I use various pay per click (PPC) keyword tools and today thought we should discuss one of them, Google adwords keyword tool and look at how it can help you choose relevant and popular terms related to your selected key term.

It's not the only keyword tool I use, but the adwords keywords tool certainly can yield some very profitable results, if utilized correctly.

When you enter a key term, the adwords keywords tool will query information from several Google searches, which it will use to determine popular and re-occurring keywords used by websites in the same industry.

The relevancy of a key term is determined by counting the number of times a given term occurs.

The adwords keywords tool can be a very effective way to find new keywords for your PPC adwords campaigns.

The Keyword Tool can be especially helpful in these common situations:

1. When you first create a new ad group.

2. When your current keywords are performing sub optimally and you need to find better options.

3. When you have one or two adword keywords that really works well and want to find more like it.

The Keyword Tool seems to works best with short keywords of one or two words in length. Fir example, "guitar software" will get better results than "best rock guitar software".

The reason for this is because if your keyword includes many words, the adwords keywords tool may have a difficult time in determining what the most important adword keywords are and may then find it difficult to deliver the appropriate alternatives.

Here are some advanced tips I have had success with.

Find keywords based on your site content.

Google's adwords tool allows you to either choose the option of entering your own keywords, or try using the Website Content option.

Using the Website Content option lets you enter the URL of your website, or of any site related to your niche. The AdWords system then scans your page and then suggest relevant keywords.

This is particularly handy if you have some decent content on your site.

A sneaky but ethical tactic is to enter the URLs of related sites, or even of your competitors' sites, to learn what keywords they might be advertising on themselves.

Create new, separate ad groups with similar keywords.

Our experience has confirmed the suggested practice of creating several ad groups in each campaign, each with a small, narrowly-focused set of similar keywords.

Google suggests keywords numbers of approximately 5 - 20 focused keywords per AdGroup. We have found these numbers to work well depending on the campaign.

Identify negative keywords.

The adwords keyword tool can also show you keywords that users may be thinking about that you are not interested.

For example,let's suppose you sell guitar pickups and you type the following in the Keyword Tool - "guitar pickup." The keyword tool may suggest the related term " best acoustic guitar pickups," and you may want to add that term to your ad group as a negative keyword because you are only sellingelectric guitar pickups and not acoustic guitar pickups.

That will keep your ad from showing on searches for "best acoustic guitar pickups" or similar terms. This helps make sure only targeted customers see your ads.

Find synonyms - or not.

The 'use synonyms' box in the descriptive words or phrases option is always checked by default.

What does this mean?

This means it might suggest " les paul" (which is a specific brand guitar), as a synonym for the keyword "guitar". If you uncheck the box, the tool will suggest only keywords that contain at least one of the terms that you entered, so Les Paul would not show.

We have also had some great success using embedded match. This is a advanced form of keyword matching that most adwords advertisers don't seem to know about. It allows you to prevent you ad from showing in relation to certain phrase or exact matches.

Specify a language and location.

Google adwords keyword tool also gives you the option to tailor results to a particular location and language. If for example you happen to be running a cost per action (CPA) offer for United States citizens living in France only, make sure you set the Keyword Tool to that language and location.

Start broad and then get specific.

Try broad terms like "guitars" in the Keyword Tool first. Then try specific terms like "vintage guitars" or "gibson guitars."

Adding the new keywords to your campaign.

There are two main ways to add any keywords to your adwords pay per click campaign that you have found using the keyword tool.

If you're already signed in to your account, just click 'add' next to the appropriate results. Ensure you are adding the keyword to the correct campaign and AdGroup.

If you're not signed in to your account and you're using the keyword tool, you can simply copy the keywords to a text document of your choice, and then paste them into your ad group once you're signed in.

In summary.

The Google adwords keyword tool can be a very powerful ally in your keyword research. I strongly suggest you do not rely on this tool alone though as it is in your best interest to also use a non google adwords tool. There is also a video on using the adwords keyword tool that is available from our blog.

We will later look at Wordtacker which is another one of my favorites.

All the best for now.

Anthony