Keywords are instrumental in helping people find your website. Every time someone searches for a keyword that relates to your brand, you want them to find your site, nestled toward the top of search results. If that’s not the case, you need to invest serious time in researching the right keywords and adding them to your website. These tools make it easy to do.
1. Google Keyword Planner
This tool is part of Google AdWords, but you don’t have to buy ads to use it. Google Keyword Planner lets you search for keyword ideas as well as see how many people are searching for a given keyword.
Go one step further: Once you find a handful of keywords that you think accurately describe your products or services, incorporate them on each page of your website. But only use one or two per page! Using more may trigger Google to push you down search results rather than up, as the search mogul is cracking down on black hat SEO strategies.
2. WordTracker
Google’s Keyword Planner is free to use, but WordTracker is a subscription-based keyword research tool. It also provides relevant and related keywords, and can help you find ones you wouldn’t otherwise have thought of. You get more keywords than with Keyword Planner, and you can access your searches by logging into your account, rather than dealing with clunky spreadsheets of data.
Go one step further: Check out WordTracker Academy for great resources to help sharpen your SEO skills and stay on top of the latest updates. They also offer some great reports and downloads.
3. Twitter Hashtags
Just like with Google Trends, hashtags on Twitter can let you know what people are buzzing about right now.
Go one step further: Check the lefthand sidebar on your Twitter homepage to see the hashtags that are being used heavily at any given moment. Use them in your own social updates, or use the topics as blog fodder.
4. Ubersuggest.org
UberSuggest is one of the best free Keyword suggestion tools with an easy to use graphical component. Übersuggest is one suggestion tool that makes good use of different suggest services. You can get suggestions from regular web searches or from search verticals like shopping, news or video. Ubersuggest can be very useful for quick keyword based post ideas.
Bonus Tool: Google Trends
While not a keyword research tool per se, Google Trends shows you what’s hot right now. This is especially useful if you’re looking for blog topics. Ride on the tails of trending searches or news, and you’re more likely to see more readers for that particular post.
Go one step further: Subscribe to Trends to get emailed whenever topics you care about pop up as trending.
Keywords change over time, so make sure you constantly stay on top of the best keywords to promote your small business website.
Republished by permission. Original here.
Image: Google
Abdul
I would absolutely add 7Search’s keyword tool to the list: http://www.7search.com/KST – the best part about it is that it shows the # of searches on the 7Search network. Great tool for keyword research.
Another couple tools out there that I’ve found useful are SEMrush and SpyFu. SpyFu is more of a competitive research tool, but you can learn a lot from what keywords other sites are targeting. SEMrush is a paid tool like WordTracker, but I quite like it.
Jodie
Thank you Melinda for such a great, resourceful article! So many ideas and “clickable” resources! I would love to join in on one of your #smallbizchat on Twitter! What time ( EST) and day do you host them?