Google Keyword Search Tool
The Google Keyword Search Tool is one of the most powerful career resources to help you find employment. You’ll discover new industries, companies, market trends and more.
This free online resource, combined with a good marketing strategy, will also help you write more powerful resumes and cover letters.
If you haven’t done keyword research before, you’ll soon learn how to find essential information. And if you are familiar with it, you’ll discover new ways to use it. Because step four requires more explanation than the other steps, I”ll write several articles explaining how to gain the most from this useful career resource. Check the tools page for more.
First, let me briefly explain what Google’s program is and does. The main function is fairly simple. Google tracks all Web searches for its service. So, for example, if 75,000 people type “creative thinking” into its search bar each month, the keyword tool calculates the total number of searches for that keyword phrase.
Keep in mind this is not the number of entries when searching on the Web for the phrase. It’s the total of all searches for the same keyword or keyword phrase by users of Google, which accounts for 65% of all Internet search. Yahoo, MSN, Ask and other search engines are not included in the Google numbers with some exceptions.
Let me provide an example. On an average month 14,800 local searches are done for “future careers” and 27,100 for “job hunt.” (I’m using local search results because they’re more relevant for most people seeking employment.) The keyword tool also shows global numbers that include all activity around the world.
But the number of “phrase matched” entries (searching with quotation marks) on Google for “future careers” is actually 343,000 and 1.7 million for “job hunt.” Phrase matching means the exact word phrase is found. If you don’t phrase match, your search results show all entries with either of the two words in the phrase somewhere in the title or body of a web page. We’ll use phrase matching for our searches.
In the next post, I’ll explain in detail how to use the keywords or keyword phrases you already wrote for your career and job campaign. Meanwhile, here’s a short video from Google explaining this powerful online tool.
