If you want to create web pages optimized for a search engine, one of your first tasks will be finding relevant keywords around which the page should be built. The more specific you can be in selecting relevant keywords the better chance of getting targeted traffic to your web page.
So generating and choosing the right keywords can be a crucial part of your success with the search engines. After doing a lot of keyword research I have come to the conclusion using one keyword generator tool is not enough, especially as in this study, less than half the relevant niche keywords available, were found using only one tool.
There are five basic problems with selecting relevant keyword phrases:
Finding the best keyword phrases for you
It’s crucial to choose specific relevant keyword phrases.
Choose generic keyword phrases and you’re lost in hundreds of thousands, or millions, of search engine results.
Focus too narrow or choose the wrong keywords and nobody will enter your query term in a search engine. So it will not matter you’re number 1 in the results for your chosen keywords, because almost no one uses that phrase to search on.
Determining how much competition you face
The number of web pages using some keywords frequently runs into several millions. With this level of competing pages your chances of getting into the top 30 with a new site or page are slightly better than your chance of winning a national lottery.
Discovering how popular they are
Using a keyword generator & keyword analyzer is absolutely crucial to finding the relevant niche keyword phrases with high popularity (searches) but lower competing pages that still get ample traffic to serve your needs.
Knowing if you’ve found the right amount
This might not seem like something to be to concerned about, but what if you’re finding less than half of the relevant keyword phrases by using only one keyword generator. It could mean some of the best keywords are in the half you never see.
It’s the reason why I use four keyword generator tools –
Wordtracker, Google, Ad Word Analyzer and Niche Finder.
The first two are online services, the last two, software programs.
The amount of keyword phrase research you can expect to do for a typical web site when starting out, will take at least a week, assuming that’s all you do. So reckon on anywhere between 1 week to a month if you’re doing other things in between.
Also take note that many engines maintain different databases in different countries. The results depend on which country database gets queried. This becomes relevant when you’re using some of these tools.
Deciding which to use
Whilst a keyword generator will do a lot of the hard work, you still need to exercise your own judgement when it comes to the final analysis – deciding which keyword phrases to use.
In this case study example, how many keyword suggestions each tool made based on a randomly selected (see note) keyword phrase “child toy” is summarized for each keyword generator.
Note: The choice of the keyword phrase “child toy” was not entirely random as it was chosen to be a popular search term. But it was not chosen so as to produce this type of result. In fact similar results were found on much larger numbers of keyword phrases.
Wordtracker
An online subscription service costing around $50 per month that enables you to query a database of around 328 million keywords and phrases recently used by some search engine users. It can be used as a keyword analyzer, keyword generator or to check keyword bidding with 5 Pay Per Click (PPC) engines.
Using Wordtracker for a comprehensive search on the phrase “child toy” produced 99 keyword phrases with 5 phrases considered irrelevant. 94 remained containing relevant variations of phrases containing those two words.
This represents 42.3% of the total number of different keyword phrase variations returned by the combined results from Wordtracker, Google, Ad Word Analyzer and Niche Finder.
Should the Wordtracker results be seen as just a one off example?
Perhaps on other keyword phrases we would see different results. Yes there would be a different percentage, but No I don’t consider it to be an isolated result. During some other keyword phrase research on 645 different keyword phrases, 194 of them, ( 30% ) or just under a third, were not found on Wordtracker but by the other generator tools.
Opening an online Adwords account gives access to a keyword generator you can apply across multiple countries and in over 30 languages. The account is free unless you start advertising on Adwords. It will also check keyword bidding on PPC but only with Google Adword’s.
Using the keyword tool on Google Adwords provided 4 new relevant variations of keyword phrases based on ‘child toy.’
This represents 1.8% of the total number of different keyword phrase variations returned by the combined results from Wordtracker, Google, Ad Word Analyzer and Niche Finder.
Ad Word Analyzer
A software tool costing around $67 that can be downloaded online and installed on your computer. It’s easy to use as a keyword analyzer or keyword generator and will also do PPC keyword bidding comparisons between Overture & Google on 11 different country datacenters. It accesses the Overture network for its
results.
A search on “child toy” using Ad Word Analyzer returned 100 relevant keyword phrase variations of which 96 or 43.3% were different to those produced by either Wordtracker or Google.
Niche Finder
A software tool at a one off cost of around $77, can be instantly download and used as a keyword analyzer & keyword generator, or for market research into new product ideas & niche markets. It also queries the Overture network for its data.
It reported all the keywords found by Ad Word Analyzer plus another 28 or 12.6% relevant keyword phrase variations of ‘child toy’ not produced by Wordtracker, Google or Ad Word Analyzer.
Conclusion
If you get your keywords & phrases from one keyword generator you could miss out on some Golden Keywords that are in use but you’ll never find.
The selection of a keyword phrase presented in these findings showed less than half (43.3%) of the possible keyword phrase variations found by using only one keyword generator.
Wordtracker gets its data from a relatively small percentage of total search engine users (1.8%) as do Ad Words Analyzer and Niche Finder (estimated 4.9%).
It’s clear, more than twice as many keywords resulted from using more than one keyword generator.
If I had selected a different example keyword phrase, would the results be different, yes of course. The percentages would be different, but you’d still find far fewer keyword phrases with only one keyword generator tool.
On other recent keyword research on over 2,000 different keyword phrases, on a final selection of 645, it was discovered that 194 of them did not exist at all in one of these tools, that’s 30% or almost a third.
So to answer the question keyword generator – Is One Enough ?
The answer must clearly be NO !
Andy Theekson http://www.the-search-engine-optimizer.com provides free information on SEO for small web businesses and conducts independent research on software tools and services. Andy has been involved in small business start-ups both offline and online since 1988.
