Consider subscribing to my blog's RSS feed. It's sticky
One of the first successful PPC ad systems was service called Overture. One of the most popular features of this service was a tool called the Search Suggestion Tool. Anyone online back in say 2002-2003 used this tool a bunch to help determine what search phrases received the most traffic. This was one very simple DIY tool.
When Yahoo bought out Overture the tool languished and eventually went away. In my opinion this was a big mistake on the part of Yahoo. (But that’s a conversation for another day)
Click on the screenshot below to see full size
Google recently enhanced their keyword suggestion tool and added search volume and some measure of competitiveness. The reason the PPC engines offer tools like this is to help people get better at bidding on search terms and offer suggestions for more terms to bid on. Serious PPC folks use this tool to help determine bid amounts and bid on thousands of search terms. (If you have an AdWords account this tool is built into your dashboard.)
I’ve found that this tool is also a nice, low effort way to get some ideas for keyword phrases for your web pages and blog posts. The tool offers suggestions for ways that people are really searching in your industry and might spark some ideas for blog headlines. Of course, for local businesses, this can be a great way to identify terms that you might want to add your city name to.
Comments
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at Jul 22, 08 | 9:32 am and is filed under Google, Keywords, Search Engines, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
We just posted a Google keyword research tutorial yesterday that focuses on the new functionality. It’s a good starting point followed up by a negative keyword tutorial today. We love the new search count and have already uncovered some great new keywords to focus on.
I can barely keep up with all the great tools you highlight! This one seems very easy to use and practical. Thanks for the tip!
Good to see that you picked up up on this from my comment on local searches John.
It seems that Google very much sneaked this in without any announcement although the SEO newsboards and blogs were buzzing about it quickly.
I find keyword research invaluable since it allows you to identify and use the words your potential clients use. Far too often I see businesses trying to make their services sound all posh and not communicating with their market.
Hi,
For year advertisers and SEO and SEM guys have been depending on various tools to predict traffic. Now that Google AdWords is giving away the data, we would be better placed to make informed judgements about how we service our clients.
I noticed this as well . My question is .. is the SEO search count factored into this number and will the large volume searches be futher inflated via seo and this will drive up prices for ppc. smart move by the ad company Google
I have been using the updated tool for keyword research over the past few days. The nice thing about it is that you can geographically target google’s data. Operating in the South African marketplace, this proves to be very handy.
Great post, a nice alternative to overture keyword tool. Another great one too is wordpot.com that is free…
Terrance Charles
http://www.terrancecharles.com