The Google External Keyword Tool – Do You Use This Feature?

I was talking to a friend about using keyword research for articles yesterday and realized that I was using a method she wasn’t. So now I’m thinking she probably isn’t the only one who has not realized you can do this. I’ll show you what I mean in a minute.

First, let me tell you about how I use keyword research in my article writing. Whenever I write an article or a blog post for that matter I base it on a keyword phrase. I prefer long tail keywords with a decent search volume and as little competition as possible. That’s where this approach comes in handy.

In my opinion the best keyword research tool you can get is absolutely free. I realize there are plenty of keyword tools on the market like Wordtracker, Keyword Elite and so on, but personally I always use the Google external keyword tool. It’s free and it has all the options I want it to have.

Let us for a moment assume that I plan to write an article on golf. I then type my main keyword golf into the Google external keyword tool like this:

Of course I’m now getting a ton of results. To refine these results I pick some good long tail keywords. By the way if you don’t know I’ll just add that long tail keywords are keyword phrases with 3 or more words in them.

Some of the keywords I picked have a bit too much competition so I’d like to refine my search a bit. I do that by first deleting golf from the search field and then press on the “Get more related keywords button. This is what happens to the search field when I’ve done that:

Now you have to press the “Get keyword ideas” button again to get your refined results.

As you can see I now get a refined list of long tail keywords, The beauty is that if I’m not happy with my list I can do it over and over again. This has become my favorite feature of the Google external keyword tool and I hope you can see how powerful this can be.