Keyword Tool - Google Adwords

Anyone in the business of SEO (search engine optimization) should at least know about the Google external keyword tool. If you have not heard of this tool, it is time to learn about it.

The best thing about this tool is that, It is completely free. You do not require a Google account. And it does not need require any sign-in. Just navigate your browser to "Google External Keyword Tool" and start using it. However as mentioned later, there are some extra information that the tool will give you if you do sign up for Google Adwords.

One main component of search engine optimization is keyword analysis. Keyword analysis is what this tool does best.

The Google External Keyword tool will show you the number of searches for various key phrases. And it will also show you the level of competition for those key phrases. This enables you to find heavily searched keyword phrases that also have low level of competition.

If you are doing geographical specific keyword optimization, it can even tell you the number of searches within a particular country location. For example if you are trying to optimize a website that targets only customers in the United States, then you really only care about the number of searches done in the United States.

Not only is the tool great for finding out what people are searching for, it is great for generating keyword phrase ideas. For example, if you put in the keyword "olives". The tool will give you a whole list of other possible keyword phrases related to olives. It would suggest looking at other phrases such as "black olives", "nicoise olives", "greek olives", and so on. And you can easily scroll down the list to compare the number of searches as well as competition for those various key phrases.

Let's say that you are trying to decide whether to optimize the site for "greek olives" or "black olives". Put both phrases into the tool and it will tell you for example that "black olives" has greater number of searches. Furthermore "black olives" has less competition. This data would make it clear to you that "black olives" would be a more better choice of keyword to optimize for than "greek olives".

The data are gathered from the Google search engine. Since Google has a 60% market share on the world's searches, it has a lot of data, making the tool very accurate. In terms of free SEO tools, this is the best one out there.

Benefits of Signing up for AdWords

The Google External Keyword tool was primarily designed for Google Adwords users. Adwords is Google's cost per click (CPC) search engine marketing (SEM) program. It enables advertisers to place ads on Google's search results page as well as Google's partner network of sites. The advertiser places bid amounts for each ads. This is essentially the cost an advertiser must pay every time their ad has been clicked on. This is known as the cost per click (CPC) for the ad.

If you are using the Google External Keyword Tool while signed into the AdWords program, then the tool will provide additional information as to the estimated cost per click for a particular keyword. This information tells you how expensive a particular keyword is if you plan to place ads for that keyword.

Even if you are not planning on placing ads, by signing into the AdWords program while using that tool, you get a much longer list of keyword ideas generated by the tool. Without signing in, you get a list of only up to 100 keyword ideas. With signing in, you get a list that can be many times longer. This might prove to be helpful if you are searching for long tail keywords.