An In-Depth Guide to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool

One of an internet marketer’s best friends is Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool.  What this tool allows you to do is come up with keyword ideas, see their search volume, and the number of people running ads against a particular term.  While the Keyword Tool itself seems simple and straightforward, there are actually a number of features and components that are often overlooked.

What is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool?

The tool was designed by Google to help you come up with keyword ideas for your AdWords campaigns – however, it can also give you a great overview for your website and SEO goals as well.

You can visit the tool here: Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Selecting your language &  geographic region

The first step in using the tool is to select your the language and geographic region that you are trying to target with your keywords – not your language and geographic area.

Select how you want to generate keywords

The next step is to choose how you want to generate your keyword list/ideas.

You have two choices when generating keywords with this tool:

• Descriptive words or phrases – Where you enter the keyword(s) that you would like to use to build your keyword list upon
• Website content – Where you type in a specific website address to generate keywords from that list.

Either is fine when you’re trying to create a list of keywords, the “Website Content” option can greatly assist you if you’re having trouble creating a list to being with.  Often, you can then expand upon this list that is generated by then using the “Descriptive word or phrases” option.

Filtering your results

Filtering your results can be helpful when you’re trying to really laser-target your keywords and Google has included several great ways to narrow down/filter your keywords.  The options vary depending on whether you select to generate your keywords from words and phrases or the “Website Content” option.

Descriptive words or phrases filters

• Synonyms - When you are generating your keywords with the “Descriptive words or phrases” you can choose to include synonyms.
• Negative Keywords – You can input words that you don’t want to appear in your newly generated keyword list.  For example if you are targeting buyers, you may want to exclude the word “Free.”
• Show only specific words – You have the option to only show additional keywords for the exact words that you enter.  However, most of the time you will want to leave this unchecked so it will generate more keywords for you to use.
• Adult terms – Turned off by default, you do have the option to include adult terms in the keyword list you are about to generate.

Website content filters

You have the same options above with the exceptions of synonyms and you are also able to add pages that are linked to from your site.

Generating your keywords

Once you have done the steps above, you want to click the button that says “Get Keyword Ideas.”  If you are logged into your Google Account it will return your results, if you’re not logged in you will be presented with a captcha (a series of numbers and letters that are used to deter spammers).

After you click the button you will be presented with a number of keywords and phrases.

Viewing and using your generated keywords

You will now be presented with a number of keywords that you can use for your AdWords account to drive traffic, or (as I mentioned earlier) to use for your website, SEO, and other promotional efforts.

Your list of keywords will appear similar to this as this is the default view:

For this example, we are going to select “Choose columns to display” and select “Show All” which will give us this view:

As you can see from the screenshot there are about a dozen different things displayed.  I would go over each of them here, however, Google explains it best by the little circle question mark icons located underneath each heading.  There is one area that I want to touch on thought and that is the “Match Type” located to the far right of the screen.

Keyword Match Type

You have three different keyword match type options available to select. These are important as they will allow you to view the true information about each individual keyword.

For these examples we will use the keyword “Internet Marketing” as our main keyword

• Broad Match – When you select this option it will give you results for anyone that has searched with the keyword “Internet Marketing.”

  Examples:

  • Internet Marketing Companies
  • Companies Internet Marketing
  • Internet Marketing
  • Marketing Internet
  • or any of the other millions of permutations of the word.  It will also include statistics of phrases that include the word “Internet Marketing” as well.
• Phrase Match – Will return results for phrases or searches that have “Internet Marketing” in that order

  Examples:

  • Internet Marketing Companies
  • Companies Internet Marketing
  • Internet Marketing
• Exact Match – Will only return the specific keyword or phrase – in our example it is “Internet Marketing.”

Saving, Storing, and Exporting Your Results

Now that you have generated your keywords, you have several options for what you want to do with them:

• Add them to your AdWords account
• Save as a text file
• Save as .csv for Excel
• Save as .csv

You will find these options located at the very bottom of your keyword list(s).

Pros, Cons & Summary of the Google Keyword Tool

The Google Keyword Tool is excellent at giving you a first shot into generating keywords for your sites and AdWords campaigns.  However, there are a few drawbacks as I have found that many times the keyword statistics are not very accurate and the number of phrases or keywords generated can be underwhelming.

All in all though, this free tool is one of the best out there for helping you get started coming up with and generating ideas and keywords for your sites and online promotion.

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Tagged as: Google AdWords