...searching for similar things, such as related terms and synonyms.

Last month, WordStream invited me to participate in a private beta of their Free Keyword Tool, which was released as a public beta this week. One of my favorite features is its ability to suggest related terms.

Finding Related Keywords

When you type in a keyword on the left side of the screen, like "cholesterol", the related keywords automatically appear in the "Related Keywords" box to the right side as shown below:

In this example, the Free Keyword Tool suggests various related words and misspellings including:

• Hdl
• Lipitor
• Ldl
• Triglycerides
• Statins
• Colesterol
• Simvastatin
• Triglyceride
• Lipoprotein
• Ncep
• (Etc.)

The tool is telling me that these keywords are in some way related to my initial keyword ("cholesterol"), so theyre important terms to incorporate into my research. A lot of times, it's not obvious why a keyword is related. For example, "ncep" is the "National Cholesterol Education Program" and "statins" are a family of drugs used to lower cholesterol (Who knew?). I like that this feature gives me ideas I wouldn't get just by brainstorming.

Expanding Keywords

After you reviewed the list of related terms, you can add them to the keyword list by clicking the checkmark icon next to each keyword. You can then do a deep-dive expansion of your keyword by clicking on the "Submit Keywords" button. Most of the time, as far as I can tell, the tool returns thousands of keywords that include the original keyword as well as variations (plurals, different verb tenses, spelling errors, etc.).

The tool only shows the top 100 keywords on the main screen (there's a button that lets you copy these to Excel) or you can enter your email to get the complete list of results sent to you in a .csv file. Obviously they will probably add you to their mailing list, but I think its a small price to pay for all the data they are providing free.

Filtering Keywords

Suppose I want to get rid of certain words in the results, like keywords containing "recipes," before I get the full keyword list. There's a filter feature so you can remove those terms. You just highlight the word you want to filter in the results and click on the red X next to it:

Finding Related Keywords in a Nutshell

If you're interested in deep keyword research and keyword expansion, I think the WordStream keyword tool has something new to offer and works pretty well, especially considering that it's totally free. You can try it out here: http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/

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