June 10th, 2011 : How To See If Your Keywords Are Being Searched?

How To See If Your Keywords Are Being Searched - The Google Keyword Tool

Local Internet Marketing companies love pointing potential customers to proof online that they can get businesses where they need to be. Often times that is impressive, however many are just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. In this article you will be able to learn if the keywords they show examples for actually produce searches on monthly basis.

To research keywords, Google provides a useful tool that allows you to see how many searches are done every month. To use it, you simply enter your search terms, fill out a captcha that verifies you're a human user, and then click the search button. It's much the same as searching. The only difference is the verification. They include this part because many advanced users abused the service by programming computers to pull keywords all day.

It's very simple, but there's a lot to using the Google Keyword Tool effectively. Entering the search terms is just the first step; knowing what the numbers mean is the most important skill.

Broad Rarely Helps You

First, the number one thing you'll need to understand is the difference between broad, phrase and exact. Why? It's because these determine the type of search people are doing. You could end up thinking you've found a gold mine, but in reality, you've stumbled on a garbage pile.

The default setting is broad and it usually gives you the wrong picture. Broad search results are everything that includes your search words. Chances are, you'll need something more specific.

As a habit, it's better if your first reaction, after filling out the captcha and clicking the search button, is to immediately scroll down and move your mouse over to the left area of the screen and unclick the checkbox next to broad. Then, you'll have the choice of deciding if you want phrase or exact.

Phrase And Exact - What's The difference?

Typically, phrase is used to give you more ideas, and exact tells you precisely how many searches are done on the words you're examining.

Phrase includes the words you're looking for and allows other words to come before or after. For example, suppose you want to know more about the keyword phrase, "dog food." You may see 1,200,000 searches every month, but those include everyone searching for everything with the words "dog food" in it. It would include everyone searching on "homemade dog food," "cheap dog food," "Alpo dog food," "dog food recipes" and everything else.

Exact is the most specific. When you click exact, you see how many searches were done with everything else cut out. If you want to be the most accurate, use exact as the match type and this also helps to validate that the keywords shown to you are the best to go after.

Global Vs Local Monthly Searches

Finally, you'll be given two columns with numbers. One is global and the other is local. Your default location is probably your country (e.g. United States). Those results show underneath the local column. The global column tells you how many people are searching those words all over the world. If you would like to change the location to a city or even a different country, you can click the "Advanced Options and Filters" underneath the search box. This can be useful for seeing how many people are searching on a type of business in one city.

Tags: Local Internet Marketing, Local Internet Advertising

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