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Do Free Keyword Research Tools Really Work?
Do Free Keyword Research Tools Really Work?
A lot of website owners ask a common question when it comes to keyword research — do free keyword research tools really work? This question is more than fair, as with most other things in life, and online — you get what you pay for. While there are exceptions to almost every rule, are keyword research tools one of these exceptions?
To find the answer to this question, you need to have a good understanding of what keyword research tools are and what they do. Keyword research tools, whether they are free or require some form of payment, are 2-dimensional maps in a 3-dimensional world. Granted, some of these “maps” are better than others, and certain tools try to add shadows and context, which can give you a better view of the search engine rankings landscape, but at the end of the day — keyword research tools are topographical maps for the lay of the search-marketing land.
Generally, you are going to receive more “depth” to your research using keyword research tools that you pay for — whether they are subscription-based services such as KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker, or one-time payment tools like KeywordElite. The reason for this should be rather obvious — when you pay for a service or software, the company you are buying from has a source of revenue so that they can invest in their data collection and interpretation of that data. If people invest in keyword research software, or tools, that are not any better than the freely available freeware versions that abound online — they won’t stay in business very long.
Getting to the point, though — many free keyword research tools are strikingly similar to the paid tools that are available today. This means that, more or less, you can receive some of the same type of data with free keyword research tools that you receive with software that you pay for, or web-based tools that you subscribe to. Granted, the depth of information is not generally the same, but the type of information is.
Even free keyword tools can provide estimated search volume for a keyword phrase, the estimated number of competitors for that keyphrase, the KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index, the estimated Cost per Click (CPC) for services like Google Adsense, and so on. The major differences between paid keyword tools and free tools can be likened to the differences between using a GPS unit versus a hand-drawn map for a cross-country trip. They both can help you get to your end-result goal, but the GPS unit is going to provide context, and depth, that is not available with the simple, hand-drawn map.
Now, something important to note here is that keyword research is not an exact science, and a lot of times, whether you are using paid research tools or not, you’ll have to apply your own common sense to the equation. Data sets can be temporarily skewed for any number of reasons, and if something doesn’t quite seem right — you would do yourself well to question your findings, especially if you are going to base your business on it.
So, to answer the question as to whether free keyword research tools really work — yes, they do. While you’ll lack some of the deeper-reaching resources that paid keyword tools can provide — with a little bit of SEO know-how and common sense, free keyword tools can give you the information you need to get started on the right foot.
If you want to do keyword research yourself, here are some great free keyword research tools and keyword software. Or you can hire the professionals to do keyword research services for you.
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Keyword Research – Four Key Criteria For Selecting “Money” Keywords
Keyword Research – Four Key Criteria For Selecting “Money” Keywords
Good keyword research increases the probability that search engines will rank the pages on your website high for your target keyword; and bad keyword research (which often means no keyword research) will doom your website to the search engine cellars.
Since search engine visibility is a key factor in attracting targeted search referral traffic, the higher you rank, the more traffic your website will receive. Clearly, keyword research pays off.
In order to ensure you get the most out of your keyword research – and, in so doing, increase the volume of targeted traffic to your website – make sure that the keywords your research identifies meet the following four key criteria (work through them in the order in which they appear):
1. Relevance
Your keyword research time and effort must focus on identifying keywords that are relevant to your niche because relevance is critical to both search engine rankings and to the satisfaction of your end users (which, in turn, is obviously good for conversions).
If the overall theme of your website or blog focused on golf, you won’t be doing yourself any favours if you target keywords that are not related to golf.
2. Probability to Convert
Your keyword research time and effort needs to ensure that the keywords you target are used by people who are highly motivated to take some form of action:
Click on a link
Download a report
Subscribe to a list or a fee
Request more information
Call or visit your business
Buy something online
As a rule, research has found that “long-tail” keywords – keyword phrases that consist of two, three or more keywords – tend to lead to higher conversion rates. The reason is simple: long-tail keywords are more specific than single-word keywords and often reveal a “probability to convert.”
For example, a long-tail keyword phrase such as “download free keyword research software” is obviously more likely to lead to a conversion than a shorter keyword phrase such as “keyword research.”
So even though search volume for long-tail keywords/phrases is lower than for more general keywords/phrases, people using them in their search queries are generally motivated to take action.
3. Search Volume
Unless, for some reason, you don’t want or need an audience for your website or blog, your keyword research time and effort must focus on identifying keywords that have a satisfactory number of people using them in their search queries every month (what constitutes “a satisfactory number of people” is, of course, up to the individual and depends on his/her objectives).
To determine raw monthly search volumes for the keywords you’re researching, head on over to Google’s Keyword Selection Tool and do the following:
Specify the country or territory you’re targeting
Select a language
Enter the keywords you’re researching
Enter the Captcha
Click on the “get keyword ideas” button
After Google serves up the initial results, you’ll want to narrow the keyword ideas by specifying “phrase match” for match type because it will produce a much more useful number – for our purposes – than the default “broad match.”
Eliminate any keywords whose “phrase match” search volume falls well below the “satisfactory number of people” your keyword research says you need.
4. “Rankability”
The final criterion your keyword research must focus on is whether or not there is a reasonable probability that you can achieve a high ranking for the keywords you’re planning to target because the only way you’ll attract search referral traffic is if you rank at or near the top of the search results. Period.
While there are some fairly advanced ways to determine the “rankability” of the keywords you’re researching, in the interest of simplicity we’re going to go with a quick-and-dirty method that many people commonly rely upon: the number of other web pages that are “competing” for the same keywords that you’re researching. To do this,
Navigate your browser to Google’s homepage
Enter one of the keywords you’re researching into the query bar (make sure you do a “phrase match” search by enclosing the keyword in quotes)
Click on the search button
If the total number of “competing” web pages – which will be displayed just below the query bar on the search results page – is less than 30,000, you’ve got a good chance of being able to capture a top ranking for the keyword for which you ran the search (it goes without saying that the lower the number of competing web pages, the better your chances are of achieving a top ranking for a particular keyword).
While this level of keyword research may require you to invest more time and effort than you’re used to, your investment will pay off in the form of consistently higher search engine rankings for popular keywords that are used by people who are generally more motivated than most to take some kind of action after their search leads them to your website.
Dawson Barber invites you to learn more about “ruthlessly practical” ways to build your business and make money online by visiting him at the Online Marketing Business Builder, where he blogs about online marketing, SEO, PPC, affiliate marketing, article marketing, backlinks, search engine ranking, as well as keyword research. He recently blogged about how to avoid the time drain and drudgery of keyword research. Click on the link to learn more.
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