Keyword Phrases: Finding the Best Keyword Phrases for Your Business
Keyword phrase research is the first step in conducting search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing campaigns. You need to be able to “speak the searcher’s language” to help them find what they’re looking for – and what you’re offering.
But too often, search marketers make the mistake of looking at keyword phrase discovery as a one-time activity. Adding insult to injury, they use the wrong keyword tools: usually limited public keyword phrase generators that only return the most popular keywords and vague estimates of search volume. Not only are these likely the same keywords your competitors are targeting, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be relevant to your business.
Proper keyword phrase research should be:
- Personalized
- Based on real data
- Continuous and ongoing
Keep doing keyword research the old way and you’ll be sabotaging your SEO and PPC efforts from the outset.
The Old Way of Finding Keyword Phrases
Typically, businesses take a one-size-fits-all approach to keyword phrase research, using the same free tools as every one else. These keyword suggestion tools (such as Google’s keyword tool) have a number of shortcomings:
- They favor historical popularity over relevance. Just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t mean it’s relevant to your business.
- The results aren’t actionable: They just dump out a list with no organization or tips on how to use the terms.
- The results aren’t exclusive, so you have no competitive edge.
- Results are just a sampling of the vast array of real search terms that are typed into Google every day. You’ll miss out on hundreds of long-tail variations that could apply to your search campaigns.
Our own Free Keyword Tool is a vast improvement over other available keyword phrase generators. Because we aggregate over a billion unique keywords and constantly update our database, our keyword suggestions are far more relevant and accurate.
However, even with this much longer, more relevant keyword list, you still need a way to incorporate exclusive long-tail keyword data. How?
Finding Keyword Phrases the WordStream Way
The WordStream Keyword Research Suite includes a keyword phrase generator that overcomes all these weaknesses. The Keyword Research Suite includes tools for:
- Finding hundreds or thousands of keyword phrases relevant to your business
- Finding targeted clusters of related keywords to use in search marketing campaigns
- Organizing a list of keywords into small groups by relevance
- Finding negative keywords to reduce wasteful PPC spending
- Optimizing your content so it gets found in the search engines
Best of all, our keyword tools are completely free.
Use WordStream to Identify Longer, Niche Keyword Phrases
Yet another way WordStream’s keyword tools beat out the competition is by allowing you to capitalize on the long tail of search.
Studies show that search engine users are getting more advanced and using longer, more detailed keyword phrases. This is great for search marketers, since long keyword phrases show more intent and often indicate that the user is late in the buying cycle.
But your typical free keyword tool isn’t going to show you all those hundreds of long-tail, niche keyword phrases. You’ll mostly get a short list of very high-volume, one- or two-word keywords that are totally obvious, with tons of keyword competition in the SERPs. By looking at the long tail, you’ll have a much better chance of ranking high in search results, and your AdWords ads and landing pages will be more specific and relevant to the search queries. Increased relevance is good for organic SEO, improves your Quality Score, kickstarts conversions, lowers your ad spend and adds more value to your entire account.
