Tools to Help Generate Additional Keywords for Your Site

This entry is part of an ongo­ing series on how to iden­tify the best key­words to help your tar­get cus­tomers find your com­pany online.

Once you’ve compiled and categorized your keywords, you’ll probably be left with a very large list. However, to be comprehensive, you will need to round up the “long tail” (the lesser known keywords) by using keyword suggestion tools.

Keyword suggestion tools take a keyword or a list of keywords, and return a number of keywords that are related or similar. By running each of your initial keywords through a keyword suggestion tool, you will develop a far more comprehensive list of keywords. To see how this works, check out Google’s free tool by following these steps:

1. Go to the following link:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2. The Google Keyword Suggestion Tool main page will be displayed.

3. Select “Descriptive words or phrases,” under “How would you like to generate keyword ideas?”

4. Enter one or more keywords that have been found through the previous steps into the box.

5. Complete the Captcha requirement.

6. Click on the “Get keyword ideas” button.

7. A list of suggested key phrases will appear.

Note: Keyword suggestion tools tend to over deliver in that they provide keywords that are rarely used, or single-word keywords that are overly used. To counter that, do not record single-word key phrases or any key phrases with more than three words when using the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. For example, “remote online backup” and “online backup” should be recorded, while “backup” and “Arizona backup online data services” should not be recorded.

Other similar tools are:

1. The WordStream Keyword Tool

2. The WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool

There is yet another step you can take to generate an even more comprehensive list of keywords – by generating keywords based on combinations of existing keywords, or by adding adjectives and other modifiers to existing keywords. This tactic, however, should only be used when your goal is to generate a list of thousands of long-tail keywords.

Additional resources:

• 3 Steps To Turning Hundreds Of Keywords Into Millions (Search Engine Land)
• How to Organize Your Keyword Modifiers to Create Long Tail Strategy (Search Engine Journal)

Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion on find­ing the best key­words for your tar­get audi­ence. Next week I will explain how to develop a prioritization scheme for your keyword strategy.