Google tool to identify best keywords for SEO

Google has released a new AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool. It’ll be helpful to both lawyers and professional services firms buying sponsored links at Google as well as those looking to identify the best keywords and key phrases to use in title tags and text for optimizing their blog or web site for the search engines.

Aaron Wall’s post at SEO Book summarizes what it offers, including sorting by popularity, performance history, cost, predicted ad position and a page of tips from Google about the new tool.

Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch, my source for this post, reportedly favorably on the tool.

Enter a term, and you get back a list ranked by ‘relevance,’ though Google doesn’t really explain what relevance is despite a help page supposedly answering this. I mean, if I enter [cars] into the search box, why exactly is ‘rental cars’ more relevant than ‘donate cars?’

Using a drop down box, the ‘Keyword Popularity’ option is much more helpful. Now I can see a new Search Volume column. Unlike with Yahoo’s tool, there aren’t counts given. Instead, PageRank-like bars show popularity, the more green, the better. Click on the Search Volume hyperlink above the column, and now things sort by popularity. Slick! It’s something you couldn’t do with the old tool.

Check out the Site-Related Keywords tab on the new tool. Enter the URL of a page, and Google will show you all the key terms it thinks the page is relevant for. That’s nice for contextual targeting, the intent of the tool. But it’s also a useful way to see what terms Google thinks an important page is relevant for. Or enter your own page, and see if Google’s finding you relevant for the terms you think you should be targeting.

Any wonder that with Google kicking out more good stuff that value of the company keeps increasing.