research” Phrase: Phrase type is useful when you need Keyword in an exact phrase. For example: “Best Keyword Research”. Keyword position won’t be changing, but it gives the data for traffic, that your Keyword might be getting for phrase search.

3) Advanced option and filter:

This feature is set to add more filters to your search. For example Country search volume, Language and target device (Computer or mobile devices). Depending upon your target audience, you can set everything including the category.

4) Understand Keyword tool column:

Notice the pointer 4 in the above image and now, understand the meaning of each column.

• Competition: Just to clear one myth about this tool, competition field doesn’t show how hard and easy it’s to rank for that Keyword. In fact, it shows the competition among advertisers bidding on that keyword. So, if you see “low” for a great keyword, mark it and later we will see how we can easily analyze the competition.
• Global monthly search: Global monthly search shows the average of search happened in last 12 months globally.
• Local monthly search: It shows the search volume based on your filter. For example, in above image, I have applied filter for U.S as country and notice the huge difference between global and local search volume.
• Approximate CPC: This column shows approx. CPC (Cost per click), for an advertiser. Many SEO gurus recommend to use this column to find AdSense CPC Keywords It’s a good idea to pick high CPC keywords, where advertisers are bidding more but with low competition.

For this tutorial, let’s keep it simple and let’s keep our example for broad search type.

Performing Keyword research using Google Keyword tool:

I hope this must have given you a basic understanding of Keyword tool by Google works, and now, we will move to real deal here. Our target is to find some low competitive but high-medium traffic Keyword usingGoogle search, Google Keyword research tool, SEMRUSH & LongTailPro.

We will be using SEMRUSH or LongTailPro to analyze the competition of a keyword. Basically, this would help us determine how easy or difficult it is to rank for a certain keyword.

Now, before we start here is a quick question:

What one of these is better?

Getting 100 untargeted visitors or 10 targeted one?

If your answer is “Targeted”, then don’t leave those keywords with low traffic. Since it’s relevant to your niche, in longer run it will help you. Make sure to check “Google traffic trend” too, which will help you to check your target keyword traffic pattern over the time.

Discover Keyword using Google Instant search:

Google instant search is my first basis of finding a perfect Keyword. It’s more like a Keyword discovery tool, which you can use to generate tons of ideas. Though you can’t use all of them, but for initial step, it’s good to brainstorm some ideas for K/w research. Put any Keyword related to your niche

Once you have found 3-4 such Keywords, start adding it to Google Keyword suggestion tool and perform a search.Now next step is to find if these Keywords are going to do any benefit regarding traffic, or just going to be another article with not much value from traffic POV.

Keyword search analysis:

Now, I will put Selected Keywords in search tool and perform a search, it will give me details for search type I’m performing and also show relevant Keyword ideas. Now, that is keyword goldmine for you, as it will let you find many relevant Keywords that you can target in the same post or else can come up with a follow-up post.

Checking Keyword competition using SEMRUSH:

Once you have identified the keyword, next thing is to check the keyword competition, or you can call it ‘Keyword difficulty.’ This is just to measure how difficult it is to rank for a certain keyword.

Note: If you are creating an authority micro niche site, you should target all possible keyword, despite difficulty level.

I usually use SEMRUSH for checking the keyword competition & it is also handy to find related keywords that I usually place around the post. Let me explain what I meant by an example.

I searched for a Keyword “SEO Keywords” in SEMRUSH tool & this is the result that I got.

Note: Do pay attention to Column call CPC. This is useful for anyone who is using AdSense to make money from their blog. The higher the CPC for any keyword is & if you rank higher in search engine for that keyword, you are more likely to earn huge/click from Adsense.

Back to the above screenshot, clicking on view full reports would show detailed information about all keywords. First, have a clear look at the below screenshot:

I have highlighted Keyword competition column with the red box. Though; this detail is for advertisers, but it would give you a good idea of what Keyword you should target.As you can see here, according to competition checker tool, “meta keywords SEO” is easier to rank.

If you are looking something from a blogger/publisher point of view to rank a post, then use LongTailPro.

Download LongtailPro (Windows & Mac only) (Windows & Mac only)

LongTailPro shows competition based on factors such as domain age, the number of backlinks, on Page SEO, page rank, DMOZ submissions, Domain authority& few other significant factors. You can also click on “view details” to see more detailed results for your competitor. Here is a detailed competition report for my target Keyword: (For first top 10 results)

Do remember when writing an article or making a post keyword targeted, you need to have Keywords in your Title, description, and H1 tag. Take care of keyword density, LSI keyword, add videos & few other signals

Along with above-mentioned points, backlink and social media promotion are one major factor for better ranking. Also, my suggestion for you is always to ensure you domain expiry date is not before next three years.

So now, we have one keyword with us, and similarly, you can find many keywords related to your niche. It might be the little time-consuming, but it’s worth more than spending un-targeted ten posts. Now, your next target should be writing a Keyword optimize article (SEO copy-writing), and you can refer to our earlier guide on OnPage optimization.

Never forget, this Keyword research is just a primary steps, and real magic starts with your content. Moreover, never try to get traffic on the wrong keyword, as it will affect your overall blog performance regarding Avg. Time on site and bounce rate. For your old blog articles, if you have not optimized them for any Keyword, you can use Google analytic data, any software for

For your old blog articles, if you have not optimized them for any Keyword, you can use Google analytic data, any software for Keyword research and work on re-optimization for Keyword. I did this for almost 30% of my old posts, and they started ranking in 1-2 page in ranking.