Where Can You Find the Best Data for Keyword Research?

Finding data for keyword research is essential for SEO. Here are some tips about how to do it.

Video Transcript:

David: You had to ask a question about charts with search terms. Do you recall your question? Yeah. Read it.

Onawa: Yeah. I think. I’ve seen reports generated from different companies, different SEO companies. And. One in particular had keyword charts. So. I was trying to do something similar. But I didn’t have access to the Google keyword planner. And the Bing one was like it threw up some really unrelated results. So I don’t know if it’s like a two part question of. How do you incorporate. A chart to make it look like. You’ve got research and data behind you. But also be relevant. Like, more relevant to your customer.

David: Right. So we’re talking about keyword research reports, right. When we’re determining. How we should talk about our clients, products and services. How do we convey. More people search for your service this way than that way. Right. And I’m glad you’re asking because. So many times when we do keyword research. We don’t put a number of some sort of value behind a word. And so we kind of end up optimizing for a word that nobody else is searching for. Right. So in curious ants I offer. Four different ways of collecting data. Or is it three. So one is use Google trends. Which gives you a value between zero and 100. Two is. Bing webmaster Tools, which is a really great tool. And you might say, oh, well, why do I care what bing says? Well, if people search for an ambing, they probably search for it on Google. And we’re just looking to put a value there. My preferred way is. Using Google keyword planner in the Google Ads interface. However, to do that. You have to have at least one. Paid account. Right. And. You can sign up for an account. And never use it. And then have some numbers. To be available for qr planner. Because Google will allow you to use a keyword planner. Assuming you’re planning to do an AdWords campaign.

Onawa: Okay.

David: But the data there is a little bit limited because it will give you a range. It won’t give you a number.

Onawa: I’ll say there are between 101,000 people who search on this every month.

David: Well, that’s still better it’s still a number and it’s still better than. Nothing. Depending on your clients or your clients budget, it might be worth setting up. A small AdWords campaign when I say small, no more than $500. Just don’t spend like Google makes a lot of money by people who pay a lot of money into AdWords and don’t know what they’re doing. But it might be worth that, because that would be cheaper than a keyword tool. And maybe that’s the way you see it. And just put a little buddy in so you get access to the tool.

Onawa: If you do that. Are you required to be actively running ads with that? No, just have the money there.

David: Okay. Well. Have at least started and stopped in AdWords campaign.

Onawa: Okay.

David: Right. And so it probably spent a little bit of money with Google. And I don’t know to what extent. Again, I’m not recommending spent. I’ve built curious ants to help people without having to spend for additional tools. Right? Because there’s a lot of SEO tools out there that are more than happy to take your money. And some of them are good and some of them are not that great. But I would like to empower you to do things without with the free tools available.

Onawa: There are limitations, like there are other keyword planning tools.

David: One I like is called keyword io, and they will give you some numbers, but you have to pay them. And frankly, it’s fair because they have to pay for the api to do it. I think Neil Patel has a couple of tools like that. Semrush. Is a very expensive tool, which I find very poor, but people love it.

Onawa: I don’t understand why. I think I worked for somebody who had me run reports from that. I don’t know. Sometime in the vague past.

David: Yeah. I tried using it, and I don’t find it useful at all. I find it confusing and overwhelming. And when you know where they get their data, it has less credibility in my mind. Okay. I like ahrefs, but that’s a very expensive SEO tool. And honestly, I think I’m going to stop using ahrefs and go back to majestic because ahs is a lot more than I need it to. But yeah, if you can get the data from keyword planner. That’s going to be the best. But. Better. But I don’t want to make you pay for more tools.

Onawa: Right. Like I said, I got a lot of info and I think it’s probably fine. It’s just like putting some numbers behind it.

David: Right. Yeah. There is an SEO strategy where some people. Will before they do Organic search do a paid search campaign. Because you can use paid search almost as a keyword finding opportunity. To again recommend that normally. But if a client really needs to start fast. Paid search is great because you pay money and immediately start getting traffic and you can start to see how people are searching for you and better. If you have conversions set up, then you can see what people convert with and now you know what to optimize for and try to get for free.

Onawa: Right. That’s a specific strategy. For that.

David: Yeah, but. Adwords. I’m so frustrated. I manage a lot of adverts campaigns. I’m so frustrated with adwords right now, because. They have taken away a lot of the customization we used to be able to do. They’ve automated stuff. So we have less control. I can’t limit to a keyword anymore. I have to trust that Google is serving my ads to what they think is relevant. Which it’s not always relevant. They don’t even allow me to create ads that I like I have to create and let them serve the ads that they think will help. I have to trust that they have my interest in heart. And their interest is for their shareholders. Not for me. Does that help?

Onawa: It does. I just wanted to make sure. I was looking at the right places, but also. Trying to have some data. And not just I think this is a great word. Yeah, this is

David: right. I like being webmaster tools for

Lidija: that.

David: The numbers are a lot smaller in bing because the traffic is a lot smaller. So if you were to compare Google versus being from a keyword. Number tool. The numbers would be significantly smaller. So it might be such a small phrase on bing that there’s no data, but it would have a little bit of data in Google. However. If you can find a phrase that a lot of people looking for and Bing. Then surely a lot of people are looking for it on Google. If you find a phrase bing that definitely has search volume, then you should definitely optimize that in Google. Even if you don’t have specific Google data. And hopefully the keyword research process helps you see. That. We want to have limited, more focused phrases, but. When we limit and focus our phrases, there’s always going to be fewer people searching for them. Right. So we can optimize for widgets. Or gears? Or engines. And there’s a lot of people searching for engines, but not all of them want to buy an engine. Some of them need service of zone engine some of them need a how to fix it. So when we limit it to engine. Services. In Dramatically, fewer people are searching for that. And that becomes a problem when you get to bang because really quickly then numbers drop off to zero even though people are searching.

Onawa: Right. Okay. So it is a good and useful search.

David: Another way of looking at, especially if the client. Has already has bing or even Google Search console installed. You can look and see what phrases are already getting traffic.

Onawa: Right.

David: And use that as starting point.

Onawa: Okay. I was looking at one site. And they’re getting a lot of traffic, but it’s not quite right. It’s not for the right thing. For their business.

David: So that means. Are you looking in that data in search console. Yes. So that means the page isn’t clear enough.

Onawa:  To describe what they offer.

David: So either keyword research hasn’t been done or keyword research was done incorrectly. To not really understand what the product is. Now Google is always going to send irrelevant traffic.

Onawa: Right.

David: And sometimes. With search console the data is always. What your website and page and queries for that website are currently and you might be optimized for the right phrase but not ranking for it yet so you’re not getting any traffic. The traffic you’re getting is irrelevant. That’s a possibility. Seo. Is sometimes very difficult for certain phrases. And so just because search console shows no traffic, data, impressions, or clicks for a phrase does not mean it’s the wrong phrase. This means that Google isn’t showing you enough to get data yet. And there might be other things you need to do to optimize that page because you might already have the right word.

Onawa: Okay.

Lidija: How many clients do actually start from keywords and then start building on a top of it usually comes kind of reverse engineering. They already have things and then. You kind of assess the website and that and find out what’s not.

David: That’s exactly right. I still always start with keyword research. Just to see what’s coming. Knowing that. But yeah, I will always look back in my data and say, oh, here’s a good opportunity I didn’t even notice.

Onawa: Yeah. Ideally you do that before you have the copy, even.

Lidija: That would be perfect.

Onawa: Right.

David: It’s funny how clients will sometimes. Avoid talking about what they have to offer. It’s the same phenomenon. I think. That sometimes clients have a hard time asking. For the sale. Hey, would you buy this from us. They’re afraid that they’re going to make someone angry. Or. Alienate them or run them away by saying. Would you like to use this service from US? Would you like to buy the product from us. And. They’re so subtle, that. They end up not really being very clear. And they might be found by their customer who wants what they have, but because they don’t talk about it directly. And they don’t offer a clear call to action. That’s why I think one of the early steps is conversion rate optimization. Because oftentimes my biggest wins on new clients come from the fact that they don’t clearly show people how to contact them. And just simply adding a button to allow people to get to the Contact page. Or like one of my clients. I lean into the css, and I made their phone number bigger. And that alone. Brought them phone calls. Because they were just too afraid. Oh, we don’t want to be obnoxious. Well, people aren’t visiting your website because they’re curious and want to waste their time. They want something from you. Make it easy. Don’t waste their time make it easy and clear. And talk about what you offer. High performance Sports undergarments. Nobody knows what that is. But. If the high performance sports garment is better than underwear, well, then talk about underwear and how you’re better than underwear, because that’s what people look for. And people don’t know what a high performance sports undergarment is. So you might be afraid of using the word, but you got to talk about what you are, at least in the category people understand.

Lidija: When you audit the website to see what’s performing and not in terms of you said, let’s say the phone number. Maybe some buttons where. They are when you audit which buttons are more click than others, or which form on which page? Which tool do you mostly use? How do you track it?

David: How do you. First start with a client. I will frankly use my intuition. Later when I need to. Use data. I like to use Microsoft clarity. Which is a free tool from Microsoft, Bing. That allows you to. Watch people interacting with the website. It’s wonderful tool. Because. It does for free. What a lot of expensive tools allow you to do have to pay for. And it’s easy to set up. It’s just great. The amount of information in there is really great. It does make a website load slowly. So I will add it and then remove it and then add it and remove it. But honestly, the first thing I do want to get a client as I just look and use my eyes to see. If I was, I even heard people say they blur their eyes and they look at a website. Like is it really obvious how to contact you. That even if your eyes are blurred, you can still tell there’s a big button right here. And if I push that button. I can accomplish what I want. That’s day. One. Stuff. But after that a tool like Microsoft Clarity can really provide the data to show you. Now, what I’m missing is an A. B. Testing tool. So if you find a good AB testing tool. I’m all about that. I would love to hear your recommendations. But Google optimizes going away.

Lidija: Okay.

David: So I don’t have a replacement for that yet.