Google Keywords Tool Guide

If you have thought about starting your own website or already have one, and have done any research at all, you have read about the importance of keywords. Everything on the web is driven by keywords. It's the fuel the Internet runs on.

One of the ways to get great traffic to your website is through the Google Adwords program. You select the keywords you want to bid on and set up the budget you want to use to get traffic based on those keywords from websites that utilize the Google Adsense program and other sources.

There is a tool to help you choose the best keywords to bid on that you definitely need to know about. I just learned about it from a friend, so we are going to learn how to use it together. Open a new browser window and copy and paste this address into your address bar.

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

If you are not sure about all of the terms used in association with keywords and Google's Adwords program, click that very first link that says, "keywords for your ad campaigns". You can use that as a guide if we get into unfamiliar territory.

In that first paragraph is a link titled, "Learn More", that gives a more detailed explanation about using the Google Keywords Tool. In this article, I am going to try to give you the information in layman's terms to make it easier to understand.

As with anything, you should also at some point read the terms of service. It is always a good idea to read the terms of service for any program you are about to use. But we will skip that step for now.

We all think we know which keywords we want to and are targeting with our website. I just had a humbling experience. I have been at this for a long time and have a lot of experience in optimizing websites for keyword content. However, I just clicked the tab at the Google Keyword Tool that says, "Site-Related Keywords ", to extract keywords from one of my own websites and can see that it is not optimized for the keyword I would have chosen.

You may want to do this first. Put in your URL and let it pull out the keywords it finds to be most relevant to your website. You might be as surprised as I was. Now I am going to be re-writing some of the text content at my website before I bid on any Google Adwords. Without the Google Keyword Tool, I would have likely just wasted money.

Make sure your website is optimized for the keywords that you wish to target by analyzing it with the Google Keyword Tool before bidding on your Google Adwords.

Now, using the other tab, "Keyword Variations", you can type in one keyword phrase or keyword per line and it will give you suggestions as to other keywords and phrases you can bid on that are related to your topic. (I like to type in one keyword or phrase at a time)

The suggestions the Google keyword Tool creates for you are based on statistical data Google compiles from the numerous searches that occur daily through their search engine, so those keywords and phrases are more likely to produce targeted traffic to your website.

As you type in each keyword or phrase and check the results the Google Keyword Tool gives you, look over to the right. You can add the keywords and phrases you might like to bid on. Create your list as you go. You can always edit it down to a few later on.

Once you have your list of keywords and phrases you might want to bid on, you can login to your Google Adwords account and check to see how much it will cost you for each of them. Then you can decide how to spend your budget wisely. Nothing replaces good research. The Google Keyword Tool takes a lot of the guesswork out of buying Google Adwords and I applaud them for creating this great tool.

Now, what they do not say anywhere at the Google Keyword Tool website, is that you can use this tool to analyze your competitor's websites as well. Go to Google and type in your targeted keyword or phrase. Copy the URL of the top 10 results. Analyze each of them using the "Site Related Keywords" tab at the Google Keywords Tool.

By doing this, you will see what keywords and phrases their websites are optimized for. If you want to compete with them, you need to optimize your website in a similar way and you may want to start bidding on keywords and phrases that match those that were pulled from competing websites.

Follow success and it will follow you. Do what successful people are doing and you are likely to also achieve success. The Google Keyword Tool can help you do that.