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Google Keyword Tool - Crap?

by hustlenflow
8 replies
Hey so ive been doing google places for clients and i wanted to know something about the google keyword tool.

My client is an employment agency and im targeting the keyword "work in atlanta". Under "broad" that had a search volume of about 200,000 and then under "Exact" it was around 250 per month. Now should i expect to get 250 searches a month or more? Whats the deal with the HUGE number gap
#crap #google #keyword #tool
  • Profile picture of the author mnonline
    What keywords did you use? I think it depends on what keywords you used. Broad keywords show wide range of keywords that have any words you typed. I think the keyword phrase you typed in have low search volume or not popular.
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  • Profile picture of the author himanuzo
    If you grab a top ranking at Google for a keyword which you targeted, you will get traffic 5-20% from the search volume of Google Keyword Tool.
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    • Profile picture of the author Scott Million
      Originally Posted by himanuzo View Post

      If you grab a top ranking at Google for a keyword which you targeted, you will get traffic 5-20% from the search volume of Google Keyword Tool.
      Not true at all. I have top positions for many keywords between the 20,000 - 50,000 exact search per month Google estimates that I laser targeted only to find that I was getting 10-20 visitors a day (total) after months of content and backlinking work.

      On the other hand, there's a lot of exact keywords I rank for that were lowballed, that ended up being gold mines.

      Trust those search estimates with a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE grain of salt. This is why longtail traffic is so important as well as non-SE traffic sources.

      I've actually been getting much better results as far as traffic is concerned (and conversions) by not doing any SEO at all and just writing for the reader, instead having my team focus on building audiences through social network sites and YouTube rather than writing keyword rich articles and building backlinks.

      Via this method, I've found it much easier to build lists as well considering you can send them to landing pages w/ one action vs. the extra step of hitting a site with options first.

      You really don't need Google anymore (although some people never needed it)... and the way FaceBook is going off the charts (likely to introduce a more popular SE than Google) it's starting to make less and less sense to optimize solely for them, and to gear more towards social share-ability.

      Back to "great content is king" I guess
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Voss
    The broad keyword phrase will always generate higher search terms, but they will be less targeted. The exact phrase will get fewer results, but they will be more targeted.

    For example, in your post you used the exact phrase: search volume.

    If I did a search on Google (without quotes) for: Search Volume

    One of my search results might be: Star Trek, The Search for Spock, Volume I

    Not quite what we would be looking for, being members of the warrior forum (well except for the nerdiest among us )

    But, if you did the same search in Google with quotes: "Search Volume"

    This page would not show up.

    So, to answer your question, if you target the keyword phrase "Search Volume" you will be targeted for the lower number and if you target the keyword phrase: Search Volume (no quotes) then you will be targeted for the higher number of searches.

    I hope that helps,
    Scott Voss



    Originally Posted by hustlenflow View Post

    Hey so ive been doing google places for clients and i wanted to know something about the google keyword tool. I targeted a keyword under "broad" that had a search volume of about 200,000 and then under "Exact" it was around 250 per month. Now should i expect to get 250 searches a month or more? Whats the deal with the HUGE number gap
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  • Profile picture of the author Vincenzo Oliva
    Well I think there's been a big discussion recently over on SEO expert Daniel Tan's page about this. Daniel says GKT is extremely inaccurate. Put in the exact phrase in quotes in google search and at the end of the url that comes back add &start=990
    Google only really ranks the top 1000, at the bottom of those results it will tell you the number of actual competing sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulie888
    There's always going to be a huge variance between broad and exact search. For local business search, don't worry so much about the numbers - what's far more important is the intent of the search terms you're using, and if they're targeted enough even a few hundred searches each month is going to bring a dramatic and noticeable improvement in business to your client.
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  • Profile picture of the author hustlenflow
    its for an employment agency, and im targeting "work in atlanta" which under broad is 200,000 searches and exact has 210 searches. I am only curious why its that way for this search term
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  • Profile picture of the author oneplusone
    One thing you could try is check out the Alexa rank of the sites on Page 1 to see how much traffic they are getting.

    Especially those which appear to be targetted specifically for that keyword, like the sites which have the keyword as (or in) the domain name.

    If there are any like that, sometimes there aren't.
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