Is the Google Keyword Tool even slightly accurate?

13 years ago

You have made the classic mistake #2 from What Are The Biggest Keyword Research Mistakes?

In brief, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool will tell you nothing about the competition difficulty for ranking a particular keyword.

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MikeFriedman 13 years ago

As UMS was alluding to, that competition bar is in relation to the competition among AdWords bidders. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of ranking keywords for those terms.
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outwest

13 years ago

People use the KW tool to find total monthly searches (approx)
not competition

competition just what are you seeing that tells you competition? their figures are for paid search adwords competition not TOP 10 google competition which is what you need to analyze

you have a lot to learn about analyzing the competition

1. The "competition" showing on Kw tool for adwords is PAID ADWORD COMPETITION , paid ads purchasing those kws

that is irrelevant.

Go to Youtube
Enter
How to analyze Top 10 on Google

watch those tutorials
they will teach you how to analyze the competion for kws usually with Market Samurai or Traffic Travis, tools like that

Spend about 6 hours watching those videos
you need to do that

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refinancepro

13 years ago

Although everyone has stated truthful information here I would like to just add my two cents to try and help. If you are truly looking for lower competition keywords you should do your research better however a good rule of thumb is that anything with over 1000 exact searches a month is going to take a bit of work to rank on. Anything below 1000 exact shouldn't be too tough but that does not mean they will rank quickly and easily always.

Obviously ranking for insurance or mortgage, even with such a low amount of searches a month, is going to take some work due to all the competition and thats just common sense.

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Eleanor 13 years ago

Hey,

Like others have said, the competition bar in the Google Keyword Tool is for Google AdWords advertisers. In other words, it's the level of people bidding on those keywords.

Competition analysis is impossible to do with the Keyword Tool (hence it's name! )

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Eleanor
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outwest

13 years ago

Originally Posted by refinancepro

Although everyone has stated truthful information here I would like to just add my two cents to try and help. If you are truly looking for lower competition keywords you should do your research better however a good rule of thumb is that anything with over 1000 exact searches a month is going to take a bit of work to rank on. Anything below 1000 exact shouldn't be too tough but that does not mean they will rank quickly and easily always.

Obviously ranking for insurance or mortgage, even with such a low amount of searches a month, is going to take some work due to all the competition and thats just common sense.

I disagree
if you go by this measure you would just ignore anything over 1000 searches a month

I have found the opposite to be true

I have found plenty of 500 searches per month phrases
with EVERY DOMAIN EXTENSION GONE
and brutal competition

I actually think that there is a TON of people out there who think this way and shoot for kws with 1000 monthly searches or less and they are afraid of the higher monthly search kws, so this creates WAY HIGHER competition on a lot of the lower monthly search kws

conversely
this past month
I found about 30 kws with 5000, 10,000 15,000 exact monthly searches
with VERY VERY LOW almost laughable backlinks, I am talking less than 50 some less than 10 backlinks not just to one of the top ten but to almost all the top 5 on google competition

were these easy to find?>
HELL NO
but the fact is I found them
if I had taken your advice I would have not even tried those high monthly search total kws

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Eleanor

13 years ago

Originally Posted by outwest

I disagree
if you go by this measure you would just ignore anything over 1000 searches a month

I have found the opposite to be true

I have found plenty of 500 searches per month phrases
with EVERY DOMAIN EXTENSION GONE
and brutal competition

I actually think that there is a TON of people out there who think this way and shoot for kws with 1000 monthly searches or less and they are afraid of the higher monthly search kws, so this creates WAY HIGHER competition on a lot of the lower monthly search kws

conversely
this past month
I found about 30 kws with 5000, 10,000 15,000 exact monthly searches
with VERY VERY LOW almost laughable backlinks, I am talking less than 50 some less than 10 backlinks not just to one of the top ten but to almost all the top 5 on google competition

were these easy to find?>
HELL NO
but the fact is I found them
if I had taken your advice I would have not even tried those high monthly search total kws

Totally agree - search volume is no way to judge competition. You just have to do the competition analysis.

Low searches also doesn't mean that a niche/keyword isn't profitable. These low search volumes could (and sometimes are) full of buyers - as opposed to higher volume searches which can be full of information seekers rather than buyers.

I'd rather have a keyword with 200 buyer searches than 1000 information searchers... but then that's a whole different discussion!

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Eleanor

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outwest

13 years ago

Originally Posted by bubbins1987

Totally agree - search volume is no way to judge competition. You just have to do the competition analysis.

Low searches also doesn't mean that a niche/keyword isn't profitable. These low search volumes could (and sometimes are) full of buyers - as opposed to higher volume searches which can be full of information seekers rather than buyers.

I'd rather have a keyword with 200 buyer searches than 1000 information searchers... but then that's a whole different discussion!

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Eleanor

You misunderstood what I wrote
1, I look for kws for Adsense, so the higher the search volume the better for me (assuming the competition is manageable)

2 . the guy was saying anything more than 1000 searches a month will be high competition hard to rank. Now when He says this what I would do if I were a newbie with no experience is say oh ok I will just look at kws with 1000 searches a month or less

I find the opposite to be true
I find that many of the low search number kws like 500 per month are BRUTALLY COMPETITIVE, since I think a lot of webmasters go for those low monthly search kws assuming exactly what this guy said, that these are easier to rank

half of them I dont know if they even check the competition on Google top 10 or not

I have found a TON of HIGH MONTLY SEARCH kws this last month that are extremely non competitive, and I am talking 5k, 10k, 15k some even 20k per month

If I had followed the advice of oh dont go for these high search volume kws they are too hard to rank for, I would have missed all these high volume kws

so you guys keep ignoring the high volume kws
more for the rest of us

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My4HWW

13 years ago

This is kind of a silly argument. Yes, it's possible for a 10k keyword to be less competitive than a 500 search keyword, but in general, the vast majority of higher search volume keywords will be more competitive than the lower search volume keywords. This is just pure logic.

Obviously, there are exceptions, but they are just that - exceptions. Most exceptions are "buyer" keywords - a keyword like "flat screen tvs on sale" may only get 400 searches/month, but it could easily be more competitive than a keyword like "what do rabbits eat" which has over 5k searches per month. I don't know if this particular example is true, but hopefully it illustrates my point.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't look to rank for high volume keywords and only focus on low volume keywords - like someone said, you need to evaluate each on a case by case basis.

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outwest

13 years ago

I dont disagree that IN GENERAL
higher search volume = more competition

however
do not go by that
you can sometimes find like I did words that are high search volume that you are SURE would be terrible competition
but
they are not
if you just ignore everything over 1000 searches a month
you pass up a lot of good kws

I found kws this month with 10,000+ searches per month, (exact local)
the backlinks to the pages? top 3 looked like this
12
5
20
and these are great Adsense Kws

something like that
and I found about 20 kws like that

now most people will say I am full of it but I am telling you its true

If I had just ignored high volume kws assuming they were too competitive I never would have found these
and yes
it was DAMN HARD
to find them
but
I did find them
probably took me 50 hours of searching

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olimits7

12 years ago

Hi,

I came across this post and found it very useful!

However, if the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (GAKT) is mainly useful/relevant for Adwords campaigns because the data shown here mainly comes from Adwords; can someone help point me in the right direction on how I can do analysis to find out good keywords to target for SEO on the top 10 of Google?

Since the "exact", "broad", "phrase" matches are helpful; based on my research it is more useful in the Adwords campaign.

What can I do to find good keywords to target based on the top 10 of Google?

Thank you,

olimits7