Analysis of Google’s Contextual Targeting Tool for Keyword Research
I recently stumbled across a tool I hadn’t seen before linked from within Google AdWords and initially overlooked it as I tend not to deal much at all with the PPC side of things. I didn’t really think much of it at the time but after a little bit of thought and discussion decided to check out Google’s Contextual Targeting Tool and see what use it can be to my campaigns.
I look after a variety of different campaigns and at first glance I can see that it would benefit ecommerce stores greatly, by grouping keywords together under a bigger, more generic but industry-related phrase – a broad phrase. Here’s how.
Let’s say, for example, that I’m thinking of setting up a ski wear online store so I put in the phrase ski wear. It showed up a few results under that banner including mens ski wear and womens ski wear which wasn’t very helpful as I already know that my site is about ski wear and I have main categories including mens and womens – which are the obvious choices for anyone setting up a clothing store.
So, I dug a little deeper and went a little more specific, such as to the level of a top-level category on an ecommerce store. I put in ‘mens ski wear’ and it showed some great results that could form the blueprint to my site structure, showing things such as mens ski wear packages and mens ski jackets – giving me some definite ideas on how I could structure my Mens category but not quite enough of what I need.
It then gave me other suggestions in other groups including different brands and suggested keywords within that as well as cheap and discount with search phrases within those areas.
Digging into these it shows some great phrases that can go on the ladies category, such as:
ladies ski wear, ladies ski jackets, ski wear ladies, ladies ski wear uk, ladies ski jacket
And in the ski suits category, such as:
mens ski suits, mens ski suit, ski suits for women, ski suits for men, ski suits
… all of which I can dig deeper into and also run through the AdWords Keyword tool to work out what’s going to work best for my campaign and site structure, splitting apart the mens and women’s/ladies keywords.
Similar to how the old Wonder Wheel tool used to work (which was removed around a year ago) putting in your basic keyword ideas throws up a whole world of possibilities which you can use to create categories or pages or even just keyword ideas.
Although the Contextual Targeting Tool isn’t a tool that shows search volumes, nor is it a tool that you can rely on solely to create your campaign, it should definitely be useful in helping to structure your site and plan the optimisation at a fundamental level. It can also give you great new keyword ideas as well as assistance in grouping those ideas to help you create a campaign that is comprehensive and well-balanced from the outset that can then be built upon further down the line easily to cover all of the major areas that are likely to pull in traffic and interest.
The tool will help you in working out a structured and balanced set of broad phrases, medium tail and longtail/product phrases that you can then asses within the AdWords Keyword tool to help form the structure of both your site and your SEO campaign based on what people are looking for and closely following a silo structure that will work for both your visitors and your SEO campaign.
