So what ARE your customers searching for…?

If only we could know just what our potential customers are searching for? The phrases they mostly use…

If you are one of the people that has not used the Google Keyword Tool to play with research your keywords yet, today is your lucky day! You will have so much fun with this, so schedule some proper time to have a play… And if you are familiar with the tool but not worked with it for a while, do the same – allocate some time to review just how people are searching.

What this process will do is arm you with keywords that you can use through your blog and website, keywords based on real search data from Google. Now there are subscription services, such as Wordtracker, that offer you ways to find your best keywords, but to be honest, for most of us, the Google tool will provide ample information.

Before you get to the tool itself, you will want to have a few base keyword phrases to work from. So for the blogmistress, for instance, I’ve chosen “wordpress help” and “wordpress support” as two of the keywords.

Let’s walk through the process…

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

In the top box, enter your base keyword phrases, each phrase on a new line. Then enter the characters shown to you in the picture, and Get Keyword Ideas.

This will then bring up two lists, one under the other. The first, top list offers the immediate keyword suggestions. Then below this you are offered a further list of additional related keyword suggestions.

The information provided includes the local search volume in the previous full month, and the global monthly search volume for that same month. I find this useful, being based in the UK and with most of my business carried out with UK businesses. But it’s useful to have an eye on the global volumes too – they may suggest an approaching trend.

You can download each list into a spreadsheet; I certainly find this useful, combining the two lists into one. Then from this you can consider the best keywords – i.e. those that people search for – for your site and blog. Of course you also want to take into account the level of competition for those keywords. This may be something worth chatting through and we’ll set up some online chats on this, or you can ask us your specific questions and/or concerns – twice a week we will focus on your specific issues within a blog post – so if that’s useful for you, just email me at hello@blogmistress.com and we’ll schedule you!

Have a good play with the Google Keyword tool – not only can this highlight your main keywords, but also blog post topics and titles – we’ll explore that in more detail very soon.

I usually download both lists then combine them into one spreadsheet to work with immediately and in the next few weeks.

Then be sure to re-visit those keywords regularly, and also try out others that you think people might use – sometimes you’ll be way off the mark, but will be provided with the keywords people are using.

Go – have fun, but don’t spend more time on this than you should! And if you’re at all unsure, just shout…