Looking for Niche Keywords?  On September 16th, 2009 WordStream Launched The Free Keyword Tool for PPC and SEO. That’s right, WordStream is giving away high quality, profitable, long-tail keywords for FREE.  For more detailed information on the keyword data that WordStream provides, you can check out Frequently Asked Questions.

*In order to build out successful Search Engine Marketing Campaigns, relevant keywords must be identified, well organized and managed on an ongoing basis.*

Free Keyword Tool for PPC and SEO

How can PPC Advertisers leverage WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool for Success?  Here are a few Ideas:

• New to PPC Advertising and looking for Keywords to build out a SEM Campaign
• Experienced with PPC Advertising but would like additional keyword ideas
• Launching a new product or service and would like to expand upon the initial keyword list

Once you have identified a particular list of relevant keywords, the next step would be to organize them semantically into specific keyword groupings. (While there is not a “magic number” of keywords one should have in each adgroup, the smaller the number of keywords per adgroup, the better).  Search Engine Marketers should pick out discriminating words/phrases to use as a foundation for a particular keyword grouping, then drill down by grouping even more specific variations of that particular word or phrase.

For Example, if you query the Free Keyword Tool for “baseball bat,” 8,203 keyword phrases containing baseball+bat plus another word or words are returned.  The goal is to pick out discriminating words like:

• Wooden baseball bat
• Easton baseball bat
• tpx baseball bat

While all three of these keyword phrases contain the same root keyword “baseball bat,” these three phrases should be broken up into separate keyword groups.  Many prefixes and suffixes can be added to create variations of these keywords and create specific types of keywords.  Instead of having a general, informational query like “wooden baseball bat,” you should probably add transactional queries like “buy wooden baseball bat, low-cost wooden baseball bat, discount wooden baseball bat.”  These transactional queries can be added to the “Wooden baseball bat” keyword group.  The “keyword groups” will then become AdGroups for PPC and content will be created using those words for on-site SEO landing pages.

Most Search Engine Marketers use Excel Spreadsheets to organize keywords for PPC and SEO.  One way to very quickly organize all of your Keyword data is to group your keywords using WordStream’s Keyword Management Solution.

Keywords are the foundation for efficient Search Engine Marketing Campaigns, but keywords are only as useful as the PPC Advertiser and SEO behind them.  Keywords are a starting point.  Intelligence, organization, research, creativity, and continual keyword management must be applied in order to have successful PPC and SEO Campaigns.  Take advantage of WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool and leverage it as a part of your Diverse Inbound Marketing Strategy.

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Attention Marketers attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose August 10-14th:  WordStream’s Founder and VP of Products, Larry Kim will be speaking on Thursday, August 13th at #SESSJ at the Advanced PPC Track Session: Brainstorming the Paid Search Super Tool.

The competition is fierce in paid search! From small in-house accounts to ones with millions of keywords, it’s the new advances in SEM technology that might just make the difference between success and failure. Are there tools you could be using right now to help double your conversions, lower your costs, or save your team hours of time every week? At this panel, top paid search tool vendors will showcase their latest features in bid management, campaign workflow efficiencies, and reveal what the future holds for the industry. As well, the audience will be asked to brainstorm what the “paid search super tool” should include and create a wish list recommendation to tool providers.

Keyword grouping and organization provides a strong foundation for long-term search engine marketing success. Start with an extensive of keywords related to your industry (products and/or services) and then organize those keywords into semantically related keyword groups.

In an ideal world, the Search Engine Marketer will want to have one keyword per keyword group (AdGroup), multiple ads that speak directly to that keyword and a destination URL/Landing Page that is optimized for the keyword in the AdGroup. There simply is not enough time in the day for Search Engine Marketers to organize their keywords at the aforementioned granularity, but there are efficiency tools in the marketplace to help. The most widely used tools for keyword grouping are Microsoft Excel and the Google AdWords Editor. Other Keyword Grouping Tools include Google’s Keyword Grouping Tool, Keyword Grouper, and WordStream.

Here are some Video Tutorials on Keyword Grouping Tools:

Google’s Keyword Grouping Tool from MarketingToolsExpert.com

Keyword Grouper (short version)

WordStream’s Keyword Grouping Tool for Efficient PPC Advertising

3 Major problems with Microsoft Excel, Google AdWords Editor, Google’s Keyword Grouping Tool, Keyword Grouper and just about every other Keyword Grouping Tool in the marketplace is that they are all STATIC. In order to group keywords, the SEM must upload keywords into the grouper in order to then take action on those keywords. Another Major problem is that it these keyword grouping tools are not collaborative. A final problem with these keyword grouping tools is that it is difficult to merge data in these tools.

WordStream is the only Dynamic Keyword Grouping Tool in the marketplace that allows for multiple users to simultaneously take action on web analytics data from anywhere in the world. WordStream is a private, rules-based keyword database that allows the SEM to take action on relevant keyword data. WordStream has a snippet of JavaScript that will capture all search queries that generate organic and paid clicks to your website and pull those queries into your database and automatically organize those queries based on the rules that you have created (read, the keyword groups that you have created).

Which Keyword Grouping Tool do you use?

***Full Disclosure: WordStream is my employer***