Keyword research tools not only free up a lot of time, they also dig out keywords that you absolutely would have missed otherwise. But that's just the beginning...

This is either a piece of software or a service you access via the Internet that performs keyword research for you. You type in a one word or more keyphrase that relates to your industry as a starting point. The tool then looks at the word and goes hunting for other ones like it.

For example if you search for 'drill' the tool will bring back things like:

power drill cordless drill new drill buy drill discount drill drill parts

Keyword research tools get this information from a database containing millions of recorded searches. It's all based on what people have previously searched for. So you know that the keywords it's suggesting to you ARE popular and in demand. You'll also get a score as to how popular each keyphrase is.


Have you ever watched a quiz show on TV and you just can't get the answer. And then when the host reads it out, you sigh and you really could kick yourself. It was so obvious! That's the exact same feeling you'll get when you start doing keyword research.

I've been building keyword lists for years in hundreds of different markets. And, without fail, after I've brain stormed my initial keyword list and then run it through a keyword research tool I always find hundreds of new keywords I'd missed. I can't stress this enough.

Don't rely on yourself for your keyword research.


Keyword research tools also help you think laterally. Most of them have some form of thesaurus built into their programming. So if you were to search for 'dog pictures' you could also expect to see the following show up in the list of keyphrases it suggests:

dog images
dog photos
dog pic
dog pics
dog photography

This is one of the real strengths. To be able to build up huge lists of keywords that are totally relevant to your market. And to make sure you don't miss any words you wouldn't have thought up yourself.


As well as building a keyword list, you'll need tools that can expand, manage and edit your list of words. Here's some extra tools that the better products out there include:

• Remove duplicate keywords from a list
• Exclude certain words, for example 'free'
• Find misspellings
• Generate permutations of each phrase

In the reviews on this site, I always write up the extra features I find on each product. It's important to have a tool that can build up a good list of keyphrases and also provide to list editing and managing tools.


Good keyword research tools should:

Save you time
Get you more customers
Dig out keywords you'd never have thought of
Help you manage and edit your keyword lists
Pay for themselves quickly

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