Google Adwords Keyword Tool
People who are starting a blog, looking to increase the traffic or subscribers to their blogs or looking for affiliate marketing opportunities hear a lot about SEO, keywords and backlinks. We are told that Google likes pages that are unique, relevant and optimized for keyword phrases that people are searching for.
Sounds pretty simple, huh?
I just read a post by Jonathan Leger entitled “Google Link Analysis 101” where he shows a quick method to see how many searches are being done for a keyword phrase using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and then do a quick competition analysis with the Yahoo Site Explorer.
Using The Google Adwords Tool Give You Search Volume
Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and type in any term you would like to rank for. Hit enter and you’ll see a list of all of the phrases that use those words and in the section below it, phrases built using synonyms and related terms.
Before you do anything else, click on the “Match Type” drop-down box and change it to “Exact.” That way you’ll get a true idea of how many searches are being made monthly for the exact term you’re researching.
Select your term from these results and open another tab or window with Google search open. Copy and paste the term into the Google search bar and hit enter. Now you’ll see Google’s listing of the top ten sites ranked in order of popularity for the term you are interested in.
Using Yahoo Site Explorer To Analyze Link Volume
Copy the URL from the last line of the first Google search result. Open another tab or window and bring up the Yahoo Site Explorer. Paste the link you’ve copied into the “Explore URL” box and hit enter. What you’ll see next will tell you how many pages and links the URL has associated with it. Click on the “inlinks” tab so you can dig a little deeper.
After selecting the “inlinks” tab, you can use the “Show Inlinks” drop-down menu to show links from outside the URL or “Except from this domain.” This figure gives you a better idea of the authority Google may attach to it because they count for more than internal links(links from one page on your site to another page on your site).
If the URL is not to the root of the domain, make sure to run the Site Explorer again for just the domain URL. Google looks at both links to the page and to the domain. A site with few links to the page but thousands to the domain may be very hard to compete against.
Repeat this process for every URL from your Google search on page one to see if any of them could be beaten by your site or page. If none of the site represent an opportunity, it’s best to start again with another keyword phrase until you find one you can compete against for page one ranking.
This method is not mine and comes from Jonathan Leger’s blog post entitled “Google Link Analysis 101.” The post has a 9 minute video illustrating how quickly and easily it can be done.
Best,
If you liked this post, please bookmark it at your favorite social media sites using the ShareThis icon below.
Very good and indepth write up Jeff!!
Mark,
This is an example of a post that started as something and ended up
as something else.
How-tos are not my forte but I'm pretty pleased how it turned out.
Thanks for stopping by.
Jeff
great explanation about the tools, I'm also using google keyword tool to search the keyword for my website and also to view the amount of competitors and searches for a certain keyword, its really helpful.. but I haven't used yahoo site explorer.. maybe I focused too much on google, anyway I might give it a try also.. thanks for the info..
I would also recommend looking into the Market Samurai tool as it
combines many quality tools into one reasonably priced suite.
As long as it doesn't cause “analysis paralysis” it helps to look at
offers and article ideas from a few viewpoints.
Jeff
I often search and there are 1000's of results displayed in the Approx Avg Search Volume column yet the data from the previous month is “Insufficient Data”.
This does not make logical senses to me as how can there be no search volume (Insufficient data) during previous months if there are 1000's on an average month.
Do you know why.
I don't know why this happens. Whether it's just a software glitch or
what. I do know that I trust the average and ignore the previous month
figures when this happens. I've found the average more reliable anyway.
If you want some backup for your research try Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends or Google Insights
http://www.google.com/insights/search/ or the Google Search Based Keyword
Tool http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords
Though pulling mostly from the same data sometimes how it is parsed makes a
difference on the presentation.
Hope this helps.
Jeff
that's an interesting tactic will try it out thanks