Using The New Google Keywords Tool - Will You Be Laughing All The Way To The Bank?

Using The New Google Keywords Tool - Will You Be Laughing All The Way To The Bank?

Author: Kristine Wirth

Google has always offered a free tool originally created for their AdWords advertisers that allowed those advertisers to research keywords for use in their advertising campaigns.

Google also offered a free version of this tool and while useful for brainstorming some ideas, it didn´t exactly bend over backwards to give you hard and fast numbers. That is, until now.

Recently Google did open up its search numbers within their keyword tool and you now have numbers straight from Google´s mouth as to the amount of search volume they receive on any keyword you choose to investigate.

Get The Most Out of Google´s New Numbers

First things first, to find this tool, just visit Google and search for "Google AdWords Tool" and in no time flat you´ll be looking at a screen that might be completely foreign to you. No worries though, we´ll go through the process together.

The first thing you´ll notice is that there are two ways of doing keyword research. You can either type in a list of words and phrases yourself, or you can click the button to enter in a website address instead to pull their keywords. Next, all you need to do is enter in the captcha code and click "Get Keyword Ideas".

Reading the New Google Search Numbers

Just like before when Google didn´t show their search numbers, you still have the same columns available with a few variations; "Advertiser Competition", "Approx. Search Volume: (previous month), "Approx. Avg. Search Volume" and "Match Type"

Advertiser Competition

The "Advertiser Competition column does not show the actual numbers like the rest of the columns do but rather the competitiveness of a keyword is indicated by a green bar. The more green takes up the space on the bar, the more competitive that keyword is.

Approximate Search Volume: (previous month)

First notice under the "Appox. Search Volume: (previous month)" you now have numbers instead of just the generic green bar which only gives you an indication of search volume.

You´ll also notice a small round circle with a question mark within it. If you hover over this symbol, Google tells you that these numbers are the approximate search volume on these words for the previous month that were performed on Google and the search network. It also says that these numbers are specific to your targeted country and language.

Now that Google does show actual numbers here, you´ve almost hit the equivalent of a goldmine provided you use the keywords correctly.

You can sort this column by clicking on the title at the top of the column. This will allow you to see which words and phrases are most competitive and those words which only get a small amount of searches done on them within the previous month.

Approximate Average Search Volume

The next column, "Approx. Avg. Search Volume" tells you the average number of monthly searches of search queries that were performed on Google over a recent 12-month period.

This is also targeted to your country and language.

This column too can be sorted simply by clicking the title.

Match Type

The last column is "Match Type" and when you first visit this tool you´ll notice that it´s default setting is "broad". This column is important for both AdWords advertisers as well as those who want to optimize their web pages. Let´s take an example using the phrase "coffee online".

"Broad Match" means that any time the word "coffee" OR "online" is mentioned within a web page, no matter the order, then your ad would be triggered to show within Google.

"Phrase Match" means that any time the phrase "coffee online" appears together in a search query, your ad will be shown. Quite often with other terms included.

"Exact Match" means that any time the phrase "coffee online" appears together in this exact order your ad will be triggered to show without any other terms included.

Using These Numbers to Optimize Your Site

While Google´s keyword tool was created to help their AdWords advertisers, it will help considerably with your own website optimization efforts.

Here´s an example. When you use "Phrase Match" with Google´s keyword tool, you´ll be able to get an idea of how many people are searching on the exact phrase for the previous month as well as an average of the most recent 12 months.

And armed with this new information from Google, you´ll now be able to build a set of specific keywords related to your website´s content.

Any phrases that get a good amount of search volume as indicated by Google, are ideal keywords for you to use on each page of your website. By taking the phrases and using them in strategic places within each web page on your website, you can quite possibly take leaps and bounds over your competition.