Using the Google Keyword Tool for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Those clever people at Google provide a great service for those of us interested in keywording articles and photographs. Google provide tools both for suggesting keywords and for analysing the traffic each keyword combination gets. I'll be taking a look at both these tools in this series of articles, and giving some tips on their use.

This article starts with a look at the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. (If you click that link, the tool will open in a separate window.)

When you open the keyword tool, it looks like this:

Make sure that the Descriptive words or phrases option is selected, then type a keyword phrase into the box next to it. Try a simple phrase like "travel to Samoa".

Enter the captcha code and click the Get keyword ideas button.

The keyword tool will have a little think to itself then it will show a list of keyword suggestions that relate to the phrase you entered:

Try some other keyword phrases. Experiment with the options to get a feel for the tool. When you get bored or confused, come back here and I will tell you some more about the keyword tool.

generating a good list of seed Keyword Phrases

Did you notice that you can enter several phrases at a time into the keyword tool, one phrase on each line? That's great, because it means we can work with several synonymous keyword phrases at once, a good seed list with which to feed the tool.

Here is the common way to get started with the process of finding suitable keywords for your web page or photo:

1. Make sure that the Use synonyms option is ticked.
2. Enter a basic keyword phrase (for example: "travel to samoa")
3. Look at the results and pick out a few of the keyword phrases that are particularly relevant to your material, for example:

   travel to samoa
   specials to samoa
   holiday in samoa
   samoa packages
   samoa vacations
    

4. Enter these keyword phrases back into the keyword tool, one per line, and click the Get keyword ideas button again. (If you are having trouble seeing the results, try refreshing the page: you may need to enter the captcha code again if it has silently expired.)
5. Repeat this a few times, tweaking and refining your list of starting keywords until you feel that you've covered all the important bases for your content. For example, if we have a web page that promotes Samoan holiday packages, we might, after going round a few times, end up with this list of keyword phrases:

   samoa travel
   samoa holidays
   samoa packages
   samoa trips
   samoa excursions
   samoa specials
   samoa deals

In this instance, I've dropped the common word "to" and I've concentrated on plural noun phrases. (Plural keywords match both plural and singular terms in searches, so I always like to use the plural form in my seed list.)

There are an infinite number of ways to iterate your keyword list. For example, you might decide to explore verb phrases:

travelling to samoa

visiting samoa

taking a trip to samoa

holidaying in samoa

booking vacations in samoa

or you might choose to get a lot more specific:

honeymoon in samoa

samoan honeymoon packages

samoa for newlyweds

get married in samoa

and so on.

Ask yourself what it is you expect your customers to enter at a search engine to find your content. If you think they are most likely to search with the phrase "cheap holidays in samoa", then put it in your list.  What you want to end up with is a set of 6-12 "seed" phrases that accurately describes the content of your material, and does so from various valid angles.

the "Use synonyms" and "filter my results" options

When I enter my seven seed keyword phrases back into the tool, Google suggests 102 related keyword combinations along with another 98 additional combinations that it thinks I should consider.

The results list includes synonyms of the words that appear in my seed list. That's because I ticked the Use synonyms box.

For example, through the results list I can see that the results list contains "samoa vacation" because of course "vacation" is a synonym of "holiday". The "Use synonyms" option is very useful during the initial iterations of our seed list, helping us find all those important variations of our starting keywords.

If you un-tick the Use synonyms box, every result the keyword tool gives you always contains all the words in one of the phases that you have entered, and no synonymous keyword phrases are shown.

The Google Keyword Tool also lets you exclude some words or phrases from the results. Suppose you are running exclusive holidays to Samoa and you don't want riff-raff turning up at your web site. Click the Filter my results link and the tool will give you a place where you can exclude results that include words and phrases like "cheap", "bargain", "inexpensive", "low cost" and so on. You can also set filters so that the tool doesn't return alternative results that it thinks you should consider, or so that it includes adult content. This last option is useful if you are running "samoa sex tours" or the like.

Choosing Languages and Countries

The keyword tool can suggest keywords based on what the whole world is searching for, or it can just suggest keywords based on searches been done in a particular country.  Click the Edit link next to "Results are tailored to..." in the introductory text to see the languages and countries that you can select. (You can use the Ctrl key to select multiple options from lists.)

A lot of people stick with "English, All Countries and Territories" for this option, but that's not always the best thing to do. One of my clients, for example, is an Australian travel agency who sell holiday packages to South Pacific islands. If you start to build lists of travel-related keywords for "All Countries and Territories", you will sooner or later end up with a lot of keyword phrases that include the term "vacation". But if you tailor the results to "Australia" those "vacation" terms disappear. That's because Australians use the search term "holiday" much more frequently.

So an important question to ask is where you want your visitors to come from. There's not much point going to the trouble of building a vacation web site for Australians: you need to build them a holiday one!

Another use of this option is to select you local language, or if you are lucky to live in a polyglottal country, to select several languages. In my home country of Sweden, many web sites are in English and Swedish. If I am writing and article about scanning photos, I may well be interested in keywords from both languages "scanner, "skannar", "photo",  "foto", etc. Again, it is worth thinking a little about who you are trying to attract: who the target audience for your material is. Sometimes you'll get better results in the long run, by targeting a smaller, but better-defined audience.