I have nothing against Google keyword tool or any other SEO optimizing tool you might find out there. I’m just saying that you need to be careful when you work with both SEO and numbers. When you work on optimizing for specific terms, some tools can be helpful. But there are others that you should avoid, or learn to use smartly at least.
“Not all numbers are created equal”
Every keyword tool, Google’s tool included, looks like a million dollars. You insert the keyword you want and lay back to see what will happen. You will get yourself a list of associated keywords. Also, you will get yourself info on the frequency of search for these keywords. It is easy to move forward: you choose the most popular keyword and use it for your task.
But let’s go a step back now. Many internet tools are free of charge provided that you register. Registration is also free, but you know the tools and apps: they want to know just how popular they are, and how many people use them to brag about it at their meetings and conventions. Google’s keyword tool is not different.
Now we are coming to the breaking point: not all numbers that you find out are equally useful.
When you go to Google’s keyword tool and do the search as an unregistered user, you will always receive millions of hits for a keyword(s). Let’s say that you are offline and you search for Tiger Woods. You will receive not only keywords that are related to the most famous golf player of today (first of all being his net worth), but also keywords that show you how many times words tiger and woods show up in search results. And that is not something that you need. Quite the opposite – it can bring you far away from what you need.
But if you are a registered user of Google’s keyword tool searching for keywords, you will receive pieces of information related only to what you put in between your quotation marks. Put Tiger Woods and you will get the relevant information on the golf player.
You can register and play with logged-in and logged-out searches to learn that the result can be remarkably different.
How does the rest of the Google family feel about this?
SEO optimization does need a bit more sweat and tears. Not everything can be done with one registration and one click.
When you finish up with your Google’s keyword tool, do stop by at Google News and start typing. Yes, do the logged-in-logged-out game once again. Now, be surprised about what’s coming: some of Google’s keyword tool specials are not even ranked on Google news most wanted list.
What to do?
First of all, and I mean this for whatever you will decide to use, do register and log in. Logged-out results are way too misleading to even look at them. And this is kind of bad for SEO.
Now, what makes Google’s keyword tool so unreliable is its search volume. As stated, Google’s keyword tool shows āthe approximate 12-month average of user queries for the keyword on Google.co.uk and the Google Search Networkā. It blows up searches.
Instead of giving just poor critics, I would advise you to turn to other members of the Google family: Google Autocomplete for News, Google Insights, and Google Autocomplete for web searches. I am confident that you will make fewer mistakes and get a much clearer picture of what people search for and how you can turn it to your advantage.
