Marketing research for internet marketers – keyword research is a powerful tool for online marketing.  With a suite of free online tools, Google has provided numerous services to increase the scope and depth of keyword research within their search engines.

So how am I supposed to use these services?
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) is one of the most useful tools for keyword research, and Google provides it for free.  When you first enter the page you can enter keywords or keyphrases and the Keyword Tool will provide you with search data based on your chosen keywords.  I know it sounds a little tricky right now, but I promise by the end of this, you’ll be an expert.

After entering your keywords, which you can separate by hitting enter, or breaking the line – press the “Get Keyword Ideas” button to start the search.  You can also choose to “Use Synonyms” which will give you a broader range of keywords in your search, related to your chosen keywords.  There are a few ways to filter the search results, you can explore them if you choose but they are not generally needed.

Ok I have a list of words and numbers, but how can I use them?
The first thing you should do when you’re getting started with the Keyword Tool, is to change your search results to only show the keyword and the approximate average search volume columns.  You can change these in the “Choose columns to display” drop-down box.

After you have a simple two column chart it makes things a little clearer, where the numbers represent the average monthly search volume (in Google) for the keywords on the left.  Note the drop-down box above the results on the right, which currently says “Broad.”  Change this to “Exact” and resubmit your search.

Changing the “Match Type” to exact will give you a more accurate snapshot of the keywords you’re interested in.  The difference between broad and exact, is that broad will display data that is reflective of anytime your keyword was used.  For example if our keyword was “Marketing” and the match type was broad, then it would display results on that keyword for any phrase including Marketing.  This could be anything from “domain name marketing” to “marketing my banana flavored gum.”

When you change the match type to exact the data is reflective of the exact keywords, so if it says 450,000 beside the keyword “marketing” then that means 450,000 searches are completed monthly, on average – and for the exact keyword “marketing.”

Alright it’s making sense, so how can I optimize my results to reflect what I really want to know?
That all depends on what your goal was with the keyword research.  The main reason for researching keywords is to optimize a website or internet material for search results.  Assuming that the overall goal is optimization – keyword research plays two crucial roles in search optimization:

1)    When a search spider is crawling your site, keywords are a major source in determining relevancy.  As a result when you type your search into Google, most of the sites you find are planning to be there – through use of the common keywords in their website content.
2)    When planning for a website or online campaign, domainers (domain dealers/marketers/developers) use keyword strength to select a formidable domain name.

With this new knowledge you should have the ability to understand your markets, what they are searching for – and how many of they there are.  Monitoring and performing keyword research is the key to connecting with customers, establishing a strong online presence and optimizing your content for search engines.

Check back this week for an exciting post, “First Page Frenzy – The Steps to Effective SEO,”
on how to optimize your site for the search engines.