I learned the hard way that the free keyword tools can’t be trusted. I still use them for brainstorming. However, I don’t trust them enough to spend hours writing content with keywords they suggest.

Here’s how I do it:

1. Create a long list of keywords you think might be good. Get these from the free keyword tools or simply use the AdWords’ keyword tool in your Adwords account to add them. Hint: For some reason the “good” tool does not show up when you first go through creating the ad group. You have to finish the ad group and then go back into it and edit the keywords. There you will see a link to their keyword tool which allows you to easily search for and add keywords of your choice.

Oftentimes the internal keyword tool in Google is all I use to insert keywords for the test. I usually add almost all they suggest. I have been surprised many times to find good keywords this way which I never had thought of before.

2. Create the new campaign with these settings: Content network off, set your ads to show all the time (not evenly spread out throughout the day…this setting is not a huge deal however), set you budget for something like $10.00 (make sure you don’t forget the decimal point!). I usually set mine to show for the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia, but it really doesn’t matter that much.

3. Don’t spend much time on the ad copy; you don’t expect to sell anything here.

4. If possible set your destination page to a page on your own site which has this approximate theme. Better yet, set it to a page selling a product on your site related to the theme of the keywords. Or set it to a page with an opt-in box which you are building a list with.

If you don’t have the site yet, simply go to ClickBank or PayDotCom and find a related product to promote. Who knows, you might even make a sale. However, that is not the point of the test.

If promoting an affiliate product, the display URL has to be the vendor’s domain and the destination URL is your affiliate link.

If promoting your own site, the display URL is your own domain and the destination URL is the exact page you are sending them to.

5. Start the test and check on it in a few hours. You want to make sure the impressions you are getting are pretty much showing on the first page. If they are not, you are failing to get an accurate count of how many people searched for the term. If they are not showing on the first page, raise the bid until they do.

6. Once you see a keyword is getting enough impressions, pause it. If you have already checked to see that the keywords have low enough competition for you to succeed, then you have a good keyword. If you have not checked the competition for the keyword, you next have to do that.

7. There is no set rule about the numbers of impressions or competing sites. However, beginners with new sites probably should be looking for keywords with 20 to 30 impressions per day at least while the competition in Google for the keyword is under 40,000 or 50,000. To check the competition, put the keyword into Google using quotes…like this: “my keyword”.
Quotes will show you the maximum number of sites possibly competing for that term. In reality, only a small number of those will actually be optimized for that term however.

With a test of 50 to 100 keywords, you should have a handful of great ones to use.