SEO Training | Search Optimisation

Keyword Selection


Doing SEO effectively starts with finding the right words, phrases, and ideas to target.

My general philosophy with most of these tools is they are good to get an idea of what to go after, but most of them do not provide deep enough search data, and so many searches are unique that you won’t end up discovering them until they end up sending visitors to your site.

The best way to find deep search data is to bid broad match on Google AdWords, rack the referrals, find the good terms, and block bad terms. Use this data to refine and improve your keyword list.

The only keywordresearch tool I have purchased so far and felt it was worth the subscription price is WordTracker, but I actually like the free tool that I created a bit more than WordTracker. Google’s free keyword research tool is probably the best tool on the market, but if you use my tool it will provide cross referencing links to all of Google’s tools and the other most useful tools on the market.

I also typically do not advocate changing content over and over again trying to find a magical keyword density. In reality there is no such thing. Keep creating new content regularly and don’t keep changing your old content over and over again.

• Free: SEO Book keyword suggestion tool – driven largely off of Overture’s keyword suggestion tool, my keyword research tool makes it easy to cross compare the results from most other keyword research tools on the market. (http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/)

• Free: Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool – Shows 12 month seasonal traffic patterns, bid competition, related terms and is exceptionally easy to export keyword lists from.


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


• Free: Google AdWords traffic estimator – estimates the traffic you would receive from AdWords given a specific bid. Also estimates the bid price necessary to rank #1 on AdWords for 85% of queries

(https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox)

• Free: Google Trends – shows estimated trending data for keyword search globally or by market. Data goes back multiple years and allows you to compare multiple keyword phrases on the same graph.

(http://www.google.com/trends)

• Free: Digital Point keyword suggestion tool – free web based tool which compares Wordtracker and Overture search frequencies.

(http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/)

• Free: MSN Search Result Clustering

(http://rwsm.directtaps.net/p5/clustermain.aspx)

• Various Prices: WordTracker – web based leased product which has many more features than the other tools. WordTracker traffic is generally more representative of actual traffic than Overture’s tool since many fewer automated bots scour its data collection network than Overture’s.
(http://www.wordtracker.com)

free version (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/)

• Various prices: Keyword Discovery - database of keyword data. Contains historical data. Some of their partners made them sign a non disclosure agreement. The database may not be as clean as the WordTracker database, but it contains a bit more data.

(http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/)

free version (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html)

Keyword discovery also provides free limited depth usage and has a free keyword directory

(http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/keyword-directory.html)

• Various prices: Keyword Intelligence – database of keyword data from various HitWise partner sources. I was not exceptionally impressed with this offering.

(http://www.keywordintelligence.com/)

• Free: Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool – offers search frequency for the prior month throughout the Overture network. Please note that many bid checkers and other automated bots cause this number to skew high.

(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)

• Free: Google Search Suggestion Tool – auto-completes search queries to help you find more related search terms.

(http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en)

I also have an online Google Suggest scraper at (http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-information/)

• Free: Google Sets – shows groups of related keywords.

(http://labs.google.com/sets)

• Free: Good Keywords – free downloadable software which can be used for preliminary keyword research. (http://www.goodkeywords.com)

• Free: Ontology tool – finds related keywords using the Google ~ search.

(http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ontology/)

• Free: Quintura – web based and downloadable latent semantic indexing tool (http://quintura.com/)

• Free: Keyword Typo Generator

(http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi)

• Free: Lexical FreeNet -- helps find ideas and terms related to a given word or words.

(http://www.lexfn.com/)
• Free: Tag Cloud – free Folksonomy tool (http://www.tagcloud.com/)

• Free: MSN AdLab – offers a wide variety of free keyword research tools including things like keyword funnels and a keyword mutation tool.

(http://adlab.msn.com/)

• Free: SEODigger – shows keywords that competing sites rank for.

(http://www.seodigger.com/)

• Free & Paid: SpyFu – shows words that competing sites rank for or are buying on AdWords
(http://www.spyfu.com/)

• Paid: KeyCompete – paid tool showing what AdWords keywords competing sites are buying

(http://www.keycompete.com/)

• Free: Competitors websites and related search suggestions from various search engines such as Vivisimo, Snap, Gigablast, and Ask.