Whenever you want to rank well for your website or any of your webpages, you need to know the right keywords to target. Whenever you want to succeed in your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you need to know what the right keywords to bid are. In other words, targeting the right keywords are so important for any webmaster or internet marketer, without which they cannot survive. This is the number one reason why a keyword tool, whether it be software or a service, is such an important piece of device for today's internet marketing and search engine optimization. However, selecting a good keyword tool can be a nightmare without having a right perspective of how a good keyword tool should function. In the following discussion, I will tell you three major elements you need to bear in mind before choosing a keyword tool.

Element 1: How Good is Their Database?
Simply put, different keyword tools and services retrieve their keyword data from different resources. Some databases may depend upon just a few major resources such as Google API and Yahoo API; whereas some others may possess a broader network from other smaller search engines. For example, Keyword Discovery pulls its data from a wider variety of search engines. Meanwhile, Wordtracker has to depend on Dogpile and Metacrawler as their major resources to pull its data. One of the caveats you need to be aware is that if the resources they depend have problems of speed to access their main database, you will have a tough time to retrieve your data. For instance, those who depend on Overture keyword tool will have a similar problem of retrieving data from time to time.

Element 2: How Accurate is Their CPC Data?
I always come across commercial hype most commonly used by internet marketers to tell people that they can get a list of Adsense high paying keywords just at their fingertips. This means that based on cost-per-click of Adwords, the keyword tool can help you to estimate how much you will get from certain keywords for your Adsense. Frankly speaking, most people will find this feature very disappointing because most likely they will not get an accurate estimate from those data. Why? The reason is simple. Google Adwords provides two kinds of searches for advertisers, namely regular search and content search. For regular search, people will get search results by typing keywords or keyword phrases into any Google search box, mainly from Google search page or Google search box located in their browser. From there they will get multipages of search results together with a horizontal box and a vertical box of Adwords advertisement appear on top of and beside of those regular search results. Whereas, content search occurs when you plunge into a webpage where there are certain Adwords advertisements placed anywhere on that particular webpage. The advertisement can be blended into the webpage content such as articles. The truth is that Google Adwords allows advertisers to place different bid values on regular search and content search respectively. In most cases, advertisers will place a bid price of content search much lower than that of regular search. This is the reason why the high paying keyword list that you get from most keyword tools will not reflect a true value of your Adsense advertisement.

Element 3: Is the Keyword Tool a Subscription or Software?
The third question you must ask before choosing your next keyword tool is whether it is a subscription service or a piece of software. If you choose subscription service, this means that you have to pay subscription fees periodically. It can be weekly, monthly, or annually. The two most widely recognized online keyword research tools are Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. On the other hand, if you choose a keyword tool as software, you will just end up paying a lump sum of money once for all without any recurring fees. However, keyword software tends to have a more limited range of keywords in its database if compared with those online keyword research services. Try to ask yourself this question, "Do you have a large collection of websites to optimize or numerous per-per-click campaigns to monitor?" If your answer is affirmative, then it may be wise to subscribe to an online keyword research tool that requires recurring fees. If not, software can be a better choice. All in all, choose wisely.


Peter Wong is the chief editor of Keyword Tool department of Review7.Net, a website that provides a more realistic review of different products and services in the industry of keyword research. For more information, please visit http://keywordtool.review7.net