Website Optimization

Keyword Research

The Google Keyword Research Tool

Imagine that you are an accountant. Your primary service is "tax preparation." You are interested in researching other keywords/key phrases that people may be using to locate a tax preparation professional. Your goal is to optimize your home page where you will introduce your tax preparation services.

Google to The Rescue!

Google has generously provided free public access to it's powerful suite of keyword and website optimization tools.

Go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Accept the default "Descriptive words or phrases" radio button selection.
Enter a key word or key phrase as shown below where "tax preparation" has been entered.

You have selected this key phrase because you made an educated guess regarding what you think others may be using.
Enter the security code as shown above where "idmhoyk" has been entered.
Click on Get keyword ideas

The Data

When the screen refreshes scroll down a bit and you will see the data presented below. Congratulations, you "guessed" a great key phrase. "Tax preparation" was an enormously popular key phrase in March 2009. The phrase was used in Google searches over 1,000,000 times in the United States. Any ideas why?

The global monthly average is pretty impressive too at 240,000 uses per month on Google alone.

The first set of data at the top is labeled "Keywords related to term(s) entered."
This set of keywords contains one or more of the keywords you entered. The keywords in the list are actual keywords and key phrases used by people searching for services related to the keywords tax preparation that you entered.
Scan down column 3 "Local search volume" looking for high numbers. At 673,000 uses in March "tax preparer" did pretty darn well too! Bingo, you found another great key phrase to work into your best keyword locations. Look for other high number terms. Keep track of these. Copy and paste them into a Word doc or text file. You will be using them later when you integrate them into your TITLE and META keywords locations as well as the page heading line and your general page text.

Scroll down to the next heading "Additional keywords to consider" as shown above. You may have to scroll down a long way.
This set of keywords may not contain the keywords you searched for however they are related keywords people are using to find related or similar information. Often this is a great place to locate other highly relevant keywords. Look for the high numbers. In the figure above the key phrase "tax return" was very popular here. Bingo, you win again, another great key phrase to work into your keyword landscape.
Perform keyword research like this for each and every page on your website targeting the specific topical information on any given page.

For example if you were an accountant and you also offered bookkeeping services and had a page dedicated to that service you would want to research "bookkeeping" as a keyword and see what comes up.
This is a little like rolling the dice except that every time you do so you win big by discovering good, relevant keywords for your website pages.
In a Word doc create a list of relevant keywords and key phrases by page name for all website pages.
When done you are ready to integrate your keyword nuggets into your web page's critical keyword-key phrase locations.

If you want to educate yourself about what the column items are about place your mouse cursor on top of the little round question mark icons as shown in the next figure. A explanation will open up like magic, Google magic!