Using the Google Keyword Tool for Related Keyword Suggestions

Being under the weather this weekend and also participating in an online mailing list promotion that seems to have backfired on me (more on that later) means that the next article in the arbitrage series will have to wait. But this post is semi-related, because we're going to talk about some neat stuff you can do with Google's keyword tool. The idea for today's posting came from a mail I received from the NicheBOT folks, although the idea itself isn't new to me. But I haven't discussed it here before, and so it bears discussion.

The AdWords Keyword Tool

AdWords publishers have had access to a powerful keyword tool for a long time now. About a year ago, Google made the tool available to the general public via this URL. (It's easy to find: if you search for “adwords keyword tool” in Google, it's the first result you get back.)

Google's keyword tool is an easy way to build up lists of relevant keywords. It won't give you exact pricing or volume data on the keywords — though you can get relative rankings — but it's a good way to build a list of related keywords using Google's own search data as its basis. Given that most of us are targeting Google search results to get our traffic and/or to display are ads, anything based on Google data should interest us.

When you load up the keyword tool, you're presented with two options for building your list: keyword variations or site-related keywords, as shown in the image below.

Chances are that you've used the keyword variations tab before to get a list of related keywords. But the two tabs are not mutually exclusive. You can use both tabs to build your list. And the site-related keywords are especially useful for building lists of semantically-related keywords — keywords that aren't directly related but are related in terms of a general theme or topic. All you need to do is find a well-indexed, authoritative site in the same niche as the keywords you're targeting. Plug the site into the keyword tool and then grab all the semantically-related keywords that Google gives you.

And what's the easiest way to find an authoritative site? Use Google's search engine, of course. For example, say I wanted to find keywords related to “dog training”. The #1 page for that keyphrase is Dr. P's Dog Training & Behavior Main Page as of this writing. So I take that and plug it into the site-related keywords tab of the tool:

What you get is a list of keywords that are all grouped by common terms — hey, if you're advertising via AdWords here's an easy way to get keywords for your different ad groups! — based on what Google thinks are related topics. Here's an extract of what'd you get for the dog training page I just mentioned:

Again, what's great about this information is that it tells you what keywords Google thinks are important. You can even see which ones are searched for more often than the others. It's an easy way to focus in one some specialized keywords without having to do a lot of fishing around.

So there you have it, another tool to add to your arsenal. Have fun playing around with it!

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Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

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