Google’s recent move to restrict access to keyword information was blow to many online advertisers and marketers. For many people, Google’s keyword suggestion tool was the main way that they researched potential keywords to use in SEO and PPC campaigns. But savvy advertising and marketing experts were already using other keyword tools to augment their research. Here are 11 tools to consider when looking for a keyword suggestion tool.

Wikipedia: Going to Wikipedia pages related to topics that are related to your business is already a great way to discover keyword phrases. When you use the SEOQuake Toolbar while on Wikipedia, you can quickly see the words and phrases most commonly used on these pages.

Amazon.com: Amazon has provided users with free access to a wonderful SEO resource: books related to their subject. Search for books and look for “Look Inside” books with free previews. Many keywords can be found in the chapter or section titles. Another way to use Amazon for SEO purposes is to just start a search on products related to your category. Amazon’s Auto Correct feature will suggest lots of related phrases and versions of your keyword.

Press Release Sites: Visit press release distribution sites like PR.com or Yahoo News to get a sense of what companies in your space are saying about themselves. Browse through industry categories and search press releases to find frequently used words and phrases by your competitors.

Soovle and Ubersuggest: Soovle will help you by automatically creating lists of keyword suggestions across multiple search engines (such as Bing, Amazon, Yahoo and YouTube). Ubersuggest takes a longtail approach by getting keywords from regular searches along with specific searches like News, Shopping or Videos.

eVisible’s Keyword Suggestion Tool: Our own free tool gives you a large list of potential keywords based on words or phrases that you provide. It’s fast, easy to use and gives you plenty of great keywords to use. You can find the Keyword Suggestion Tool at https://www.evisible.co/tools/keyword-suggestion/.

Followerwonk: Using Followerwonk to determine the influential social media experts in your space gives you several avenues of keyword research. You can scrape these people’s Tweets using a service like AllMyTweets and then feed the content into a word cloud generator like Wordle to find frequently-mentioned terms. You can also export title tags using Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider into Wordle.

Prismatic: When you are searching for SEO keywords specifically for social media, Prismatic is a great tool. You can follow topics by category and browse social media updates to find frequently-used keywords.

Google Correlate: Google hasn’t completely dried up as a source of keyword research. You can use its Google Correlate product to search for the most frequently searched for terms within a given time frame. You can compare search rates on a weekly or monthly basis or across different time frames to see when the right time to use a keyword might be.

When it comes to content creation, finding the right balance of information and effective marketing of your business is difficult. One of the driving factors of your content is to get customers, but the best way to do this is to present them with intriguing and useful content that will help them in their business lives. eVisible has years of experience with content marketing services and we’ve learned some of the most common mistakes that businesses make when they create their own content.

Here’s what to avoid when it comes to your own SEO copywriting or any content written by an outside agency:

Unreadable content: When it comes to online content, writing that is crisp, focused and to the point always has the best chance of catching — and holding — the reader’s attention. You want to avoid run-on sentences or using “purple prose.” One way to avoid this is by using the Content Readability score provider offered by eVisible. It will give you an idea of how easily the average reader can process your content.

Diminishing returns: Many content creation campaigns start out with a bang, as companies are brimming with information they want to share with their customers. But in many cases, the quality of the writing quickly declines as the well of immediate story ideas runs dry. Combat this by thinking of questions your customers might be asking, reviewing your competition for story ideas and adding a personal touch to your writing.

Not involving the customers: The best corporate blogs and other online marketing campaigns feel like a conversation between a company and its customers. You can encourage your customers to get active and involved to keep it from feeling like you are simply spitting marketing copy at them. Have them submit pictures of them with your product at famous tourist attractions or unusual sites. Invite customers to write guest posts explaining new or interesting ways they’ve used your product or service. Make sure you make it clear to customers that you own the content they submit to you in order to avoid any legal headaches down the road.

By now, you probably know about the some of the basic tools for SEO keyword research before launching an online campaign. Everyone understands the tools that are available through Google’s Keyword tool and performing various online searches. But if you want to take your campaign to the next level, you need to go beyond the basics and use a wide range of sources for your research.

One great way to do this is with eVisible’s free Keyword Suggestion Tool, which provides you with effective and targeted keywords to meet your needs. Along with this, there are other outlets that will provide you with useful information and potential keywords for your SEO campaign. Here are four sources to consider:

Popular Posts of the Year: One way to understand what keywords people are searching for is to see which blog posts are generating interest within your niche. One way to do this is by performing a Google search that looks something like this:

[your field]+most popular posts of 2012+traffic

So, if you an investigative firm, you might perform a Google search like this:

“Investigative Law” “most popular posts of 2012” traffic

The results might take you to posts like this one from the Diligentia Group highlighting their 10 most popular posts out of the more than 50 they made in 2012. Reviewing these posts will give you a sense of which keywords they highlighted and what readers were searching for when they arrived.

Google Keyword Tool Searches By Year: You can also use chronology to narrow your searches when using the Google Keyword tool. When reviewing your analytics data with Google Keyword, do a search for “2012.” This will tell you the phrases and keywords that were generating interest in the previous year and which ones will likely to become popular soon.

Wikipedia: Nothing is more frustrating than spending money on a keyword campaign only to see a Wikipedia link come up first on results. It can be hard to move a Wikipedia site some a top ranking. You can use this tool (https://stats.grok.se/) to review the traffic volume of any Wikipedia site for the last 90 days to see if a page associated with any keyword term is going to be an obstacle to your success.

Government Websites: As Search Engine Land accurately points out, government sites are potential goldmines for keyword information. In many cases, you can see the most popular pages, referring sites and keywords used for many government sites that could relate to your niche. Reviewing this data will give you a better sense of popular keywords and potential link partners.

Any social media marketing company will tell you that content is king when it comes to a successful SEO and Social Media campaign. But not all content is created equal. How you structure your blog posts, social media updates and other content and what you say in it will play a huge factor in attraction attention to your campaign. Here are five types of online content that are proven to boost your SEO campaign.

The Mission Statement

One of the most important factors in making your social media marketing campaign connect with its intended audience is to establish its identity. You can easily accomplish this with a blog post or other type of content that spells out your mission statement. Think of it as your manifesto for the campaign and the reason why you are doing it.

Example: Three Reasons Why Solar Power is Important for Our Future lets readers who are interested in solar power know that this blog will speak their language.

The Pot-Stirring Post

Controversy generates conversations and if done the right way, taking a stand on a controversial subject will get people commenting on your campaign and following what you are going to say next. Be careful with this type of post – going too far can get you in trouble.

Example: Warren Buffet’s recent op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy took the stance that the richest Americans took the stance that the wealthiest Americans should be required to pay some income taxes regardless of loopholes. It was quickly shared and debated by people on both sides of the issue.

Timelines

People always love quick fixes and seeing fast results. Give this to them with posts that promise results in a set period of time if they follow your steps. This is a close cousin of the “Best Of…” list posts that we’ll get to shortly.

Example: 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger gives people one action to try each day to improve their writing and publicity skills.

ASAP Posts

These posts feature a headline that grabs your attention and frequently will spur you to urgent action. If nothing else, you’ll be compelled to read the article to see what is so important that it can’t wait.

Example: Top Ten Reviews’ 10 Things You Can Do Now To Protect Your Identity addresses a serious subject and makes it clear that it contains actionable steps that can help a person become a victim of identity theft.

List Posts

People love lists and rankings and blog posts that do this attract attention and comments as readers debate the validity of your list and come up with lists of their own.

Example: This Bleacher Report ranking of the Biggest One-Hit Wonders in sports brought interest from fans of all sports.

Need more help guiding your SEO campaign? Along with content creation, eVisible has many social media services available to help brand managers, bloggers and other people boost their visibility and track their success. Make sure you check out our new Social Involvement tool at https://www.evisible.co/tools/social-involvement/, which tracks the interest the social world has in your web pages.

When it comes to SEO campaigns, using the right keywords is critical to success. You can corner the market on keywords that are related to your industry, but if these keywords don’t correlate to clients and customers, what good does this do? Keywords serve as invitations for customers to check out your site. When someone does a search on a keyword or phrase and your site ranks highly in the results, you’ve effectively brought them to the front door of your virtual business. A smart keyword strategy not only gets customers to your virtual store but makes sure they are looking to spend money and not just there to window shop.

Knowing your market and your place within the market is critical to researching your keywords. Less competitive keywords and phrases might generate less traffic but there’s also a greater chance that you’ll rank highly for them if you target them with an SEO campaign. If you are in a niche market, you can find keywords that will specifically target people looking for exactly what you’re providing. This can get your ideal customer to your website quickly while providing immediate returns on your SEO campaign. If you are an established company looking at long-term gains, you might want to focus on a few keywords that are more competitive. You’ll know your market and your position better than anyone else and will want to adjust your SEO campaign accordingly.

Before starting any keyword search, there are a few things that you’ll want to consider:

• If you are using Google AdWords Keywords Suggestion Tool, make sure you are doing an Exact Search instead of a Broad Search. This is something that you can toggle between by clicking a button before you perform a search. A Broad Search will include phrases that include your keywords in any order or even parts of your keyword phrase. It also includes plural or singular forms, stemmed forms and synonyms. An exact search only returns the phrase exactly as you entered it. You can search for both if you want to expand your search but this can create confusion in your research.
• Think about all of the different ways that people might search for your products. Instead of just focusing on your category of business, do searches for specific product models or sub-categories of services you provide. Search for variations with part numbers or popular abbreviations of products.
• More than anything else, ask yourself what customers are searching for and build your keyword list accordingly.

Before you start doing your research on your keywords, it’s important to have a game plan in place. Instead of just grouping words together that “seem” the same, group them into categories. If you sell golf clubs, one category could be for name brands of golf clubs. Another could be for types of clubs (such as drivers, irons, wedges or putters). Other categories could describe what people are searching for with new versus used equipment. This lets you select keywords that target the right audience and potential reach as many different customers as possible.

Ultimately, you want to get the highest Return on Investment for your SEO campaign. eVisible understand this, which is why we’ve created a powerful Keyword Research and Suggestion tool and made it available for free on our website. All you need to do is enter in a keyword, phrase or a bit of marketing copy and it instantly gives you a list of related keywords. It’s a great way to start your keyword research and narrow down (or expand) your choices. You might want to focus on areas of your business that are currently underperforming by targeting related keywords. Or you might notice keywords and phrases with a limited amount of competition that you can rank highly for more quickly. Having a smart game plan and doing the research the right way will set you on the path to smart and focused keyword-based SEO campaign.