SEM/SEO

You have probably heard of all the common keyword research tools from Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Wordze, KeywordMax, Marketing Samurai, Spyfu, SEMRush and tons more, and of course not to exclude the official keyword research tools of Google, Yahoo and Microsft Ad Center, but for international SEO, sometimes these tools may not be the best tools out there.

Google Adwords Keyword Traffic Estimator where you can see the language and country selection before the form.

Just in case you do not know yet, most of the search engines keyword research tool already give you the option to choose certain countries or cities of the work which will already help in International SEO.

Google Search Based Keyword Research Tool Country Selection Option

However sometimes in other countries, the predominant search engine is not always Google, Yahoo or Bing and tools offered by other engines can give you more better local insights into what people are really searching for within a target country.

I do not have a list of tools for every country in the world, but I do have a few tools that can be used in some countries for your International SEO efforts. Here are the list of tools below:

China/Chinese Keyword Research Tool

Baidu – The predominant search engine in China has it’s own keyword research tool. The link I have is going to their user manual and not really to the tool, since the tool is in Chinese which I really cannot read. But if you can, you should not find any difficulty joining their PPC network and checking out the keyword research tool they have in that section.

European Keyword Research Tools

Miva – They have a PPC network that their gets get to various popular websites including download.com / cnet.com so we can say their data is pretty significant. They have separate keyword research tools for UK, Germany, France and other European countries. Problem is often their keyword research tool is down. Although they do have an API available to members of their PPC network and advertising on their network may not be a bad idea. So if you visit the link and you go to this help page, click on the link going to the tool popup window and if it does not load, their public facing tool may be down again. The one I linked to was for UK and they have other URLs for the other European countries.

German Keyword Research Tool

Keyword Datenbank – The Germans are pretty good in SEO and they have their own SEO community that gives the good demand for coming up with German SEO Tools. One of these tools they have is the Keyword Datenbank which is for keywords in German.

Russian Keyword Research

Russia also has a large SEO community where they not only concentrate on learning SEO internationally, but they are of course experts in their own search engines like Yandex and Rambler. Their largest email platform is mail.ru and all these three including another company called Live Internet all offer keyword research tools for the Russian language. As of this current time, it seems Rambler’s keyword research too that used to be on: http://stat.go.mail.ru/ is currently down. Live Internet may require you to be a member of their site to access data.

• Yandex Keyword Statistics
• Rambler Search Query Request Stats
• Live Internet

Korean Keyword Research Tool

Naver Popular Keywords – Naver is the predominant search engine in Korea and it also has keyword-based advertising platform. The link here is the popular search queries on Naver.

Philippines Keyword Research Tool

Sulit.com.ph – The predominant search engine in the Philippines is still Google. There are other engines in the past that tried being a search engine but was easily overshadowed when Google came out. But one of the largest sites in the Philippines is a buy and sell/classified ads type of community forum where people post things they are selling and buyers search for any product under the sun that hopefully someone is selling. Many Filipinos use the site searching for online deals of any product or service in the Philippines and these top search queries are captured by their system and can help serve as a guide in keyword research also.

Other Country Keyword Research Tools

If you are targeting a country not in this list and you are from that country, most probably you know more than me. Here are a few tips in searching for a keyword research tool in your local country.

1. If Google, Yahoo and Bing are not the predominant search engines then check your local search engine if they have a keyword research tool They would usually have one if they have keyword based advertising which is how most search engines make money.
2. If Yahoo or Bing are used more than Google in your country, might as well prioritize using their keyword research tools instead of Google’s.
3. If there is a website that is used often for buying products or searching for services, something like an Amazon or eBay that is widely used in your country, check if they have a keyword research tool If they don’t, then check if they have a bestseller list, often the bestsellers are also the ones that are searched the most. And this may give you more inspiration in coming up with more keywords to target.

Tags: International SEO, Keyword Research, Keyword Research Tools

Tags: International SEO, Keyword Research, Keyword Research Tools
Posted in Keyword Research | 1 Comment »

Posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 5:51 pm under Keyword Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.