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It’s a Good Idea to Use Multiple Tools When Researching and Developing Keywords

Written by SEER 2 Comments < back to blog home

Recently, I did keyword research for one of our clients. The client is an online retailer that sells snowboard and skateboard gear. When I was researching keywords, I came across a discrepancy within Google’s keyword research tools. First, I used Google’s Keyword Tool to research some general snowboarding terms. I looked at “snowboarding equipment” and “snowboarding gear” in exact match and examined their estimated monthly volumes. Below is a screen capture of the researched keywords on exact match:

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I then used a second tool to analyze these two terms. I turned to Google Insights and found the following:

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Now look how different Google reports on these two terms. As you can see when Google Keyword Tool was used, “snowboarding equipment” has almost 14 times the amount of average monthly search traffic when compared to the keyword term “snowboarding gear”. Then when Google Insights was used to evaluate these terms, “snowboarding gear” clearly has more traffic than “snowboarding equipment”.

These discrepancies clearly prove how important it is to use other resources for keyword research and development. Other great keyword research tools consist of:
• Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
• Microsoft adCenter Lab Keyword Research Tools
• Keyword Discovery

Overall, it is very important to use multiple keyword research tools to identify the right keywords to target for a SEO or SEM campaign. Even Google conflicts with its own self. Make sure you exhaust every resource before you are officially done.

Posted: 08.28.09