Google Keyword Tool

[LucianaLucy]

Google keywords, I have a few questions. With colleagues in the natural position of the site, I have been working for some time. SERP selection process is something that we've handled intelligently is what I think. Per month is the key word, which reported more than 100,000 searches and I was very surprised to discover Tuesday about Google keyword tool, I am quite uncertain. Market research; do not know if you make any sense. I really would not admit that we won any benefit here. Do you think this is any use?

[tedster]

Hello LucianaLucy, and welcome to the forums.

There's no doubt that the Google Keyword Tool can give you an idea of the total searches done - it's main use is helping people but PPC ads. But if you are saying that 100,000 searches doesn't seem to match what you see for traffic, then yes - that certainly can happen.

One thing to remember, especially with short keywords, is that 100,000 searches doesn't mean 100,000 clicks. Especially for short searches, many people will see the results and then realize that they need to add more words to get the kind of results they want. This can be as high as 40% of all the searches.

So for some keywords, 100,000 searches may only create 60,000 clicks - and those clicks will be shared between all 10 positions, plus the ads, plus the Universal Search boxes.

[deadsea]

Make sure you have the "exact match" setting checked. "Broad match" is the default. It isn't all that useful from an SEO standpoint to look at "phrase match" or "broad match" terms.

In my experience, the tool is the best data source out there for keyword volume except for single word keywords and for phrases that get less than 10 searches a month. It is also just flat out wrong on about 5% of other phrases, and I can't figure out exactly why. For example in local search, it reports large numbers of people searching for widgets "in my area". We targeted pages to rank for that, and have yet to see meaningful traffic, despite good rankings.

Another source to look at is Google trends. You'd think two sources of data from Google would show the same results, but Google trends often shows different results some of the time.

Neither can be completely trusted, but they are better than other traffic estimation tools that I've tried.