For those that don't know how to find some good solid keywords in the Denver market, make certain that you utilize Google's Keyword Tool.While I don't think that the search results that it reflects are entirely accurate, it has been a heaven sent in locating some of the most popular keywords for campaigns that we have run at our company.

Some examples for how we have used it. I started with the search term "Denver Lumber", now according to Google's Keyword Tool there are 6,600 searches every month for this search term. However, there are some long tail keywords which deliver the kind of prospect that we are really looking for. Some of the other terms were:

denver lumber company 110 searches every month
denver lumber co 1,300 searches every month
lumber in denver 590 searches every month
denver lumber yard 590 searches every month

According to what I know (and that is not too much), there are an additional 2,400 searches here that we were not targeting previous to knowing about this tool. So, it's a very useful and quick tool when researching keywords for your site. I have utilized these keywords in our SEO campaign as well as our social networking campaigns and we have gotten a fantastic ROI on this free SEO tool by Google.

I think this is a great post Mike, I have found that most of the companies that we speak with about SEO do not have any knowledge about the free tool from Google. I do want to say, that the tool is useful for finding popular searches, but in our opinion the numbers are not very realistic. In other words, if you appear at the top of the search engines for the four search terms you have listed, it is not as though you are going to see an increase of 1,000 visitors or 2,400 visitors per month for that matter. Would you agree?

What other keyword tools would you recommend using? I am very familiar with Google's Keyword Tool and it has served me well over the last three years, but what else do you recommend.

At this time I have been using Keyword Spyand I do subscribe to their service. What else is a good tool?

Both of these are fantastic tools and we do utilize them all the time. The one thing that I haven't seen anyone mention just yet is competitor analysis. When we are analyzing our customer's site, or one of our sites, we will definitely check out the competition's website. We will find out what they are ranking well for, how they have structured their meta tags and content as well as analyze their back links. This will help us in forming our strategy for keywords.

Usually we will pick up a dozen keywords that we would have never found through any of the keyword tools available by analyzing our competitors sites.

Also, when we are completing a keyword analysis we will make certain to write everything down in our SEO plan for that campaign. Sounds like it makes sense right? Usually when we are meeting with a customer, they will explain that they have gone through a keyword analysis and that they are executing some type of internet marketing plan, yet they usually don't have it in writing.

It is important to write down all possible keyword combinations and keep records of these in your internet marketing file. Also, make certain that you are utilizing competitors that might be in the same business but they are out of state. So for example, if I have a client that is a plumber in Denver. I might check out other plumbers in Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins as well as out of state. Of course I would probably not use the out of state company's search terms verbatim, but there might be some ideas there that I had not thought of previously.

I hope I made some sense to someone here. This all made sense to me while I was writing it.

Cade wrote:
Also, make certain that you are utilizing competitors that might be in the same business but they are out of state. So for example, if I have a client that is a plumber in Denver. I might check out other plumbers in Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins as well as out of state. Of course I would probably not use the out of state company's search terms verbatim, but there might be some ideas there that I had not thought of previously.


Good point, Cade. I hadn't thought about taking into consideration keywords being used by out-of-state businesses in the same industry. Thanks!