A Good Time is Blog Time

The format of this site has changed, but all the categories are still there and visible after you have done an initial keyword search. Look for the option to change from broad to exact down the left hand side and to add average cost per click open the columns menu using the button at the top right of the table.

The Google Traffic Estimator keyword tool is a tool that Google uses to display how many search enquiries have been made on a month by month basis for a particular search term (keyword or keyword phrase). Strictly speaking it is not a traffic estimator as it actually presents data collected from the previous month based on actual enquiries put into the search engine. It is fairly clear though that by using actual data collected on a month by month basis you can in fact make reasonable assumptions as to the popularity of particular keyword or keyword phrase and then of course use that data as a traffic estimator.

There are a few key parameters in the tool that you should know about and they have been labeled 1 to 6 with their descriptions as follows: -

1. Geographic Target – this is where in the world you intend to target. Select the country or region of interest before requesting the data e.g. USA, UK, Australia etc.
2. Value of the CPC (cost per click) for the search term – this is of interest if you are looking for Adsense income from the keyword you select. This is not the actual amount you will receive per click as you will only get a percentage, but clearly the higher the value of the CPC then the higher the value of your percentage.
3. Type of match – this is the type of match you are looking at, you can decide which type is of interest to you but the recommendation is that you use ‘exact’ i.e. the exact keyword or phrase as opposed to ‘broad’ which will include results that have any of the words included in the search enquiry but not necessarily all of them. The other option is ‘phrase’ which includes all of the words but in any order. For an exact match there will be fewer enquiries but you can decide if there are enough to warrant targeting the keywords in question. 1000 – 3000 per month minimum is a generally a good rule of thumb for an exact match on a local search.
4. Advertiser Competition – this is the level of competition you are up against, i.e. how many other people are using the search term in the Adwords campaigns. 100% means the term is maxed out with a high level of competition. The best terms to go for are those with a high number of enquiries and a low level of competition. In other words a ‘niche market’ that has yet to be exploited and has the potential for bringing lots of traffic to your site with little competition from other sites or campaigns.
5. CPC indicator for the keyword – you may decide that anything less than $2 isn’t worth pursuing as a keyword, but it is all relative to the level of competition for the term and the amount of traffic it can bring. A click worth $.05 to you that is clicked 1000 times a day is still worth $50. So its your call, if you think you can achieve that number of clicks then potentially you could be earning $350 a week for one search term. But of course realistically you will probably need around 20,000 visitors a day to get that level of click through, going for a higher value search term is likely to make the effort more worthwhile.
6. Local and Global Volume – the local represents the geographic region you selected at ’1′ and the global is what the whole world is entering into the search engine. If you are targeting a certain specific country then you should disregard the global results and concentrate on the local results.

There are other parameters you can play around with, but these are the ones most widely used to turn the keyword tool into a Google Traffic Estimator for anyone looking to target certain keyword phrases that can be used on a website, blog or in an Adwords campaign.

This is where to find the Google Keyword Tool

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