The Google keyword tool can be located through the following link attributed to the screenshot. Within the screenshot i have done a search for ‘google adwords keyword tool’ which is the topic of this blog.

I am supplied with the following results.

: The Keyword
: Advertisers competition ( The amount of competition from a search perspective attributed to this keyword)
: Local search volume for the previous month (This is related to the country you have chosen for your local search volume). This can be changed through the following area of the keyword search tool.

Clicking the edit button you can display which local search volume you want. Easy hey?

: Global monthly search volume. If you are catering for the wider audience then this is a key feature you need to look for.

Why Is this tool important?

The data within the Google Adwords keyword tool is brought to you by Google which means the accuracy of the data is as current as it can be. Google wouldn’t provide its customer base with incorrect data as this would surely hinder the development of their Google adwords advertising platform

What to do with this information?

As i stressed earlier please don’t use this tool as the only method for your keyword research. This should be in-depth, related to the niche in question and contain longer tail keywords. The keyword tool does however give you an alternative perspective within your search criteria.

Case Study

A recent project of mine involved a ecommerce website selling ‘water features’. I typically search around the term to provide a basis for my research. Using the keyword tool i would add the most broad term linked to the product and then use further keywords produced to form the basis of my campaign. The keyword tool brought back variations of the products the ecommerce site sells include ‘water fountains, self contained water features’ to name a few. Due to my limited knowledge of Water features this provided basic information for me to detail my further keyword building around. The keyword search tool does the basic jobs of supplying you with keyword examples. Its up to you to find the longer tailed keywords to really find those niche clients

Seeing the bigger picture

There is endless features involved within the Google keyword tool. Once i have searched my selected keyword i typically change settings within the drop down menu provided.

When choosing which columns to display click to show all the columns as shown in the screenshot above. This will provide the following information:

Within these new fields you will be presented with estimated position, estimated average cost per click, when the highest volume of searches occurred and most significantly the search volumes trend by month.  This is extremely important as the overall volume of searches doesn’t highlight when the keyword is my popular.

This was extremely important when producing keywords for ‘Water features’ as the volume of searches were significantly lower in the winter months than in summer months. Sounds obvious really but its amazing the mistakes online marketing individuals make when advertising through paid search especially with a seasonal product like water features.

The same can be applied for many areas of ecommerce paid search advertising. If your company sells suntan cream then using the keyword tool to identify the monthly trends can help make strategic decisions on when to spend the bulk of the yearly advertising budget. This type of knowledge is crucial in order to produce success paid search marketing campaigns.

I hope this is of help to you guys. Please comment away and retweet, digg or stumble upon my post. Very much appreciated.

Thanks

Ryan