Keyword Phrase Research – Finding Your Business’s Best Keyword PhrasesKeyword phrase research is the first step in conducting search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing campaigns. You need to be able to “speak the searcher’s language” to help them find what they're looking for – and what you're offering.

But too often, search marketers make the mistake of looking at keyword phrase research as a one-time activity. Adding insult to injury, they use the wrong keyword tools: usually public keyword phrase generators that only return the most popular keywords and vague estimates of search volume. Not only are these likely the same keywords your competitors are targeting, but there's no guarantee that they'll be relevant to your business.

Proper keyword phrase research should be:

Personalized Based on real data Continuous and ongoing

Keep doing keyword phrase research the old way and you'll be sabotaging your SEO and PPC efforts from the outset. The good news is, there's a better way. The WordStream keyword management solution can improve every aspect of your keyword research process. Read on to see how.

The Old Way of Finding Keyword Phrases

Typically, businesses use one or more of a handful of publicly available tools to perform their keyword phrase research, all of which have serious shortcomings:

Keyword suggestion tools (such as Google's keyword tool)

These favor historical popularity over relevance. Just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t mean it’s relevant to your business.

Search volume estimates are dubious at best. Results are just a sampling of the vast array of real search terms that are typed into

Google every day. You'll miss out on hundreds of variations that could apply to your search campaigns.

Competitive keyword tools

These tools are based on the questionable premise that because a keyword is relevant to a competing vendor, it will be relevant to you – but every business is different.

If your competitors aren't doing a great job at keyword research, you'll just be copying their mistakes.

Keyword generator tools

Mashed-up keywords bear little resemblance to real keyword searches.

Furthermore, all of these tools are static and built for one-time use. Even if they did give you useful data, that data would quickly grow out-of-date and eventually fall into virtual obsolescence.

Keyword Phrase Research the WordStream Way

The WordStream keyword phrase tool overcomes all these weaknesses. First of all, your keyword data is completely personalized and unique. When you sign up for WordStream, you'll be prompted to import a list of keywords to get started. We recommend that you import keywords and phrases from your Web server log files. What this means is that your data will be 100% accurate and relevant to you – these are words and phrases that have already brought searchers to your website. Even better, this keyword data is completely private, so your competitors won't have access to it.

Secondly, the numbers in your WordStream account are actual traffic numbers. No more guessing at how many people are searching on a given query and wondering what (if anything) those numbers mean to you. You'll be able to see at a glance how many visitors are arriving at your site from your top keyword phrases. You can also view keywords by number of conversions, according to goals you set yourself.

A third benefit of using WordStream for keyword phrase research is the tool's dynamic nature. By adding the WordStream Tracker JavaScript to your website footer, which takes only seconds, you enable WordStream to continuously collect new keyword phrases that are driving traffic to your pages on a daily basis. No longer will your keyword research be static and stagnant. Your private, proprietary keyword phrase database will be growing and updating all the time, and

you’ll be able to use that fresh data to keep your PPC campaigns, ad groups, landing pages and so on as relevant as possible.

Use WordStream to Identify Longer, Niche Keyword Phrases

Yet another way WordStream's keyword tools beat out the competition is by allowing you to capitalize on the long tail of search.

Studies show that search engine users are getting more advanced and using longer, more detailed keyword phrases. This is great for search marketers, since long keyword phrases show more intent and often indicate that the user is late in the buying cycle.

But your typical free keyword tool isn't going to show you all those hundreds of long-tail keyword phrases. You'll mostly get a short list of very high-volume, one- or two-word keywords that are totally obvious, with tons of competition in the SERPs. By looking at the long tail, you'll have a much better chance of ranking high in search results, and your AdWords ads and landing pages will be more specific and relevant to the search queries. Increased relevance is good for organic SEO, improves your Quality Score, kickstarts conversions, lowers your ad spend and adds more value to your entire account.

Why Wait? Try WordStream for Keyword Phrase Research Today!

Sign up for a free trial of WordStream and realize the value of private, personalized, relevant keyword phrase data that grows continuously and never goes out of date.

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