Over the years I have been asked many times “What is a keyword tool and why is it important?” The question has invariably been posed by small business owners who have a website but probably don’t understand the power, or significance, of keyword tools.

The Internet is a vast encyclopedia of knowledge that throws up results for each and every phrase that is entered in the search bar. The phrases or search queries that are entered are “keywords” that Google (or other search engines) use to search their vast library and come up with a relevant answer to the search.

Understanding what a keyword tool is, what it does and why it is important will benefit you in your business and have your results show up higher and more frequently in search results.

The more your website shows up in results the greater the number of people that will view your site – these visitors to your site are referred to as “traffic”. The more traffic you have visiting the more likely you are of making sales, getting appointments having people engage or whatever your goals are.

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What is a Keyword?

Wikipedia’s definition of a keyword can be seen here.

Let me give you my internet affiliate marketing perspective of what a “keyword” is.

“A keyword is any word, combination of words or phrase that is used in describing, or searching for, information on the Internet”.

It isn’t any more complicated than that.

As an example the following keywords would probably be used by people who are after the same thing but each search will throw up different results:

• Keyword tool,
• Keyword research,
• Best keyword tool,
• Ranking using a keyword tool,
• Is a keyword tool important?
• What is the best keyword tool?
• What is a Keyword tool? (The keyword I am targeting in this article.)

A key word tool can tell you which of these phrases is used the most and which is easier to rank higher for.

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Using a Keyword Tool To Get Ahead of The Competition

I use Jaaxy as my preferred keyword tool, primarily to find good keywords with very little competition.

Researching the keywords used in the previous paragraph Jaaxy gives me the following information.

 

Keyword	Monthly Searches	Page 1 traffic	* QSR	** KQI
Keyword tool	3881	661	180	NORMAL
Keyword research	6608	1124	198	NORMAL
Best Keyword tool	316	54	185	GREAT
What is the Best Keyword tool	302	52	40	GREAT
Ranking using a Keyword tool	<10	<10	0	GREAT
Is a Keyword tool important?	<10	<10	2	GREAT
What is a Keyword tool?	3881	660	25	GREAT

Where …

*QSR stands for “quoted search results” and indicates how many pages on the internet have this exact phrase – usually as a title or as a paragraph heading. QSR is a very good indication of your actual competition for that particular keyword. This does not mean these are your only competition and further research needs to be done before deciding on using a particular keyword.

**KQI is Jaaxy’s Keyworde Quality Indicator showing how good the keyword is to target.

Now with this information in hand you would begin the process of elimination or selection.

As a general rule it is far better to target less competitive keywords, even though potential traffic might be less, than it is to try to muscle the big boys out of top spot – more on this later. This is especially so in the early stages of your site’s development.

Looking at the above numbers it can be seen that the search volume and anticipated monthly traffic for “Keyword tool” and “What is a keyword tool?” are virtually identical.

The actual number of competing pages (QSR) for the latter are far less while the keyword quality is better.

Searches for my chosen keyword and my anticipated page 1 traffic is the same!

It therefore makes much more sense to aim to rank for “what is a keyword tool?”

To make my heading, and hence my keyword, a bit more interesting I have added “and why it is important” in brackets – Google likes this sort of additional enticing heading as it get’s people’s interest up.

Will I rank using this keyword?

Will it work?

I really don’t know and will only find out once it is posted and been up for a while, however I do believe that I have a very good chance of ranking highly.

In the meanwhile … how did you come to be here on this page – what keyword did you use?

Try Jaaxy for free – click on the mouse.

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier on I mentioned targeting less used keywords with good numbers and potentially good traffic – let me expand on that.

Using jaaxy I aim for what we call “low hanging fruit” keywords that have very little competition. Ideally the QSR index should be less than 100.

It’s pretty easy to compete against 100 other pages, much more so than competing against 500.

Make sense?

If you have 200 posts or pages of low-hanging-fruit keywords that are each getting 50 views a month you will have a total of 10,000 visitors to your site each month.

It is much easier to achieve this than it is to rank for 5 keywords that each get 2000 visitors (although of course this is possible).

Learn more about low-hanging- fruit keywords – click here (great video included).

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Ranking on Page 1 – nothing else (really) matters

Ranking on page one is not some big secret that only those “in “the-know”” can achieve.

Understanding what search engines are about and what their aims are will help you go a long way to getting on page 1 of rankings.

The search engine’s primary function is to provide their users with relevant information.

Think about it – if you want to know about a keyword tool (or any subject you choose) you do NOT want to be taken to a page that talks about anything else.

The search engines will give you what they believe is the most relevant information in their archives that accurately answers your query. They are there to help you and relevance is their number 1 priority when presenting results to their customers.

Not only will they put the most relevant information in front of you but they go further and give you millions of results to view – if you so choose.

Very few people ever bother going beyond page 1 of results. Maybe page 2 at the most but after that they will probably refine their search if they haven’t found what they want.

Can you see why it is so important to rank high on page 1?

No other page really matters.

Keywords and relevant content play a huge roll in rankings but there are other SEO (Search Engine Optimization) issues the come into play. These take the form of meta tags, images, alternate text for images, internal and external links and an array of other things which are all fed into the search engine’s algorithm before the results are spat out on to your computer.

Where can you learn all this stuff – and believe me you can save a lot of time and dollars by getting the right training?

There are a ton of places that you can go to on the Internet to learn all the SEO ropes.

A note of caution – many promise the earth, some will try to fleece you by luring you in and slowly up selling you until you are hundreds or thousands of dollars in, others deliver inferior products where the success rate is virtually zero.

The best place on the planet to learn all you need to know about SEO practices from starting a website to marketing and promoting ANY TYPE OF PRODUCT is Wealthy Affiliate University (WA). Coincidentally Jaaxy is part of the Wealthy Affiliate University’s toolbox.

I’ve been part of WA sine 2006 and the training, education and support they offer is by far the best in my opinion.

Read my full review on Wealthy Affiliate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now … back to keyword tools.

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Google Searches – “Google it”

How often have you heard someone say “Google it” in response to a question?

Google and the internet as a whole has become an integral part of or life and despite the over 3.2 billion people (2015 figures) that use it daily the growth is still exponential.

There are over 63,000 searches per second on Google every second of every day!

That is 3.8 million users looking for something on the Internet every single minute.

You don’t need a big percentage of these searches to become successful online and a keyword tool will help you pick-up enough to create a very successful online business – always provided that you do everything else SEO wise correctly and ensure your content is relevant.

There are 3 keyword tools I use:

1. The first is my brain.I ask myself what would I enter into the search bar if I was looking for something specific. I do this because it is humans that we are dealing with and who will be entering the searches. Be sure to use proper English not words that do not make grammatical sense.
2. The second is the Jaaxy keyword tool which I find invaluable.I often use Jaaxy to eliminate high competition keywords, keywords that I don’t want to compete with.
   It’s always disappointing to find a keyword you think is great only to discover it is too hard to rank for – but better that than spending hours on it and not having it ever rank.I’m looking for low-competition keywords that will easy to rank for and Jaaxy is ideal for this.
3. The third is Google’s keyword planner.A great free keyword tool that I find very useful for checking Jaaxy’s numbers and it is particularly good for Pay Per Click Advertising.
   If you want to learn more about Google’s Keyword Planner just “Google it!”

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Google Algorithm – an evolving process

Google and other search engines are always updating their algorithms as they strive to provide relevance to their users.

These updates are sometimes driven by shady manipulation of SEO practices to get ahead of the rest but in all honesty if you stick to the basics as taught by Wealthy Affiliate University (who have been around since 2005) you have no need to worry.

The trick to getting high ranking is to provide relevance using low hanging fruit keywords and drilling down to specifics.

Knowing your audience and target market, the “language” they speak, the things they are after, why they want them etc. will all help you to help them. Help people and they will trust you and in turn accept your recommendations. This could well result in sales (which is the general idea) without being pushy.

Internet Customers are way more sophisticated than they ever were and snake oil salesmen struggle in this environment.

It is worth noting that, when analyzing your competition, established authority sites carry more weight in the algorithms than do new sites. Take this into consideration even though your keyword tool says “go for it!”.

Yes you can compete with the big sites but before I got in the ring with Muhammad Ali I would have done some serious training and fighting at the lower ranks. And then changed my mind ’cause I’m not a fighter.

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A Keyword Tool is Your Best Friend

Without a keyword tool you would struggle to find out how many competing pages you are up against and could end up doing countless hours of work for no reward.

Here’s a pro secret for you.

I’m going to use the keyword “what is a keyword tool” for this example.

I’d like you to play along.

Go to Google and type “What is a keyword tool?” (without the inverted commas)  into the search bar.

Your result should look something like this.

 

WOW 317,000,000 results!

Now type “What is a keyword tool?” with the inverted commas. This is called and “exact match” search and shows the number of pages with that exact phrase in them. The same as jaaxy’s QSR – quoted search results.

Note the is a dramatic change in the numbers – just by searching in inverted commas for an exact match we are down to as few as 45,900.  But we’re not finished yet as this is not quite the figure we are looking for.

To come up with the same figure Jaaxy did (25) we need to dig a bit deeper.

Here’s what you do now.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of this latter search where you will see it has a total of 4 pages.

In my case it comes up with 1 result on page 4 which is a paid advert (this is pay per click I mentioned earlier).  When the only result on the last page is an advert you need to go back a page until you arrive at the real organic search results.

Doing this you should land up with something like the following screen shot.

 

 

As we can see there are only 20 competing site – pretty close to what Jaaxy said.

That means that I am really only competing with 20 pages for this specific keyword.  As a result I feel much more confident of being able to rank.

Can you see why I say a keyword tool is your best friend?

Conclusion

Now that you know what a keyword tool is and what it can do for you I hope you are intirgued and interested enough to find out more about how the Internet, and the search engines in particular, work.

Is this something you want to learn more about?

Let me know in the comments below.

Any questions or thoughts and I will be happy to get back to you with a RELEVANT answer.

Be careful out there – behind every click is a potential scam artist trying to empty your wallet!