In a previous post, Targeting Geograhic Niches with Google Trends, we highlighted one possible use for that popular webmastering tool. There is another free online keyword tool that uses data from Google trends that is even better, the WordTracker Gtrends Keyword Tool. We have used it for 4 months and it is indeed a powerful keyword research tool. Here’s how to use it to get the right keywords for our articles.

Step 1. Open the keyword tool in a browser.

Click here to open WordTracker Gtrends in a new tab. As shown in the screenshot below, the homepage has a column titled “thesaurus” (encircled in red). If the keyword we are researching has several related terms, the link will appear here. A nifty feature to spread our nets wider to catch more traffic.

We enter the keyword we want to research in the field encircled in red. For this example, we used “ways to make money online.”

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Step 2. Check out the list of keywords or key phrases.

The next page will give us a list of keywords or key phrases related to “ways to make money online.” We can drill down further by clicking any link or we can click the button on the rigth side that looks like a graph icon to see the the details for each keyword.

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Step 3. Check out the competition and visitors for a particular keyword.

The next page will provide us with the number of pages in Google that contain “ways to make money online” (competition) and the approximate number of visitors that the number one ranking site receives per day. A Google Trends graph below will give us an idea if “ways to make money online” is still worth using for future searches.

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The best combination we want is less competition and more visitors. As we can see, “ways to make money online,” isn’t exactly a keyword we should target.

Trends is a Google webmasters’ tool that shows us the hottest searches from 2004 up to this moment. Bloggers and webmasters most often use it to catch and ride the wave of the latest Google hot trends for popular searches and incorporate related keywords in their content to partake of the massive Google traffic.

There’s another use for the tool we want to highlight, that of targeting geographic niches with Google trends search terms. Well, that’s how we use it for anyway.

Step 1. Open Google Trends in browser.

Click here to open Google trends in a new tab. To illustrate, we will compare the key phrases “make money online” and “ways to make money online.” Let’s key in “make money online” in the field provided and click the Search Trends button …

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Step 2. See where the traffic for “make money online” comes from.

Browse to the bottom of the page and see where the traffic for “make money online” mostly originates. This is the screenshot of the top 5 countries where searchers key-in this particular key phrase…

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Step 3. Compare the results for “ways to make money online.”

Now, enter the key phrase “ways to make money online” at the search filed and click the button. Browse to the bottom and see the results (note: trends change daily and results may vary) …

We can drill down per country, estate, and city for specific niches. The results can help us decide on what keywords or key phrases to use so the right persons can find our blogs or websites with Google.

Any idea on how we can fully use the power of Google Trends?

People scour the web for high-paying Google Adsense keywords. If we consider the dynamics of bidding for keywords in AdWords, wouldn’t those lists be a little late for current and future searches? Besides, we have looked at such lists and most often they are of top-paying keywords in limited niches. What if our sites do not deal with loans, mortgages, a disease we get from inhaling or ingesting asbestos, and lawyers?

We believe the best way to look for high-paying keywords suitable to our niches is the source itself, AdWord’s Keyword Tool External. This is simply a brief introduction and tutorial on how to get started with this important keyword tool.

Step 1. Browse to the AdWord Keyword Tool External.

Click here to open the tool in a new tab. In the homepage, we will see this image…

We can choose to generate keywords through descriptive word or by URL. By using the URL option, we can have a list of keywords relevant to the EXISTING content of a website. This is useful if we want to fine tune the keywords of our posted articles.

If we want to generate keywords for content we are yet to write, then we choose the first option.

In the adjacent gray box…

We can enter our chosen keyword or key phrase in the field provided. We can check the “use synonyms” option if we want. This will provide broader results. To keep the keywords tightly grouped, we unchecked it. We will cover later one possible use for checking the synonyms box.
For this illustration, we will generate keywords for the key phrase “ways to make money online.”

Step 2. Select suitable keywords and download a list.

After filling-in the search and captcha fields, click the submit button. We will see the box below…

The second column with the green bars tells us how much advertisers compete for each given keyword. Presumably, the longer the bar, the more advertisers are bidding, and the pricier the keyword. We can start selecting keywords and add them to a list that will appear in the green right sidebar that we can download later. Alternatively, we can download all the keywords by clicking text or CSV as marked at the bottom of the image.

Now, most people look for the top or highest paying keywords. However, let us look at them like we are selling stuff in a market. What will give us a better chance of selling something (or having people click), an expensive product which few are looking for or a regular-priced one with hundreds of potential buyers? The search volume should also guide us in making the right decision.

Another key factor in finding the right keywords is the supply of information available for any particular keyword. Is the market for that niche too saturated? Can we ever hope to have our wonderful information-filled pages seen by hundreds of potential buyers or surfers? Unfortunately, the Keyword External Tool does not include information on it but several online tools provide this, the most basic is Google itself.

About that synonym option we covered earlier, another use for it is to find keywords related to our main one that can lead people to the page or site we want to promote. For instance, if we are making a site selling clothes, we should also be using keywords on fashion, apparel, designers, and garments.

High-paying keywords are for real and it is possible to target them. For RMO, we had some luck with $0.50 to $1.00 clicks. We have read that some ads pay $2.00 per click.