If you are trying to optimize your website, or any article you are writing for the search engines, but do not want to spend out on software or monthly subscriptions, Google keywords tool is free and can provide all the information you need to get a good ranking in the search pages.
The keyword tool gives a number of options. The results can be tailored to a specific language and country or worldwide results. Select what best suits your target viewers. If you are selling to a particular country, it is pointless knowing worldwide figures.

There are two options on how to generate keywords.
If I want to write new website content, but want inspiration, I will use “descriptive words and phrases” and type in either a single word or broad phrase to get ideas.
However, if I already have website content and either want to write an article promoting the site, check that the content is properly optimised, or whether it could be improved, I use the “Website content” option. Whichever option I choose, I also show all the statistic columns.

When using the “Website content” I use broad phrase option. The results will give the main keywords and by clicking on each individually I can see the number of searches and the competition. If the competition is too high, I will select a phrase with less competition but with a reasonable number of searches and adjust my website content accordingly. I will also use the phrase to write several new articles and link these to the web page.

When using the “descriptive words or phrase” I initially use the broad option to get ideas and then refine the search to the phrase option. I look for a phrase with reasonable number of searches without too much competition. My web content is then written around the phrase and articles also based on the phrase are submitted to article directories.

Google keywords tool is easy to use. I am sure everyone has a different method. Play around with it and you will find ideas to improve your SEO as well as new ideas for website content.

Tiggers runs the http://www.forex-trading-articles.com website.