SEO Test, Google Keyword Tools
Fortunately for me, I am currently working for a web publishing company that has an in house search engine optimization (SEO) researcher who likes to talk about the craft. I had a conversation with him today on how to use Google AdWords Keyword Tools.
He explained to me the term ‘long tail’, which describes using keywords and content that have low search volume. The idea behind using those terms is that since the search volume is low your site would potentially rank high on a search for those keyword and ultimately generate traffic to your site. This seemed counter intuitive to me at first … I thought to myself, ‘wouldn’t I want to us higher volume words to generate traffic?’ After all, those keywords are getting the big hits and if I want to generate traffic to my blog, I should use those since it will more likely be searched, right?
Think about it. If I was to use a high volume keywords I would have a lot of competition and my page might show up on the 20th or 40th page of a search with those words. With a long tail keyword search I have a chance at the first page and it is more likely to generate traffic.
So as an SEO Test, I used the Google Keyword Tool on the term SEO. The term SEO shows an approximate search volume in the month of June of 1,220,000 and on the AdWord advertiser competition the results show that this is pretty heavy. A term like ‘SEO Test’, however, had an approximate volume in June of 480 and low advertiser competition. I might have a chance here. It appears that ’search engine ranking test’ is even better at 36.
My co-worker who has a much deeper understanding of ’search engine results’ (another long tail term) ranking, warned me that there were a number of nah-sayers when it comes to the Google Keyword results. As I dig further into this subject, I will share what I find along those lines.
