Keyword Research and Analysis with Google AdWords : Step by Step SEO Tools for Adsense

Keyword research and analysis is the foundation of search engine optimization.To know the keyword research basics are inevitable to make money online writing contents. Google Adwords: Keyword Tool is the best free keyword research and analysis tool over the internet to attract traffic from search engines. Besides, Firefox and Google Chrome have some awesome affiliate plug-ins those are awesome for search engine optimization researches. In this hub I will discuss the keyword research basics in detail and set some examples of keyword research and analysis. Hopefully you will find this hub easy to understand and by the end of this hub the most important search engine optimization tips and keyword research basics will be clear to you and you will understand how to find low competition high traffic keywords list easily. If you find this long hub informative and helpful for keyword research and analysis for attracting traffic from search engines vote it up and share it with others. Thank you and all the best with your keyword research analysis.

Why choosing proper keyword is important?

We want to earn money; therefore, we need traffic to visit our online contents like hubs, lens, blogs, WebPages and so on. Whatever the path of earning is AdSense, selling products or other affiliate programs traffic from search engines is a must. Proper keywords drive traffic to our web contents. Keywords that are related to our content make the search engine traffic interested to the contents. It increases visits and more visits mean more sales or more clicks and more money. If we can’t attract our targeted traffic we have no chance to make money online. Making money is not all about writing well and offering the best services rather it is more about a healthy combination of quality service and efficient online marketing.

What are proper, useless and wrong keywords?

Proper keywords:

Proper keywords are keywords that are used by the online surfers in search engines. These are widely used or more likely to be used sensibly. Most importantly these are relevant to the content. For example, "search engine optimization" is a relevant keyword for a "make money online" hub as it is related to the topic and well searched in the web search engines. "Fundamentals of SEO" can be a good keyword for this topic also though it’s not at all searched widely in the search engines but it’s likely to be searched and make sense.

Again sometimes nonsense and misspelled keywords can be proper keywords if those are searched highly and their correct spellings are content related. For example, "video", "vidio", "vedio" all three are proper as keywords for a hub on "video online". Though there are two misspelled versions of video in those keywords those are not wrong or useless as being highly searched in search engines. Remember in such cases only the proper spelling should be used in content though misspellings can be used in the tags with proper research.

Useless keywords:

These keywords are frequently used in the contents and are relevant. But these are not searched in the search engines and less likely to be searched in future. For example, "relevant to content" can be an acceptable and sensible keyword for a hub on "keyword research tips" and this long tail keyword phrase is also often used in the hub but the reality is, neither this long tail keyword phrase is commonly searched in search engines nor will be. So it is useless.

Again there are keywords that are highly searched in search engines but are still useless. These are the function words like and, but, the etc. Search engine simply ignore these.

Wrong Keywords:

Wrong keywords are irrelevant and misleading. These keywords might be popular search terms but as far they are irrelevant to topic they are wrong to be targeted to be ranked or drive traffic. For example, AdSense is a wrong keyword for a recipe hub though AdSense is a widely used search term.

What if we choose wrong keywords?

Wrong keywords are irrelevant keywords to the content. These keywords will drive no traffic or wrong traffic to the contents. This traffic will never be converted into sales or clicks. For example, if a person searching for SEO tips is derived to a hub written on best online games there is no chance that he will click on an AdSense ad of online play station. So, misleading keywords mean no traffic and no money.

Content with misleading keywords will also never rank well in the search engine rather will be penalized. In Hubpages contents with misleading keywords will be flagged also.

When I will start keyword research?

You should do your keyword research before writing, even before writing your title, even before choosing your topic. Don’t start your research after your content is ready. As content is needed to be built in a way so that it becomes keyword rich and gets ranked for its title keywords in the search engine the research should be done prior to writing.

Why I will do keyword research so early?

First priority of writing content should be choosing a title that will be founded in the first page of Google search engine as well as other reputed search engines. These titles should contain keywords that are well searched and can dominate a less competitive niche being ranked high. So you need to know which title will give you the best chance to dominate a nice and enable you to drive traffic. After being ranked for the exact mach title you should be ranked slowly for other keywords. So you also need to know which other keywords gives you best chance to drive most traffic and rank well. As soon as you research these facts and find out your set of keywords and long tail keyword phrases you will know how should your hub be written, what information will be provided, which keywords and how frequently they will be placed in certain places.

As soon as your content is made, do a little more research again. You can always find few more good keywords that didn’t come to your mind before writing your content. Keep researching and you will always find more and better keywords as you dig dipper in the market and gather more information with time and experience.

Where will I find the ideas of keywords?

Here are some tips to find out a list of relevant keywords. These are all awesome and don’t need an expensive keyword tool. Check these out.

Commonsense to find out effective keywords

Think, what you would search if you were trying to learn about the topic you have chosen to write. Think about your topic and find in which markets it can enter. Remember one content can enter multiple markets and niche. Suppose you are interested to write on online marketing. The word online is related to web, internet, technology whereas the word marketing is related to competition, strategies again online marketing relates to search engines, AdSense, search engine optimization and so forth. Thinking this way you will get a list of related keywords very easily. Now make a list of those words and phrases and preserve for further research.

Search Assist for more and popular keywords

Have you ever searched anything using Yahoo, Bing, Google Homepage or any other top search engines? If you are reading this hub you must have. So you know when you start writing something in the search box the search engine it starts showing suggestions of topics that contains the letters or words. These suggestions are based on the most popular searches over the internet that contains your search terms. All these are not relevant to your topic but some are. Pick those and preserve for further research.

For example if you want to search for marketing, keywords, search engine optimization, web traffic, increase traffic, AdSense etc from Bing , Yahoo or Google Homepages you will see a list suggestions as shown in the images.

The best practice is to enter different theme keywords for your topic and adding every letter of the alphabet one after one after the theme keyword and check what suggestion the search engine returns. For example, if you enter "keyword research a", it shows "keyword research and analysis" and other suggestions, if you enter "keyword research f", it shows "keyword research free" and so on. Thus if you use a to z after your different theme keywords you will get a long and very significant list of long tail keyword phrases. Most of the time you will get some great long tail keywords and a great title from these searches with further research with Google AdWords: Keyword Tool or other free keyword tools or paid services.

Google Homepage for Keyword research

Google Homepage can be a great keyword tool. When you search for a topic it not only shows you ten websites or web pages but also gives a lots of supporting and related Google search suggestions. I have already described search assist. Now look at the left of the Google search page. You will see a Google search menu. Click More search tool. Now you will get a standard view menu. There are two wonderful Google search options. They are

1. Related searches

2. Wonder wheel

Related searches for related keywords: Both tools are amazing. If you click "Related searches" you will find a long list of keywords. If you search for a phrase like search engine you will get list of relevant keywords for search engine, search and engines. Amazing, right? Yes it is. Now pick the relevant and related keywords and preserve in your keyword list for further research.

Wonder Wheel for long tail keywords: Now try the Wonder wheel. It will show a wheel of several circles surrounding a main circles that contains the phrase or keywords you have entered into the Google search. All these are related and relevant to your search. If you click one of those smaller circles it will show another wheel. Thus you can check wheel after wheel in a short time to pick a lots of keywords. This tool will also help a lot to find a great long tail keyword phrase. Preserve all your chosen keywords in your keyword list for further research.

Free Keyword Tools for keyword research

I have already described some very easy manual tools. You can make a long list of keywords with those. Now you need further research and few more keywords. The theme keywords are the base on which you will make further search. There is a lot of software for keyword search in the web. Some are absolutely free and some needs money to be invested. I will discuss a free keyword tool here. This is Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. It’s free and very easy to use. Just open the page and enter your targeted keywords and the tool will do the rest for you. AdWords will provide you with a long list of relevant and related keywords. You just have to pick the right ones. This tool is the last place that will furnish your research and provide you with a lot of necessary information that you should look for.

What are qualities of the best keywords?

Well, if you are still with me you have already got the ideas on making a long list of keywords. But we all know we can’t take all the words of the world as our keywords. So it’s time to choose the best and a reasonable numbers of keywords. To pick the best keywords you should know the qualifications of the best keywords. Here are the qualities that a make keyword best:

Relevant:

Your keywords must be relevant to your topic. Preposition and conjunction are not relevant to any topic you know as these are used everywhere. Irrelevant keyword will do no good for you rather than causing harm. So the first emphasize to choose a keyword for search engine optimization should be a relevant keyword that gives a quick reflection of what are you actually offering to the search engine traffic.

Popular or Easily to be Ranked:

The keywords must be popular. Your target is to make money online and you need traffic for making money. Forget about the profitability of your keywords. Target a decent traffic; don’t target a big cost per click. Huge amount traffic will automatically make up the money. Remember tons of cheap clicks will result into a handsome amount of money. If you choose only high paying keywords you will find the competition too steep to be ranked. Unfortunately you stand no chance to be ranked if you are not a professional or have a great enterprise. Remember it’s far easy to sell tickets rather than selling stadiums. So popularity should be prior to commerciality.

Again you can also go for low competition keyword that are more specific but get less traffic. You can rank quickly for such keywords and the cumulative results for few of these low competition keywords will eventually show you handsome money.

Less competitive:

Entering a high competition market and making a mark there is almost impossible. If you are highly professional and well equipped with your resources to rank you would not read this hub. So if I am right you are one of those who have less resource but high expectation to make money. In this case your only choice is to enter a market niche of less competition and word hard to reach the top of the niche with easy and basic SEO techniques.

Decently profitable:

Well, cost per click that indicates how much profit you can make is the last think to be considered though not to be neglected totally. Any keyword that pays at least something is decent. Cost per click value is the bid required for high visibility, but chances are you will be showing advertisements from lower bids for that keyword. The percentage you earn per click from Google is 68%. Now the fact is we don’t invest for AdWords. So our priority should be targeting low completion high traffic keyword. No matter how much it pays until there is a zero immediately after the point. So, keyword, with a cost per click better than 0.05 is not bad at all if it has the potential to drive huge traffics. For example, if a keyword with 0.1 cost per click can bring you 10 clicks everyday you can earn (10*0.1*68%= .68) almost 70 cent every day for that single keyword. So, it’s better considering the fact that you will get no clicks for a high cost per click keyword. But when you are choosing low competition keyword just forget about the CPC. No matter even if it is 0.05 as it's only an estimate, you will earn far better in real.

How will I research a keyword in Google Adwords: Keyword Tool?

I have already introduced you with Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. This is the tool that has the answer of your question. You can just search for Google Adwords: Keyword Tool in the search engine to get the page. Even you won’t need a registration Remember you can always invest your money to get a better tool. But now my only focus is to make sure that you become well educated on AdWords for SEO at the end of this hub. Ok, open the page and insert some raw keywords you have already picked. Click search and you have a list of keywords that consists both your entered ones and some others that relates to your keyword. You can insert multiple words or phrases one after one. Now look at the page. You will see five columns by default. All these columns are not necessary for the research; again some additional columns are very much needed. So first take of the unnecessary columns and add other required columns. Click on column button. Uncheck Competition Column, Local Monthly Search and Local Search Trend columns and enable Estimated Avg. CPC column. Keyword, Global Monthly Search and Estimated Avg. CPC these three columns are what we should use for basic keyword research.

Keyword column: contains your entered words or phrases and other related keywords. You can pick relevant keywords and long tail keyword phrases from the list.

Competition column: shows the intensity of the competition for each particular keyword amongst the keyword advertisers who bids for AdWords. It’s not for us and don’t be misleader assuming that this is for Google search engine keyword competition. Uncheck it, we don’t need it. Just remember one thing that if the competition is very low for a keyword it may happen that the cost per click for the Google keyword will not be high for longer and if you use those keywords your content may show misleading Google Ads sometimes.

Local Monthly Search column: shows monthly searches in a certain area. If you are not targeting a particular area for your content or product uncheck it.

Monthly Search Trends column: shows how much a keyword is searched in a certain month. 12 bars indicate 12 months. If you are not targeting a seasonal content or product uncheck it. If you are targeting something like Christmas products or New Year celebration it will be useful.

Global Monthly Searches column: shows how many people searches for the keyword globally using Google Search Engine. It’s the most important column to be considered for Google keyword research. You should always look for a good amount of search when choosing a keyword. But remember the more a keyword is searched the fierce the competition is.

Traffic Estimator: In the left hand side of the page you will see a menu named traffic estimator just beneath the keyword tool. This is not for us. This is only for who buy AdWords. But this menu can be used for our Google keyword research as well. Just click on the traffic estimator and when loaded enter your keywords in the search box. Check the Estimated Daily Clicks Column. This column indicates if you were willing to spend any amount in an Ads group to keep your Ads in top three position how much clicks you could get. Though we are not buying Google AdWords it can give a very rough estimate of how much clicks we may get if we rank for a certain keyword. You can check it but don’t do your keyword research based on it. Remember, paid AdWords service and self served search engine optimization is totally different stories.

Match Type:

What all you need to do now is pick the keywords with less competition and high traffic. That’s it. After hitting the search button you will see a menu in the left hand side of the page that says Match type, make sure your search has been made in the exact mood. So uncheck broad which is selected by default and returns results that are not specific and misleading. Enable the exact mood and start your Google keyword research.

How can I balance between estimate avg. cpc and traffic?

There is actually no rule or specific way to do it. And also choosing a keyword not only depends on these two factors but also on competition and conversion rate. Still you can find a path like multiplying the traffic with cost per click. For example, if A and B are two keywords where A has a cost per click of 0.1$ with 50,000 traffic and B has a cost per click of 2$ with 2000 traffic then A could be a better keyword as for A adsense income could be 50,000*0.1= 5000$ and for B it could be 2*2000= 4000$. But remember the thing totally depend on for which keyword you can really rank for or get some traffic. And also on how much of the traffic really can be converted into buyers or turned on who will click on the Ads.

Where will I use the keywords now?

After you have done your keyword research you have actually already set the foundation of your work. Now build your content on and around it. Write rich and fresh content using your keywords so that the content becomes keyword rich. Use the keywords all over the content but not meaninglessly for sure. Use your main keywords in the title, subtitle and URL. Put the keywords and long tail keyword phrases used in the title and in the first couple of lines and paragraphs of the content as Google highlights the terms of the search in the first couple of lines and also both search engines and readers look for them in first portion of content. Use keywords in the subtitles of the hub. Search engines consider those with great importance especially first couple of paragraphs and headlines of the paragraphs. So don’t use an image at the top of a hub. Make a keyword rich starting manually or with summary text. The summary text button is situated on the top of the box besides setting when you are in edit mood of a page.

How frequently I have to use the keywords for SEO?

First you will use your keywords all over the hub in title, URL, summary text, first paragraph, in the middle and conclusion of your hub. Now the there are some specific tricks to over rank your competitors websites or article. I am not going to the detail in this hub. The plain rule is you should use your keywords not less than 3% but not more than 8% of the total words of the content.

Is it good to use single word highly competitive but high traffic keywords?

It’s hard to rank for these keywords and conversion rate is poor for these keywords. But if you can rank the price is good. Though the conversion rate is poor the great amount of traffic really recovers it. So adding some of them is not a very bad idea. Even if you can take place within first 10 pages you can get some traffic.

Is it good to use only long tail keyword phrases?

Long tail keywords usually get less traffic but the conversion rate is far better than gross keywords. So well researched long tail keywords can do the trick for you. The cumulative earning of few long tail keyword phrases can be turned into a handsome figure. But targeting only these won’t be great. Mix them with other main keywords.

Is it good to use new long tail keyword phrases?

You can try one or two such long tail keywords which are not prominent yet. Use your mind and brain. Many a time people don’t get exactly what they are searching in the search engines. If you can invent a few of those it can work handsomely. Remember search engine optimization is not a science rather it’s an art.

Can a long tail keyword phrase replace two keywords?

The simple answer is No. Using a long tail keyword like "SEO Keyword research techniques" in tag doesn’t mean that you don’t need to add any of the tags that can be formed from this tag like "SEO", "Keyword", "keyword research", "SEO techniques", "SEO research" or "SEO techniques". As a title that long tail keyword may cover all these area but still you have to target for these tags individually if you are willing to rank for these keywords also.

How will I know about the level of competition?

When choosing keywords and title it’s very important to analyze the competition you have to encounter for search engine optimization. There are few easy techniques and tools to determine the completion level.

Keyword Research Data from the Search Engines for SEO:

Use quotation: When you choose your keywords and title you should first look for what the search engine already returns for those searches. If you enter a search term and hit search in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing it will show every result where those words are been used. There you will see millions of web pages but for sure a very little amount of those pages are targeting for the keyword. So this result is irrelevant as it shows pages with the keyword used in any combination rather than the web pages where the keyword is specifically used.

To avoid this confusing result put quotation (””) mark around your search term. It will return more specific results. The fewer pages showed the better for your competition.

Use &start=990: Place your keyword, long tail keyword phrases or title in the search engine and hit search. Then enter &start=990 at the end of the URL shown in the search URL title bar and hit enter or the arrow. This will return a very few web pages with which you will have to get into real competition to be ranked. The fewer the number is the better. If you see a huge number of pages you will find the competition much harder.

Specific Search Term Counts for SEO

Intitle Counts: Enter "intitle" before the keyword and hit search. In Google & Yahoo the search results shows only those pages where the term is particularly used in the title tag - this helps to give you a sense of how many pages are actually truly focused on the term/phrase, rather than those that simply have it somewhere in the content. If you are using a long tail keyword phrase you have to enter “intitle” before each word.

Inurl Counts: Use "inurl" similarly to how you used “intitle”. It provides only the pages where the search terms are used in the web address. This also let you know who are really focusing on the keywords.

Inanchor Counts: Using “inanchor” before search terms show only those pages where the keyword appears in anchor text pointing to the page. It gives you the idea about with how much pages with well backlinks you will be competing with.

Intitle, Inurl, Inanchor Combination Counts: Combining intitle, inanchor and inurl gives you a good idea of how many pages are seriously targeting (with good SEO practices) a particular term or phrase. For example, a search for "intitle:keyword inanchor:keyword intitle:research inanchor:research" shows 38,300 results vs. the general query keyword research which shows 10,200,000 results. I prefer combing intitle and inanchor (rather than inurl), as many serious competitors don't use the keywords in the URL; however, using the "inanchor" can show you how many truly experienced with SEO competitors are out there.

Allintitle Count: It’s almost similar to "intitle". Just the difference is you don’t need to enter allintitle before each word of a long tail keyword.

Remember, it actually doesn’t matter much that with how much pages or contents you are competing with. No matter if it is 1000 or 10,000, that matters is how efficient you are in search engine optimization and with applying SEO techniques if you can climb up in the first page of the search engine. If you can’t rank you can’t earn. If you are not in first page or at least in first few pages being in 500th or 5000^th place is actually the same thing. So check your competition carefully and decide if your hard word will worth the income or not. So, compete with low ranked pages and if you see a lot of .com, .org, .net sites with exact same title in the site’s URL not the content’s URL in the first page, don’t try to compete with them as you can’t beat them. Try to compete with low ranked pages or sites. In a scale of 1-10 it’s hard to beat pages with page rank higher than 4 though sometimes lower ranked pages can beat higher ranked pages sometimes depending on many other factors. So, primarily try to compete with low page rank pages. You should keep changing your title without changing the main theme until you get the best nice with low competition.

How do I know the page rank of a competing site?

There are some awesome free tools to check the page ranks of a page or site. You can use SeoQuake Seo extension or SEO for Firefox plug-in. Any of these tools will greatly help your search engine optimization quest. I suggest you to immediately get them.

How to create a great title and URL?

Make a catchy title that clearly indicates what you are offering in your hub. Don’t make the title or URL extra long but ensure that your main keywords are embedded with the title and the URL. Keep the URL short and simple. Google indexes such URLs quickly. You can make your title and URL different. Usually when you will write the title Hubpage will automatically create the URL. But you can make it manually also.

I have already explained how you can make a great title researching the competition and keywords with use of some manual techniques of using search engine, wonder wheel and search assist, SeoQuake and Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. Apply them and surely you will be able to find a great title.

Some additional Tips:

• Try both singular and plural forms of a keyword.
• Try both the short form and the abbreviation of a term. Like "SEO" and "search engine optimization" both are handy but different keywords though both are similar thing.
• Sometimes synonymous words are also better keywords, so look for them.
• Use different combination of same group of words and see which is better as a keyword. For example, keyword research and research keyword both should be checked as a part of your keyword research and analysis for search engine optimization.

Summary of the discussion:

• Use the online resources and your mind for your search engine optimization with keywords
• Do keyword research and analysis before writing your hub.
• Pick relevant keywords.
• Pick low competition but high traffic keywords.
• Use keywords in the title, subtitles and URL.
• Make the content keyword rich.

Ok if you are with me still now let me thank you for reading this long hub. I have provided some information that will help you to start your research with a better degree of efficiency. If you can understand these tips you will get your keyword research basic cleared and you will be able to make a decent keyword research and analysis. You are now well educated if not expert.

Feeling better? If you think I have provided you with some good information you can vote it up, rate this hub as useful, beautiful or awesome, subscribe to my RSS feed, bookmark this hub, like or tweet it, share it in your social bookmarking sites and leave me a feedback and take the pools. Thank you.