How to Use the Google Keyword Tool to Understand Your Customers

One of the most powerful marketing benefits of the Internet is the ability to get a clear, in-depth picture of what people are interested in.

This can be extremely helpful when deciding what products and services you want to offer.

These days, when people want to research an issue or check out a product, they will often go straight to Google or another search engine to get the information they want.

The key to be able to tap into this information is knowing what words people would enter into a search engine if they were interested in your information, product or service.

These are known as ‘keywords’ and they are very important at different stages in your marketing process. So one of your marketing tasks is to build an understanding of the keywords that are most important for you.

Keywords are important in various ways. They help you:

• Estimate the size of your potential market
• Identify your top competitors
• Optimize your website for better search engine ranking
• Find out more about people’s specific interests
• Plan online advertising campaigns

Google is by far the biggest search engine and it offers an invaluable free tool to help you understand the keywords that matter to you.

This 7-Step process shows how you can use the Google Keyword Tool to understand your customers. The tool is primarily designed to support people who use Google’s AdWords service (the paid-for ads that run alongside search results) but is available and relevant to anyone wanting to understand keywords.

An alternative service is available from Wordtracker, which I have covered in a separate post on How to Use the Free Wordtracker Tool to Understand Your Customers.

Step 1: Identifying your keywords

The first step in the process is identifying the most relevant keywords for your market.

If you already have a website, you can review your stats to see which phrases are already bringing you traffic. But you should also look at what people are searching for outside your site.

The key is to think about what people would enter into a search engine if they had a problem or were interested in information on the topic.

You should start the process by thinking about all the words people might use in an internet search.

Here are some questions to get you thinking.

1. What would you type into a search engine if you were looking for information on this topic?
2. What do you think other people would type in?
3. What are the problems they are trying to solve?
4. What do they really want?
5. What name brands would people key in if looking for information on this topic?
6. What other products or services would they look for in his area?
7. What technical or slang terms might they use?

Try to build on your list by thinking about as many variations of the words as possible.

The more specific you can be with your keywords the better. The term ‘keyword’ can encompass a sentence as well as a single word.

For example, a very general word such as ‘coaching’ will have a very high volume of searches but this will include people searching on a whole range of different issues. If your work focuses on coaching entrepreneurs under 30, you need to look for more specific keywords related to that.

In general, avoid the one-word keywords and look for longer phrases.

You should keep a note of your top keywords, including their search volumes, and continue to build the list over time.

Step 2. Connect to the Google Keyword Tool

You can of course find the tool by typing ‘Google AdWords Keyword tool’ into Google – it will probably come out top!

The tool is free and can be found at the following link:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Step 3. Conduct your keyword search

You should start with at least 10 keyword phrases from Step 1 that you want to research.

Then go to the box in the Keyword tool headed ‘Find keywords’.

In the box that says “Word or phrase (one per line)”, enter your keyword phrase(s) and then click on the Search button. (If needed, change the Location/Language.)

Note that instead of entering keywords, you can enter a website address and get the top keywords for that site – so you can do that for your own site or a competitor’s site to get more suggestions.

Step 4: Evaluate your results

After you click on the Search button, wait a few seconds for your results to appear.

This example shows just the top six results. If you do not see the competition column in your results, click on the “Columns” button (top right of the screen) and choose which columns you want then search again.

You can play around with the settings to see which ones work best for you. We only show the first few columns here. The other columns give you some very helpful information so do not be afraid to experiment.

You will most likely need to scroll to see the complete list.

The search volume for this tool is Monthly so you may need to make adjustments if you want to compare data across tools.

If local search engine traffic is important to you, be sure to pay attention to the “Local Monthly Searches” column (not shown in the screen print).

While there can be value in using different keyword tools, I recommend that you choose one tool as your primary choice and stick with it. That way, you know you are comparing apples to apples.

The goal here is to look for phrases that apply to your website and will likely convert the visitor into a buyer/customer.

Remember to look for the longer phrases that are more targeted. These are known as long-tail keyword phrases.

If your website sells women’s shoes but only “high-heel wedding shoes”, you might not want to optimize for “women’s shoes” as someone looking for sandals or tennis shoes would not be your potential customer.

As soon as they hit your page and see you do not have what they want, they’re gone anyway.

Step 5: Look at the Google Insights data.

For keyword phrases you are seriously considering, click the magnifying glass to review the Google Insights data. This information is very helpful.

It shows you how that keyword phrase has been searched over time. The data will show you the trends for an entire year but here is just the last four months for “outdoor solar lights” which as you can see has declined.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad keyword phrase, only that it’s seasonal as one would expect.

The criteria you can edit once you are on the Google Insights screen contains different options and there is also some interesting data presented at the bottom of the screen.

Click on any of the links and the page automatically refreshes to give you trend data for that keyword phrase.

This will even give you an idea which searches are rising.

Step 6: Create and optimize your content using the keyword phrases

This is a quick introduction to keywords so I won’t go into much detail here but you need to actually USE the keyword phrases to accomplish anything.

One way you can do this is to make sure you use your keyword phrases in the Title, Description, Headings, Alt Text, etc. When possible, link from other pages/posts to the new page or post using the keyword phrase. This is called internal linking.

You’ll also want to get external links from websites other than yours. The external links need to appear natural to search engines so don’t obsess over all of the links having the same phrase.

Remember, the more popular a search is, the fiercer the competition usually is. So make sure you look for long-tail keyword phrases. These are phrases with multiple words that further define the search. For example, “web design” would be a typical search and “small business web design” would be a long-tail keyword phrase related to web design.

The number of searches on “web design” is far higher than for “small business web design” but getting a first page ranking is harder with the more popular search.

Step 7: Rinse and repeat

Things change over time so conduct keyword research periodically to make sure you are still targeting the best keyword phrases.

RESOURCES

Information about keyword matching options (Broad, Phrase, Exact, Negative)

http://AdWords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100

Google Keyword Tool Box (not affiliated with Google.com)

http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

Google AdWords Traffic Estimator Sandbox

https://AdWords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Print PDF