Keywords are one of your greatest assets when it comes to choosing topics to write about, organizing content, researching potential products and driving traffic to your site. The problem is finding the right ones.
There is a whole big industry just around that part of online marketing. You can part with a lot of money paying for software you install, online subscription tools and people who provide such services. I’m not saying they are bad, but especially when you’re starting out it may not give you the most return on your investment.
This article is going to show you ways to use a free service you probably already use every day without thinking about it.
You can use google to search for keywords for free
In writing this post, I have put some constraints on myself to keep it as simple and straightforward as I can. If the methods don’t fit these criteria, I’m not including them. Those criteria are:
- Pay nothing – not a single cent. There are low-cost ways of adding more value to these methods, but these are all totally free
- Sign up for nothing – Google has other keyword tools you can use if you sign up for an ad account. they have value, but you do have to sign up to be an advertisor – wether you actually buy ads or not
- You don’t even need a gmail address – or an email of any sort. No one is going to create the list of words and then ask for your email address so they “know where to send the results”.
Also, I’m not going to include the free Google Trends tool either. It’s fine. It provides some insight. But this article is about coming up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases, not about more in-depth analysis of their potential worth.
Speaking of which… start a list. Keep a spreadsheet or document of your choice with all the keywords in some sort of way that makes sense to you. I’m a spreadsheet kind of guy and am continually trying to come up with better ways to organize my lists. But that’s a topic for yet another article.
About the examples I will provide
Google knows you. So do the other search engines to some extent. They know me too. Our results will vary.
If you and I search the same phrase at the same time from our individual computers, we will probably get slightly different results because Google knows from our past searches and browsing history which results we’re more likely to find useful.
If I search the same thing six months from now, results will vary based on seasonality (maybe) and the fact that new stuff has been added to the internet.
The same search phrase made from two locations hundreds or thousands of miles from each other will also provide different results because different populations (who are closer to different Google servers), may favor slightly different content.
While I’m muddying the water I might as well point out that sometimes the search results on your phone are different from the same search done on your computer 2 feet away at the same time. Go figure.
HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean the information is worthless. Just the opposite actually. the results – however you slice it – are what people are searching for and what they want. Google doesn’t make stuff up. All the data you get this way is based on popularity. And that is the number one defining metric for a good keyword.
So, the examples I provide won’t match yours. I’m going to do the searches in an incognito window so they don’t match my personal preferences either.
For the sake of consistency I’m going to pretend I’m doing research into dog beds for my site and looking for keywords that will help me with that niche. I chose it solely because one of my dog is behind me on hers (making a fuss at the moment).
Six Methods for Finding Keywords with the Google Search Bar
As with a lot of things I write about, the lines are kind of fuzzy on where one thing ends and another begins. I’ve divided them into six basic techniques, but some of these can be combined so you’re using more that one technique at a time. You’ll see what I mean.
1) Plain old Google search
Specifically, see what happens if you start typing in the search bar. As you type, Google will try to predict what you will type next. It is called predictive text. Brilliant name for it. Don’t hit ENTER yet. Just look in the search bar.
For me, it gave me:
- Dog Beds
- Dog Beds… for big dogs
- … large
- …for medium dogs
- …amazon
- …near me
- …for small dogs
- …for humans
- …for chewers
- …walmart
There are some good keywords worth looking into. You can probably ignore amazon, walmart, and near me. Those phrases show up in a lot of searches. The “for humans” one surprised me. Not so sure that would be helpful, but maybe there’s something I don’t know. In any event, there are some good topics to write about in that list, and/or products to consider.
That is the most basic search you can do. But obviously this would be a much shorter article if that’s where it ended.
2) The alphabet method
I call it alphabet roulette. Some call it the alphabet soup method. I didn’t invent the idea but I know a good thing when I see it
Do exactly what you did above but add the letter “a” after it. See what it suggests. Next try it with a “b” instead. Then “c”, “d”, “e”, etc. Do it 26 times and save the ones that make sense to you.
For example “dog Beds a” gave me:
- Dog beds at Amazon
- ….at Petco
- …at Target
And so on. Not super useful. They were all store names
The same thing with the letter “b” gave me
- …best
- …big
- …biteproof
- …by stella modern family
Those are potentially a bit more useful.
“c” resulted in
- …cheap
- …cute
- …chew proof
- …cooling
- …covered
- …couch
Okay. There are some content ideas there. Are they the best ideas? I don’t know. If dog beds are you niche you can tell me. That’s 3 down 23 to go… and then some
There will be letters that suggest a next word that would have multiple words after that. Words like “for”, as an example. So you can dive deeper by typing “dog beds for a”, “dog beds for b”, “…c”, “…d”, and so on. Even those results my suggest additional words to you that would have their own family of words after them.
From this method alone you can get dozens of keyword phrases if not more.
3) Ask a question
Actually, ask part of a question using words like Who, What, Where , When, Why, How, Is, Does, Are. Not all the words will make sense, so use your judgment and change the tense if you want to. “Does” can become “Did”, “Will”, “Doesn’t”, “Do”, “Don’t”.
You’re not typing the whole question here. You’re just starting it to see how other people finished it. Here are just a few examples from my dig bed experiment:
- What dog beds are chew proof
- What dog beds are made in the USA
- What dog beds are best
- Who accepts used dog beds
- Where to wash dog beds
- Where to donate dog beds
- Do dog beds need to be fire retardant
- Do dog beds matter
- Why elevated dog bed
- Why dog scratch bed
- How long do dog beds last
You’ll notice that “dog beds” isn’t always right after the search word. In fact it’s not always in the result at all. I’ll get to that in a little bit
4) Compare and Contrast
Still just using the search bar here. But now try using your search terms plus the word vs. (usually abbreviated). My results for this experiment were:
- Dog bed vs. crate
- …vs cot
- …vs floor
- …vs blanket
- …vs dockatot
You can do the same thing using the words “and” or “or” after your seed search term. To a lesser – but sometimes useful – extent you can add the words “benefits of”, “pros and cons”, and “compare” to the beginning of your “vs.” search phrase. It may provided different results than “vs.” alone.
5) Underscore before the word
Actually, this is a little old-school now. It used to be that you’d get more additional results by typing “_dog beds” than you would typing “dog beds”. Now the underscore doesn’t seem to make a difference.
All you have to do now is type your phrase and click before the first word in your phrase. The predictive text will change to different phrases.
For our search we get
- best dog beds
- orvis dog beds
- luxury dog beds
Not a huge list, but it does add to the list.
6) Add an asterisk
This is similar to the underscore idea above. the asterisk in many computer related things is a wildcard. So when you search with one, you’re telling the computer (or in this case Google) to look for anything in place of that place holder.
Unlike the underscore mentioned above, the asterisk actually does change the predictive text. In fact try it between different words in your phrase if you have longer strings of words.
I just tried it with the phrase “dog beds for big dogs” and got the following extra keywords (among others) by moving the asterisk around
- Nice
- Fancy
- Tough
- Washable
- Orthopedic
- Best
- Cool
- Two big dogs
Out of context they look like pretty average words, but in the full phrase “cool dog bed for big dogs” you have a topic people are searching for and you can probably solve the problem they are trying to solve. Is it worth writing a post with that title? Maybe. Maybe not. You know your niche better than I do. Couldn’t hurt to add it somewhere in the text of related content if it fits though.
A couple notes on the six methods above
As I mentioned before, these techniques do not have to be independent of each other. You can – and should combine the techniques.
If you get some longer phrases using the alphabet method, try using the underscore (insert) method or asterisk method with those results.
Or if you do the question methods. what happens if you add the alphabet letters at the end? Or for that matter in between words.
As I also mentioned before, some of the words and phrases that show up using these methods won’t have your keyword(s) in them at all. These are called LSI keywords. Don’t worry about what it stands for, what it means is words that are related to your keywords – or at least what Google thinks such words are.
Those words can be just as valid as the ones you thought of. And they can spawn whole new branches of your keyword family tree.
Finally, look at the results that show up in your searches. More on that in a second, but do you see any words or phrases that pop out at you? Again, these words can seed your next round of searches.
Okay. The second is up. Here we go…
Google Search Results
Everything we’ve done up until now has been about what auto-populates in the search bar as you’re typing. In this section we look at what shows up when you actually click on one of those things. You don’t have to search them all, but maybe at least try to search a representative sample of the keyword phrases you have so far.
Here on some things to look for in the search results:
Are there paid/sponsored listings in the search results?
These will normally show up in the first few spaces at the top and the last few at the bottom of the first page of the results. Their existance ther tells you that people paid to have them pop up when someone searched that phrase.
It’s good because it means you have something with revenue potential there. But beyond that, those results will likely have some other keywords in them too. And if you click though to the site they point to, you may see even more.
And if you refresh your browser, new ads may also show up, giving you even more to look through.
Questions related to the word or phrase
There will also be a section with highlighted text entitled “People also ask”. It is exactly as advertised. Those phrases show up because people asl those questions. If they’re showing up there, it’s a pretty safe bet that you should target those phrases too.
Other search Tabs
Across the top of the page will be some buttons provided as ways of refining your search. They are:
- Shopping
- Images
- Videos
- News
- Books
- Finance
- Travel
A few results from one or more of those may show up in your search results. If so, you know that is one of the ways people are searching it. That is to say that people may be looking for a product to buy in the shopping category, or they’re looking for an image related to the search.
Whether you make use of that information is up to your judgement. If your content lends itself to an infographic, that may be a way of targeting your content. But not necessarily. You don’t want people just download or viewing the image without stopping by your site and continuing on to more content.
If videos show up, that is another good indicator that a) people are interested in the topic and b) it lends itself to videos that people actually watch. Good to know. But again, for the purpose of this discussion it’s about finding keywords. What other words showed up in the video results? If you click on it, what videos does it suggest watching after that one?
Ditto for the other categories. Some may be duds. Use your judgement.
You’ll also see in most results that you have the option of selecting a time frame. Some content is time-sensitive, some isn’t. but if you limit reseults to say, the past year, you can see what is more popular now. It may be the same as if you don’t do that, but if it changes, that tells you something.
Related Search Terms
As though the related search terms that popped up in the search bar as you typed weren’t enough, Google also provides you with a small grid of them towards the bottom of the page. You may already have seen them, but it’s also possible that there will be new ones there.
But wait there’s more
You’re just looking at page 1 of the results. What is on page 5 and 10? It isn’t the top ranking results for the phrase you typed in, but it might be a glimpse into some other words or phrases to consider.
Again, use your judgement here. It may be a goldmine other’s haven’t tapped, or it may be fools gold.
Check the competition
Okay. Here’s one last tactic using Google Search. Search the site of your competition. It is called scraping a site.
Let’s use TheSpruce as an example – because it is large and has varied content.
if you type “site:wwwthespruce” in the search bar followed by your keyword, it will search ONLY their website. So you can see all the content they have that includes that word. When I use the phrase “site:www.thespruce.com dog bed”, I get ovet 5300 results from their site.
Is it all pertinent to what I’m looking for? no. Are there new ideas in there that didn’t show up elsewhere? yes.
You can do this with any site. Be careful here though, and play nice. This isn’t about totally copying another creators content whether it be a sole individual or a faceless company. It is about coming up with content ideas and making your own version of the ones that make sense for you – preferable better than they did.
Final thoughts
Everything we covered in this article came simply from using Google’s search features that are available to everyone for free. But as you can see, these methods can yield quite a lot of keywords to choose from.
And that’s without getting into some more advanced features, or using paid tools that help to automate some of those tasks. It also doesn’t take into account keywords you can find by doing similar searches on different platforms.
It is easy to go down a rabbit hole with this stuff. So be purposeful about it. You don’t have to click on all the results – no matter how intriguing some of them might seem.
And you need to have a system in place for keeping your keywords that makes them useful when you go back to use them. In fact, you should probably have a system for how you approach your research so you get as many good keywords as possible without wasting time.
And make no mistake about it, this will take time. A lot of it. Make sure you carve out hours to do this. Maybe even days. And revisit it from time to time to see if there are new words to find.
It will be worth the effort. Having a robust list of keywords and keyword phrases makes so many other business tasks easier.