Keyword Research Tools
The following keyword tools are an absolute must have for doing your research, whether you're looking for a place to start, are plum out of ideas, or simply feel like you're missing something.
Keyword Research Tools in English
- Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool - was written with Google's AdWords in mind. In addition to broadening the root keyword entered, it also provides related term information (essentially, synonyms).
- Google AdWords Traffic Estimator - a nice way to estimate on which keywords are popular in Google organic listings. (You have to register free AdWords account first).
- Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool - enables you to enter keyword phrases and search for related keywords based on the previous month’s search data. Up to 100 results per query will be displayed. The results are displayed in order of popularity and only search terms with a minimum of 25 queries during the previous month will be displayed.
- Wordtracker - a database of search terms that, though similar to those of Overture and Google, comes from a different search engine source - several meta engines.
- Yahoo! Related Suggestions - provides suggestions for queries related to the submitted query in Yahoo!. Free registration required.
- Keywords Research from Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engines
Remember, these are research tools that are meant to assist you - no data set is perfect. You must use your own discretion to make the final say on which keywords you plan to target and those you plan to omit. Another rule to keep in mind when selecting keywords is to make sure they are relevant for your site. Don't just pick something off the Top Search Keywords list to try to drive traffic to your site. Optimizing for "Britney Spears" only makes sense if your site actually is about Britney Spears. The search engines learned that scam ages ago and will at best, ignore them, or worst, penalize you. There's no reason to spam if you optimize your page correctly.
International Keyword Research Tools
In German
- German Keywords Datenbank - Paid keywords database from the Tricus, one of the largest German Search Engines.
- Free German Keywords Database - covers about 10 millions retrieval queries, which are however all together older than two years.
- Overture German Keywords Suggestion Tool
In Russian
- Yandex Direct - Keyword Suggestions and detailed queries data for last month from leading russian Search Engine.
- Rambler Keywords - Keyword queries suggestion and statistics for last months from second by popularity Russian Search Engines.
- Mail.ru search queries - provides keyword popularity data from Mail.ru search
- LiveInternet queries archive searchable data what keywords drive traffic to russian sites from search.
In Chinese
- Baidu Search Terms Suggestor - essentially lists various phrases containing your keyword in the order in which they are searched. This does not show the exact volume of searches for each query combination, but it does show a small graphic indicating the amount.
Related Searches on Search Engines and Directories
A lesser known technique is to run a query on a search engine and watch for the related search options it suggests. Some search engines such as AltaVista, Teoma, Lycos, Rambler (on Russian) will make suggestions on related keyword phrases that you can use to refine your search. You can use these suggestions as a means of generating additional keywords or opening a new theme of search phrases you never thought of.
You can use thesaurus to increase vocabulary, avoid repetition in your writing and find a word for an idea you have in mind:
- Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus each entry (English) includes a brief definition, synonyms, antonyms (where appropriate), and concept, the general idea underlying the terms in the entry.
- Lexical base of the Russian synonyms - about 20,000 Russian verbs synonyms.
