How to find keywords getting significant traffic

[seoug_2005]

How can we  check with the Google Keyword Tool to figure out which keywords are getting significant traffic. Needs explanation for the bolded part.

I am referring to the Q and A at -

http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-a-report-in-seomoz-that-will-show-me-what-keywords-each-page-ranks-for-on-my-site

The best way to see the information you're looking for is to take all keywords that sent you an organic search visit for a given time period in your analytics and run them through a rank checker. You can then cross-check this data with the Google Keyword Tool to figure out which keywords are getting significant traffic.

[BigTimer]

I've found Wordtracker to be the easiest to get started with. You can enter in keyword phrases on their home page and get instant, actionable advice. Then, after you've made a few choices in Wordtracker, go to AdWords to compare and refine your results.

However, here is a down-and-dirty way to find out high-traffic keywords:

1. Go to Google.com and log out of your Google account.
2. Start typing in your search terms
3. Google automatically returns the most-searched terms while you're typing.

[johnshearer]

I discovered what Atticus is suggesting by accident with ADwords. I also use Wordtracker a great tool to discover long tail keyword combinations. Some folks use SEO Samaruai. Good Luck.

[seoug_2005]

Great answer. Thanks

[activitysuper]

Ok basically what he is saying is your website might be generating clicks from a keyword which has more potential if it moved up the rankings a little.

So he is saying take all the keywords from Google analytics which generated a click from organic (say over a 3 month period) and paste them into Adwords keyword tool as exact match.

You might find a keyword which generated 20 clicks actually has a monthly search volume of 5,000.

Because this keyword has 5, 10, 20 clicks it must not be that far away from page 1 as users don't really dive deeper then page 2 of Google (in general) and your getting clicks for it.

So that would be a good keyword to aim for in your SEO efforts (as long as its relevant to your industry).

If you find a keyword like this, you could most likely search for it in Google and find your result within the first couple of pages.

Hope this makes sense.

[LuminInteractive]

This may not be the answer you're looking for but....

The best keyword research tool is AdWords. Yes...it cost money, but think about it this way...You get a client that's paying $2K/month. You use all the keyword tools and decide on a several keywords, but really go after 2-3 which you target on the homepage. 2-3 months later when you links start kicking in you realize that the kewyord volumes reported by all the keyowrd tools (especially Google!) were wrong. You've now wasted 3 months and $3K of your clients budget on optimizing for the wrong terms.

In reality, you could have run a PPC campaign to get almost perfect keyword volumes (especially with by using the impression shares and search terms reports). Sure, it matters how much the PPC costs are for that keyword, but the idea when doing a campaign like this is to get your ad on the front page, but NOT get it clicked. Do things like bid high but write the worst possible copy you can. (It's actually kind of fun!) Also, get a coupon to get a $100 of free research.

It's best to do this for a month, but if you can only afford to do it for a week, nine times out of ten it's far more accurate than Google's keyword tool. Also, when you do this you can get your server logs to determine every keyword that TRIGGERED your ad, not just keywords that resulted in a click.

****If you have the budget to actually try to generate clicks, this had an additional benefit. Try as many ad copy/headlines as possible. The copy with the highest CTR will likely be an excellent choice for your meta description and title tag.

Another option is to do this on AdCenter. It's cheaper and they'll give you every keyword that triggered an ad with Excel add-on (only if your using a PC....argh!). If you use AdCenter, just multiply your results by 3 to get an estimate. Again, it may not be perfect, but it's way more accurate than the keyword tool.

I'm at the point where this is pretty much the only way I do keyword research. It's a small investment for the potential benefits.

If folks find this interesting/helpful, I'll write a step by step blog post....I've also been collecting all of the keyword volumes I'm finding with Adwords/AdCenter (and confirming with GA) and comparing them with keyword research tools, particularly Google's. From what I found this far, I honestly don't use Google's keyword tool for anything other than finding other keywords and getting a very, very general idea of which keywords should have the most volume.