What's the alternative to Google's soon-to-be withdrawn keyword tool?

In the next few weeks, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is being retired. To get keyword ideas with Google, you will need to log in to your AdWords account and use their Keyword Planner. Google keyword research is effectively moving behind bars.

Brent Hodgson from Keyword Blueprint asks Wordtracker CEO Mike Mindel what these changes mean for people doing SEO keyword research.

Brent: Google is pushing website owners towards a high quality content strategy with recent updates that limit the value of some types of traditional SEO. That said, is keyword research still valuable now? Will it be valuable in the long term?

Mike: Keyword research is as relevant now as it was in the very early days of search marketing. Without insight into how your potential audience or customer base is searching for products or content, you're walking in the dark.
It's easy to guess how to target content, but without clear knowledge of who you're writing for, that guess could result in hours, days or weeks of misguided publishing that don't produce any clear results.

Brent: In general, what are your thoughts about Google removing the Google AdWords Keyword Tool? Is it a smart move on Google's part? Or shortsighted?

Mike: The temptation here might be to just say 'shortsighted' and leave it at that. However, looking at what may be the reasons behind this move (creating a tighter PPC tool that supports the AdWords network well), from Google's perspective, it's reasonably smart.
That said, the tool caters in no way towards those marketers engaged in organic SEO. In fact, the keywords returned aren't that helpful to someone who's starting out with a new site that they're trying to rank organically for.
So in terms of catering for organic SEO, it could be perceived as shortsighted - but Google isn't famous for supporting direct SEO, so in some ways it's a move that's to be expected.

Brent: Where do you think Google's new keyword toolset falls short?

Mike: There are a couple of obvious places. Firstly, the 800 keyword limit on lists of keywords returned from the initial seed doesn't always provide good insight. Secondly, access to the long tail of search is restricted because of the words that Google likes to present back to a user - lots of 'head' keyword terms, and fewer long tail keywords - so optimizing for further along the buying cycle is difficult.
There also appears to be less opportunity to find good content generation keywords in the data set. Reporting on questions that searchers are asking online, for instance, while having lower search volumes allows publishers the opportunity to engage potential customers in the spirit of being useful rather than directly trying to make an immediate sale.

Brent Can you share a little about how you've been preparing and adapting ahead of the big closure date?

Mike We've been investing a lot of our time and resources into preparing a huge new data set (which is now available in our Keywords Tool), and are continuing the work to enable our customers to get greater detail out of the data than Wordtracker has ever been able to provide.

Brent How do you think keyword research/SEO will change in the coming months as a result of Google's move?

Mike As the Google tool is now more than ever before wrapped around the PPC process, organic SEO users will find less value in spending their time with it.
Keyword research remains crucial as the bedrock of any organic SEO campaign, but the insight Wordtracker will be able to offer is going to allow SEOs to refine their research (particularly those people working with more seasonal keywords) to a degree that hasn't previously been possible with longer tail keywords.
We've also released an early version of Wordtracker Scout - which is a Chrome extension designed to uncover the true language of your market by allowing users to start their keyword research from any web page.
This will give insight into which keywords any web publisher views as important to their page, with added insight from Wordtracker's own keyword database, to give a view on how popularly searched and how competitive each of those keywords are.

Brent What's your #1 piece of advice to people who previously relied on the Google Adwords Keyword Tool? What should they be doing over the coming weeks in light of these changes?

Mike We've always encouraged organic SEOs to rely less heavily on Google's data as it is so PPC-centric.
Our message to anyone who's using the tool outside of specific AdWords campaigns remains the same - and we'd advocate using the new Wordtracker data to find the language that their potential customers are using, rather than relying on a tool that isn't specifically designed to fit their real needs.
Taken from wordtracker.com
What's the alternative to Google's soon-to-be withdrawn keyword tool?

Why SEO is important?

The web is bringing in billions of dollars every year now, mostly from advertising, but also from all types of other revenue sources like affiliate sales, professional services, products, and so on. The ways any particular website can make money are almost endless. But all of these methods come down to a single starting point, a single bottleneck, called traffic.

Many web experts will tell you that traffic is king, because it doesn’t matter how wonderful your site looks like, or how useful the product you sell is, if nobody comes to your website, you won’t make any money. That’s why understanding and practicing good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques is crucial.

To make money with SEO, you can either apply the techniques you learn for your own site, or sell your services to other sites who may not know what SEO even means. As the title says, Search Engine Optimization is all about making sure that people who search for a particular topic find your site. There are many things you can do to ensure that, and other things that you should not do.

First, it’s important to understand how Google and the other popular search engines rank websites. When someone types in “sleeping bags” in the search box, the results will be listed in order of relevance. How the algorithm determines that relevance is the whole secret. It’s based on how much good, high quality content the site has about this particular topic, and how many other sites link to that site.
Let’s see how to optimize both criteria. First, SEO will never replace good content. You must make sure that you have that first. But then, you should make sure that Google knows you have good content. To do that, you have to use “meta tags” on your site. These are special tags in the HTML pages that tell Google the page’s title, description, keywords, and so on. Most programs used to create sites have options to add meta tags, and it’s crucial that you add them. Also make sure the pages themselves are easy to read and not cluttered. Modern search engines notice that and can penalize you.

The second criteria, the number of sites linking to your site, is called off-site SEO. This is about getting other sites to link to your content. This is a much slower part of SEO, because you need to go out and put in links on other sites. You can use forums, comments on blogs, directories, and so on. Anywhere that allows you to put links.

Finally, it’s important not to give in and try to do illicit SEO techniques, such as spamming your site’s address on other unrelated sites, or filling your own pages with unrelated keywords. The search engines are smart and will detect that, and can even delist you. Overall, SEO isn’t that complex, it’s just a long list of little things you can do to improve your site’s presence online, and thus make you more money.

How To Find Keywords For Your SEO Article: A 5-Step Primer

Keywords are one of the most important components of any successful Search Engine Optimization campaign. However, before you quickly skim your website and round up a few less-than-stellar keywords, you should invest time in performing some in-depth keyword research. Salma Jafri, online content development specialist and New Way To Work finalist, shares her 5-step guide on finding the right keywords to get your search rank jumping.

Oftentimes, buyers give you a brief description of the title of an article or its main topic and let you determine the appropriate keywords to use. Whether you're doing an SEO article project for a client or wish to rank your website or blog higher, you'll need to pick and find the right keyword combination to attain that all-elusive high-ranking keyword niche. This article will provide you with a primer on getting started with keyword research.

Step 1: Think Like Your Reader

When I was writing an article about buying ergonomic chairs, I started thinking about why anyone would want to buy this item. Here's what I came up with.

People who'd want to buy ergonomic chairs:

• might be looking to buy chairs for their office, home office or staff
  
  
• might have back pain, spine problems or suffer from some other kind of repetitive stress injury (RSI)
  
  
• are probably concerned about their posture while sitting and about preventive pain furniture
  

This brainstorming helped me to think like my potential readers. So before you start keyword research, spend a few minutes thinking about what problem the article will solve for a reader – this will help you align the article's focus with the keywords used in search queries.

Step 2: Brainstorm Larger Keyword Categories To Develop A Niche

I found that I could group my brainstorming session above into three distinct categories: chronic back pain relief, office furniture and chair features (such as backless, arm rest, wheels, etc). Grouping keywords in this way can help narrow the categories that you'd wish to derive keywords from. So now I can use a tool like Google AdWords: Keyword Tool to search these specific categories for keywords.

Using the tool I came up with several possible keyword combinations (executive, reclining, orthopedic, lumbar, armless, computer, posture, swivel, etc) that I may not have thought about on my own. Even if I don't use all these phrases as my main keywords, I can still work them into my article as synonyms and alternate terms so that people searching for them will find my article.

Step 3: Analyze And Rank Traffic Potential And Earnings

If you're looking to find the maximum number of readers for your article, then you'll want to sort your keywords according to volume. If you run ads which relate to your article, then you'd want to choose keywords that have a high earnings potential (CPC). In most cases, it's best to have a middle-of-the-road strategy and choose keywords that have a good amount of volume and pay well. The actual numbers that work well for you will depend on your niche and SEO goals.

Step 4: Pick a Targeted List of 2-3 Keyword Phrases

From your list of researched keywords, narrow down your main keywords to two or three phrases. These will become your main keywords that you're trying to rank well for.

Step 5: Insert Keywords Into The Elements Of Your Article

The most important place where your primary keyword needs to go is the title. Next up is the sub-title or lead paragraph, where you can usually put your secondary keywords. Use your keywords in other prominent places of your article such as sub-headings, anchor text links, images, as well as the first and last paragraph of your article.

Using these five simple steps, you can choose keywords that not only rank well and pay well but also use those that are human reader-friendly and natural-sounding in your article. Your keyword research will hit the mark if your reader benefits from your article and your client (or your blog) benefits from targeted and relevant traffic.