Image via CrunchBaseMany search engine marketers don't know about the AdWords Keyword Tool, a powerful keyword tool from Google that is free for anyone to use. Developed primarily to help AdWords advertisers find the right keywords for their advertising campaigns, the tool can also be used by search engine marketers for niche analysis and to find underserved or otherwise potentially lucrative search terms. You don't need an AdWords account to use it, either.
After entering one or more "seed" keyword phrases, the tool generates a list of related keyword phrases. The following information is available for each keyword phrase:
- Average global monthly search volume
- Last month's search volume for a specific target region and language
- The search volume trend for the last 12 months (a great way to see seasonal search patterns)
- Average ad position and cost-per-click values on Google's search network
Some of this information is not shown by default, but you can expose the columns of interest from a drop-down list in the keyword results.
See the tool in action yourself. Search Google for "AdWords keyword tool" and click the first result to access the tool. Enter a keyword phrase of your choice into the keyword input area and press the "Get keyword ideas" button.
Don't be surprised if you spend 15 or 20 minutes exploring all kinds of keywords the first time you use the tool, as it can be rather addictive. A bit of focus and two tweaks to the tool will really help you with your marketing efforts, though.
The first thing to do is to adjust the geographic area and language that the tool is targeting. You'll find this information near the top of the keyword tool window, where it says something like "Results are tailored to English, United States". Click the link immediately to the right to change the targeting to suit your needs.
The second tweak is to adjust the "Match Type" setting. The default setting is "Broad", which means that the search volume numbers and cost-per-click values are calculated based using Google's general matching algorithm, which is very (as the name would imply) broad. Most search engine marketers prefer to use either the "Phrase" setting, which only counts searches that include the verbatim keyword phrase, or the "Exact" setting, which only counts searches that exactly match the keyword phrase.
These two changes make the keyword data much more relevant to your needs. Knowing how often specific phrases are being searched for allows you to tune the content of your sites to attract more traffic -- it saves a lot of guesswork. You can also see which niches are super competitive and perhaps focus your efforts elsewhere.
A particularly good use of the tool is to find low-competition, low-volume niches -- sometimes called "micro" niches. You do this by identifying keyword phrases with less than 5000 searches per month using the "Exact" setting but that still have a reasonably high cost-per-click (CPC) value. Take this set of keyword phrases and analyze each one by doing a phrase search in Google and seeing how many competing sites there are and how well-optimized are the top 10 pages in the search results. You'll be surprised at how many of these micro niches are usable for search engine marketing purposes. All found for free using the AdWords Keyword Tool, time, and some elbow grease.
If you're a frequent user of the AdWords Keyword Tool, consider purchasing Micro Niche Finder to automate some of the more repetitive tasks, like the micro niche validation check mentioned above. Micro Niche Finder gets its data from the same source as the AdWords Keyword Tool, but it presents even more information than Google's tool does, making it possible to decide at a glance if a keyword phrase merits further exploration. Highly recommended for all serious search engine marketers.
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