3 Killer SEO Tips When Using Google Keyword Tool

The best SEO tips when using Google Keyword Tool

Take a moment and think what your favorite SEO tool when it comes to keyword research? Could be some paid SEO tools,  so called ‘best SEO tools’ or the famous Google Keyword Tool? For me, I use Google Keyword Tool nearly every day of my blogging life and I am pretty sure you can’t find a free SEO tool better than the Google Keyword Tool.

Now, if you are a beginner or have not heard about Google Keyword Tool, you probably should visit the site once you finish reading this. Alternatively, you can bookmark this page, head over to Google Keyword Tool website (which is called Google Adwords by the way), scout around and come back here to continue reading.

So, what is Google Keyword Tool?

It is a God send, heavenly free and probably one of the best SEO tools which offers many (and I really mean many) functions for bloggers. Want to perform some keyword research, search engine optimization techniques or simply find a profitable niche and don’t want to fork out a single cent? Google Keyword Tool is your best friend!

Google Keyword Tool is one of the best SEO tools for beginners and webmasters

Not convinced that Google Keyword Tool plays a huge role on search engine optimization? See the image below:

Choosing the right keyword is one of search engine optimization techniques
Google Keyword Tool is the best SEO tool for bloggers

Google captures roughly 246,000 exact search queries monthly and 90,500 searches originated from the United States alone. This easily means that the term Google Keyword Tool is receiving at least 8,200 searches in a day! I wish my blog can get such traffic. Okay, I’s dreaming here.

*p/s Kindly ignore the term ‘exact search’ as I will be explaining below.

Now, do you believe that Google Keyword Tool is probably the best SEO tool (and on top of all, free) for bloggers like you and me?

What is Match Types?

When you are performing keyword research on Google Keyword Tool, it offers three very distinct reports which extremely useful; broad, phrase and exact. Don’t worry, Google isn’t going to leave you in the dark. Here’s what they meant:

  • Broad: The sum of the search volumes for the keyword, related grammatical forms, synonyms, and related words
  • Phrase: The sum of search volumes that include the whole phrase or near variants of the whole phrase
  • Exact: The search volume for that specific keyword and close variants

Makes any sense to you?

I didn’t get it at first either. Like it or not, these three different keyword research reports are the ones that make or break your website SEO.

Let me give you some examples to further increase your understanding (taking ‘dog collar’ as an example)

Broad keywords

Broad keyword research is one of the keyword research processes
Broad keyword will always have the highest search queries

Broad keywords are selected by default and this research will tell you how many people are searching for words related or closely related to the keyword ‘dog collar’. Broad keywords usually have a highest number of searches as it is very general and not a focus keyword. Example of broad keyword for ‘dog collar’ are ‘pet collars’, ‘dog harness’ and ‘dog tag’.

Phrase keywords

Phrase keyword research is one of the keyword research processes
Phrase keywords plays a huge role especially when it comes to choosing tags and keywords

Phrase keywords on the other hand, will always be the second in the ladder. Phrase keywords means that searches are done with regards to the keyword ‘dog collar’. In phrase keywords, it is not that general compared to broad setting and each keywords are closely related to the word ‘dog collar’. Example of phrase keyword for ‘dog collar’ are ‘yellow dog collars’, ‘designer pet accessories’ and ‘dog leather collars’.

Exact keywords  

Google Keyword Tool offers Exact Keyword research which is extremely useful in keyword niche
Exact keyword research will help to pinpoint keywords which could worth a lot when it comes to finding the right keyword

Exact keywords are the keywords that bloggers and content writers should focused on. Usually, the search results for exact keywords are the lowest among all. The number of searches represents the number of people searching for that specific keyword, ‘dog collar’ or words that have ‘dog collar’ in them. Example of exact keyword for ‘dog collar’ are ‘toy dog collars’, ‘best dog collars’ and ‘fashion dog collars’.

Let’s take a quick, 5 minutes break. A little quiz for you to keep you occupied:

  1. From the above article, what have you learned about Google Keyword Tool?
  2. Do you know how to differentiate broad keywords with phrase and exact keywords?
  3. Are you using Google Keyword Tool for your keyword research?

Now that you are ready, let’s head over to the next section, shall we?

How to use Google Keyword Tool correctly?

Ever wonder what makes Google Keyword Tool the one of the best SEO tools?

I beat you are using Google Keyword Tool as well but the question here is, are you using Google Keyword Tool correctly? I’m not sure about you but for me, I try to avoid any mistakes as much as I can when it comes to doing search engine optimization.

Choosing the right keyword will affect the SEO ranking of a website
What are the three best SEO tips when using Google Keyword Tool?

SEO tips #1 – Always use the Exact Match keyword search

This is the most common mistake done by bloggers when it comes to search engine optimization. Just because Google Keyword Tool default the search criteria to Broad Match, it doesn’t mean that you have to follow it by the books!

Let’s assume that you read the above (if you have not, then scroll up half a page and read what I wrote about the match criteria). When it comes to searching for the right keywords, always…always use the Exact Match keywords.

Why?

Simply because you want your keyword search to be as close as possible to the real deal. In the world of search engine optimization, having an exact match keyword (or at least Phrase Match keyword) could easily differentiate you between the top 10 ranking and top 100 ranking on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

It is a known fact that search engines such as Google gives ranking priority to exact match keywords first before others.

Do you think you think that you need to change your keywords now? You probably should!

SEO tips #2 – Healthy match of keywords for the best search engine optimization

This is one part I got wrong in the past. There is absolutely no point stuffing your article, blog or websites with just quality keywords or in this case, exact keywords. Instead, you want to have a healthy dose of keywords!

Firstly, you got to understand that you are going to rank well when you use exact keyword ONLY when people search using that exact term. Out of the millions and billions of people out there, how many would actually key in the exact keywords?

Don’t ever put all your eggs in one basket – English proverb

It doesn’t matter if you are a blogger, content writer or a SEO writer. The bottom line is you want to grab as many opportunities possible to have some ‘limelight’ on your website.

If you are doing the right content optimization technique, then you would probably be ranking especially well when people are searching for the exact keyword. Now, you need to mix and match your keywords (phrase and broad keywords) to further enrich your website.

Personally, I would go for 25% exact keyword match, 50% phrase match and 25% broad keyword match. And so, my question to you now is what’s your mix and match keyword ratio that you use for your website?

SEO tips #3 – Use Google Keyword Tool to ‘spoon feed’ you with quality keywords choices

Believe it or not, Google Keyword Tool is able to tell you what keywords your competitors are using to rank on search engines. Pretty impressive right?

See the image below. Do you see the red box? 

Google Keyword Tool provides a deep insight of your competitors Google Adwords campaign
Know what your competitors are ranking for using Google Keyword Tool

What you need to do is key in your competitor’s website in that box and with a click of the button, you got yourself a list of keywords which your competitors are trying to rank. Not only that, the results also includes the keywords which your competitors are buying on Google Adwords.

The below are one of my search engine optimization techniques to farm quality keywords for my blogs:

  1. Find my closest 20 to 50 competitors
  2. Use Google Keyword Tool and collect a list of 20 keywords each competitors are using
  3. Compile the list of keywords and search again on Google Keyword Tool and my list of personal paid SEO tools
  4. Shortlist the set of keywords to 10 to 30 keywords to rank for (the bigger the website, the more keywords to rank for)

Yes, this is a very lazy way of farming keywords but trust me that this is very useful. The results you collected are raw data which you would need to enrich them further using more SEO tools (optional).

If you are wondering why it is stated optional, it’s because you could still rank well on search engines if you are doing the right SEO strategy but why don’t adding in a little bit of hard work to get the top rank on SERPs right?

Over to you

Go get yourself a cold beer or a simple pat on the back. I am pretty sure you learned something here today. If yes, good for you!

Do you use Google Keyword Tools for other purposes and do you have any tricks you want to share with us? I am very eager to hear your reply!

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