An important process of keyword research is finding out how many times it is searched for per month in the search engines. After all, what good would it do if you ranked #1 for a keyword phrase that no one searches for?
You will see claims from cheesy, questionable SEO companies that guarantee #1 rankings where they will rank you #1 for keyword phrases that no one searches for.
If you use different free or paid SEO tools you will discover that many of them will give you different results of how many times the same keyword phrase is searched for per month. It is best to get use an SEO tool/software that gives you the most accurate numbers.
An example of this is Google Ad Planner which gives you a number that you will not want to trust. But software like SEMRush and Ahrefs will give you more accurate numbers.
In the article “How to do Keyword Research” I go into more depth about this topic.
The main thing to remember is to use multiple tools and go with the ones that all seem to agree with about the same number of searches and to always use the same tools consistently so your numbers won’t be off.
Where do SEO Tools get their Numbers From?
- Google Ad Planner gets its numbers from its Google AdWords campaign which can bring skewed results but many of the major SEO Tools take information from Google Ad Planner through the use of an API combined with their own resources.
- SEOPowerSuite uses a hybrid of their own sources and Google AdWords
- Ahrefs uses a hybrid of using Google’s Ad Planner and Clickstream.
- SEMRush uses its own algorithm/data called Neural Network Algorithm plus ClickStream to estimate the number.
- Moz uses Clickstream data and the Google API to get their numbers
- UberSuggest uses most of its numbers from Google’s API for Google Ad Planner.
- KW Finder uses strictly the Google Keyword Planner
Long-Tail, Accuracy, and Number of Searches
An important thing to remember is that the longer the long-tail keyword phrase is the fewer times it is searched for per month, but it will yield more traffic and sales because of the niche.
An example of this is in Microsoft Ad Planner (fairly new) if you do a search for “widgets” here is what we come up with.
The phrase “widgets” is searched 16,910 times per month.
The phrase “blue widgets” is searched 20 times per month.
The phrase “blue widgets in upper Michigan” is searched 0 times per month.
More examples and details are available in the paid version of this course.