SmallBusinessNewz

Have you ever used Google's search-based keyword tool? The tool was launched last November. It was designed to enable paid search advertisers to get more ideas for keywords that could drive people to their sites.

Earlier this year, Google made some improvements to the tool. They made it more widely available (US, UK, Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand), and added some customization features that could lead to more targeted results: language/country-specific results and ad/search share filters, which let the user filter by ad share and search share, in addition to the other advanced filtering options like monthly searches, competition, suggested bid, and "URL Contains".

To use the tool, just enter you URL and some keywords associated with your site as examples. The tool will give you:

- More keyword ideas
- The average number of searches on each query per month
- The competitive bidding level for each term
- The estimated bid to appear in the top three ad positions
- The % of time with which an ad for your website appeared for the given query
- The % of time which your site appeared in the first page of search results for the query
- The suggested landing page for each keyword

Apart from being a valuable (and free) tool to use for paid search campaigns. It could also be used as a gauge to see what other queries people are searching for related to keywords for your industry. You can then use this information to keep in mind when optimizing your site. Remember, Google doesn't pay attention to the "keywords" meta tag, but that doesn't mean you can't consider popular queries when it comes to headlines, sub-headings, etc. That said, you don't want to overdo this, because writing for search engines is not likely to work in your favor, as opposed to writing for people. You still have to keep it natural.