Ever wonder what Google thinks the most competitive keywords for your website are based on your content and other SEO elements? There are helpful third-party tools, such as SEO Moz's, that spider your content and make recommendations for what a page is about and what terms should be targeted. However, these are still limited in scope and still don't give you insight into what Google actually thinks.



Google Adwords has now ended much of the guesswork by allowing Adwords users to run a report on your site that tells you possible terms to target with a Pay Per Click campaign. This new tool is very valuable to many different marketers, ranging from people running their first Adwords campaign looking for good terms to experienced advertisers trying to devise new keywords to target.



In order to use the tool, login or create a new Google Account, if you don't currently have one. Once logged in, visit the Google Search Based Keyword Tool at www.google.com/sktool/, there will be an option to run a test on one of the sites associated with your account or to enter a new domain. Google will then give you a list of the most valuable terms it associates with your site, based on the terms' density in your content and their total number of monthly global searches.



For our site, the tool does a fairly good job. It lists Online Content Management, Raleigh North Carolina Web Design, Web landing page, Web Design Carolina, and Great Web Design as five of the top keywords that it would be worth us running an Adwords campaign to target. Next to each term, the tool also displays number of monthly searches, suggested CPC bid, and the main page on your site that the phrase was chosen from.



All of terms chosen by the Keyword Tool are consistent with our business, and while we aren't curretly running a Pay Per Click campaign for ourselves, we do target many of these terms through Inbound Marketing, SEO, and other techniques.



While certainly, the best longterm approach to Google is to focusing achieving high organic rankings vs. paid ads, there are definitely situations where it makes sense to buy ads online and Google has now removed some of the guesswork to building a successful campaign. If you're currently running an online ad campaign or exploring the possibility of launching one, I recommend checking out this helpful new tool.