subject: Using the Google Keyword Research Search Tool [print this page] In any online marketing campaign, keyword research is one of the most important factors. A great way to get started in choosing the perfect keywords is by using the Google keyword research search tool. This will help you drive large amounts of traffic to your site.
It is important to choose keywords that have a large number of searches per month, but don't have a lot of competition. Ultimately, you want be ranked at the top of the search engines for traffic generation. If you choose keywords that are difficult to rank for, you will spend hours trying to compete against much older or more established sites.
An example of choosing good keywords is the topic of pets. If you wanted to get a good ranking online for the keyword "dog", this would be extremely difficult. At this time there are over 300,000 searches per month for that term in the Google keyword research search tool and the competition would be fierce. But if you changed your keyword to "how to stop your dog from barking", you would find only about 1,600 searches per month and the competition would be much lower.
The Google keyword research search tool has helped you out by also suggesting other keywords. It gives you lists of other words that fall into the same categories and also expands on your current search.
Competition of keywords is the second issue you need to deal with if you want to rank highly on the search engines. In the example that we used, "how to stop your dog from barking", the monthly searches using the Google keyword research search tool were at 1,600, but how much competition is there? This question is basically asking how many sites you have to compete with to be number one and do those others sites utilize very strong SEO tactics. If so, you will have a very hard time ranking at the top.
