With the plethora of choices in keyword research tools, it is easy to get lost even before you get started. The fact is, none of the keyword tools could serve all purposes in every situation. As one of the biggest providers for pay-per-click (PPC) services, Yahoo! provides Keyword Selector Tool.

Basic Keyword Research Principles

For keyword research to be effective, at least a web publisher has to collect keyword data from different sources including on-site search query and log files. Often, the data you can gather from your site search is far more valuable than others because they are more focused.

I have got ahead of myself, but the point is…

It is important that you don’t seek for perfectness too. While it is necessary to come out with a relatively long list of keywords so you can cover as much search terms as possible — and in turn get found in many more ways — realize that keyword research is an on-going process.

In other words, the first phase of research just before you start building content and website or blog is preliminary to get you in the right direction.

So, please get it going…

Introduction to Yahoo! Search Marketing Suggestion Tool

That said, perhaps the most commonly used and covered keyword search tool on the planet is Yahoo! Search Marketing — formerly known as Overture — Keyword Suggestion/ Selector Tool.

This free tool show the number of searches for particular phrase across all Yahoo! and its partner sites in the previous month. Very useful indeed.

Best of all, it is free. Many keyword services and software are built based on its data. You might stumble upon this type of tool that could help you search, brainstorm and manage keywords. By all means, use that if it improves your experience. We will cover some of them in other posts but for now just focus on using the tool as is.

The Downsides

You should be aware there are some downsides to using this tool. It combines the results for singular and plural forms of words so unless you have research data from another tool, you are left guessing which to use primarily on your pages.

Another downside is quite annoying and could drive you in the wrong direction. Instead of listing keywords as they are searched by users, it actually makes the data difficult to perceive by reordering the phrase alphabetically.

For instance, the phrase “severe acne remedy” will show up as “acne remedy severe”. So, it is important that you use common sense, or combine the data with other tools to get the most out of your research.

Update: This case only occurs if you enter “acne remedy” into the keyword search box. Entering “severe acne” returns the correct and logical results. Again, common sense is required for you to use this tool.

The third downside is accuracy. The numbers are not actually very useful but pay attention to the relative number of searches. A keyword that was search 50,000 times last month and another only 1,000 times should give an idea about which one is more important.

The Benefits

Yahoo! Search Marketing tool is excellent to get started in searching terms for building a website. Not only it is easy to use, but also based on real data from different sources so when it comes to keyword richness we can rely on it.

Probably one of the most overlook feature of this tool is that you can actually click on the keywords to bring up similar and related terms for that phrase.

This feature alone will build an extensive list of words for you.

Using Yahoo! Keyword Tool

You can access this tool directly here or by pointing your browser to Yahoo! Search Marketing Resource Center.

Click the Keyword Selector Tool link on the right side of the page. A small window opens. Enter a keyword in the search box and press Enter.

The Tool will return two columns of information in a nicely formatted table. The first colum displays the number of searches (count) in previous month. The second column shows the keyword and keyword variations derived from the main keyword you’ve entered.

Notice that once you have saved this list of keywords you can dive deeper into each keyword variations by clicking on the each keyword.

Usually these steps are more than enough to get you a list of tens to several hundreds of keywords. It depends on your niche, but with these keywords, you can start planning for site content.