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One of the initial processes of optimizing your websites for search engines is to find the right keywords or keyword phrases for your website. You ultimately should figure out these keywords prior to developing your web pages so you can optimize them accordingly. However, if you’ve already developed a website and want to find better keywords this article can still be useful to you. This article is going to teach you how to use both the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Trends to find the best keywords for your website. Both these tools are free to use and will provide the most accurate information. Don’t be fooled by other articles who use alternate tools or services that cost money. These tools are provided by Google and obviously Google would have ultimately the best information on their own data.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This tool is provided by Google for advertisers of their Google Adwords program. This tool is used by advertisers to view the advertiser competition between keywords, search volume and find alternate suggestions for specific keywords. This article will teach you how to use this tool to figure out the best keywords to optimize your website based on search volumes.

The Google Trends Tool

This tool is used by people to see what the most popular trends or topics currently on the internet. It can be used to compare keywords and see which ones are receiving the most interest over time. This article will teach you how to use this tool to view the trend of a specific keyword and make sure it has a stable monthly search volume. You can also use this tool to view when seasonal or holiday based keywords start gaining more interest and when they peak.

Let’s Start the Research

The first step is to figure out the primary keyword for your website. This is going to help find other related keywords and see if there is an alternate keyword or phrase that is more optimal for your website.

I want you to now load another web browser window and load the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You’ll have the option when you first load it to enter one keyword or keyword phrase into the text box. Make sure on the left hand side of this text box the selection “descriptive words or phrases” is checked. Enter in the keyword or phrase that you think is best for your website into the text box, then enter in the CAPTCHA information below and click the “get keyword ideas” button.

In a few moments another page will load and display a list of keywords. It will include your original keyword and a bunch of other suggested keywords related to it. You’re going to see 4 columns in the following order; keywords, advertiser competition, local search volume and global monthly search volume. You only need to worry about the local search volume column as this is the estimated monthly search volume for this keyword during the previous month.

Now, the local search volume provided isn’t for that exact keyword, it’s the broad match for that specific keyword or keyword phrase. What we really want to know is how many people search that exact keyword or phrase, so, we’ll need to change the match type of the listed results. On the right of the column named global monthly search volume you’ll see a drop down box and above it match type. We want to select in this drop down box the word “exact” and the page will reload the results. The data you now see is for that exact keyword. Yes, the numbers will drop dramatically but this is because it’s no longer a broad search volume, rather it’s now the exact search volume. This number now located in the local search volume column is the estimate of monthly searches for that exact keyword.

You’ll want to review some of the suggested keywords or phrases that came along with your keyword. Some of these might either have more search volume or less competition in the search results. Ultimately, you want to find a keyword with a good search volume and low to medium competition. Usually keywords or phrases with a high search volume will have a lot of competition. So, consider aiming for keywords with a decent amount of volume and lower competition. Once you achieve a good stream of organic traffic you can then work on harder keywords.

Let’s View the Trends

Now that we’ve found some great keywords to use for our website remember we are basing this information on last month’s search volume. We have no idea if last month maybe there was a spike in interest or if this is the natural average search volume. This is where Google Trends is going to be our next step in verifying if the keywords or phrases are right for your website. I want you to load Google Trends in a new web browser window and follow the steps below.

Enter your keyword into the text box and click the search trends button. If there is enough data for this specific keyword you’ll see a graph on the next web page. This graph will go back and display the trends for about 5 to 6 years. On the left hand side of this graph you’ll notice some numbers like 1.0 or 3.5 and these numbers are very important. These numbers display the actual interest in the keyword. For example, in 2009 if you see it peak at 3.6 that means that at that time there was 3.6 more times traffic in 2009 at that period of time.

Basically, we are looking for keywords or phrases with a steady trends. We want to avoid keywords with a constant declining trend as that shows there is less and less interest in that keyword each year; which will result in a lower monthly search volume. This tool is also useful if your keyword or phrase is seasonal or holiday related. You can get a general idea of when the keyword will start picking up prior to that season or holiday.

Overview

As you can see, if you combined both the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Trends tool you can get all the information you’ll ever need for a keyword. Your research shouldn’t stop here, as I mentioned previously in this article, the actual competition of a keyword should also play a vital role in your decision. You’ll want to weigh the actual keyword competition against the time it will take to rank for that specific keyword, more competition equals a long period to rank. Ultimately you want to achieve results for less competitive, less searched keywords in the beginning. This will bring traffic to your site faster and bring sales or conversions. Then, once you’ve stabilized some basic organic traffic you can then work on those harder to reach keywords.