There are many free and paid keyword research tools out there, but until this announcement, none were able to provide Google-only data. So this is a big deal!

Its hard to say how accurate some of these keyword predictions are but overall this is very useful information to have. I wouldnt say it totally replaces Wordtracker or any of the other keyword tools but its a great keyword research tool to use because lets face it, its ALL about Google!

The tool gives approximate search volume for the previous month and then the average search volume over the past 12 months, below are the descriptions from Google.

Approximate Search Volume [Previous Month]
This column shows the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network in the previous calendar month. This number is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.

Approximate Average Search Volume
This column shows the approximate average monthly number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network over a recent 12-month period. This number is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.

Keyword research is a very important step in search engine optimization.  You must know what people are searching for and the different combinations of keywords people might use to find your service. 

If your law firm needs assistance with legal search engine optimization or any other Internet marketing service, visit the Lawyer SEO site for more info.

Why is Trellian offering a free search term suggestion tool? Its web site says, "For many years the Overture Keyword Suggestion was the only free, publicly available keyword research tool. Now, due to its recent outages we are pleased to offer an alternative."

Earlier in the week, Wordtracker also has launched a free keyword suggestion tool. The tool gives webmasters up to 100 keywords in each session.

These are great tools to use when trying to determine what keywords  you should focus on in your online marketing campaigns, I use them both and would lean towards Keyword Discovery as the better of the two.

27 Sep 2006 – NEW!!! Shopping and UK Keyword Databases

1. UK Regional Keyword Database.
   Finally a premium UK only keyword database from searches performed on UK search engines, without rank and PPC skews.
2. Shopping Keyword Database.
   This new database gives you the ability to research keywords based on Shopping searches performed on sites such as Amazon, Bizrate, Buy, Froogle, NextTag, Shopping and many others.

The latest KeywordDiscovery version includes new features and introduces a number of new keyword databases.

1. eBay Search Term suggestion.
   This new database gives you the ability to research keywords based on eBay searches. Use this feature to optimize your eBay listings.
2. Market Analysis.
   A new feature to help you identify market share held by each major engine for each search phrase.
3. Eliminated Skew.
   KeywordDiscovery’s new premium database eliminates all skew caused by automated rank checkers and other bots.
4. News Keywords.
   This new database enables keyword research based purely on searches performed at major news sites and news portals.

Every law firm should do some kind of keyword research to determine which keywords to focus on. Keyword research is vital to a succesful search engine optimization campaign, both for organic and pay per click search marketing. Below is some example data from Keyword Research.com for a law firm in Portland, Orgeon.

Query	Searches	Occurrences	KEI	Predicted Daily
oregon lawyer	578,155	1,010,000	5.11	13,200
oregon criminal law	383,994	1,010,000	4.70	8,767
real estate law	301,432	256,000,000	0.18	6,882
property law real estate law	19,211	77,900,000	0.04	439
real estate and portland oregon	16,012	10,400,000	0.30	366
oregon+lawyer	12,902	991,000	1.56	295
real estate portland oregon	10,399	17,100,000	0.12	237
portland attorney	4,863	581,000	1.26	111
portland law firm	3,897	440,000	1.32	89
oregon bankruptcy law	3,843	n/a	n/a	88

These are the top 10 results sorted by the # of searches. Below is an explanation of what each column means.

Predicted Searches

Figures in this column provide a rough estimate of the total number of daily searches on the internet as a whole, for each given search term.

Predicted Daily count is just that, "PREDICTED". The searches column contains the total number of ACTUAL searches in OUR DATABASE that is supplied by close to 200 search engines.

Occurences

This column contains an estimate of the number of pages in which each search term appears.

The more pages there are, the more competition there is for the top position in the search results. This means that if there are a lot of pages, it will be more difficult for you to achieve good rankings.

KEI

KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Indicator.

It is designed to measure the effectiveness, or the value of a given search term. This is done by correlating a number of factors such as the number times a keyword is searched for, with the number of pages on which it occurs, etc.

KEI is a log scale with values from 0 to 10.

The concept is very similar to the Richter Scale used to measure earthquakes and this is a good way to think about the numbers. Search terms with the largest values tend to be less competitive and thus have the most potential to "shake" things up.

New Features

• Domain Research. Keyword Discovery now provides a new service for domain name research. All keyword discovery keyword data can now be converted to domain name format and cross-referenced against a DNS registry database to check for availability. (Note: requires a separate domain research subscription)
• Search & Replace. A new Search & Replace feature now enables you manipulate keyword results. Use the Search and Replace icon below the search results.
• Translate. A new Translation feature can instantly translate search results or project lists to various languages.