Learning Google Adwords: Keyword Tool

The Adwords Experiment has given me some time to play around with some neat tools that Google offers.  If you are a blogger the keyword tool alone is worth signing up for the service.  Even if you never intend on starting an ad campaign the tool can help you find related keywords that will give you a boost if you are doing SEO.  The keyword tool is so interesting I ended up playing with it for a week or two just to figure out what keywords would be best.  Here is a screen shot of a few keywords for this blog.

As you can see some of them are kind of crazy, and aren't obvious.  They still have huge numbers of monthly hits and very low competition.  Those were suggested to me by the Keyword Tool itself.  Which is awesome as you don't have to quest in the dark for keywords that work well with the ones you already know.

Although the bar assigned to each keyword may not make it obvious, there is a way to tell how much competition each keyword has.  You can cross check the competition bar to find out more closely what it means by opening up a browers window and typing that keyword into Google.  The same day I ran those keywords there was one ad on the 'a game' keyword.  That means that whoever put up that add bid really high (unnecessarily high, as there is no competition for the keyword) to compete with up to 6 other advertisers.

But wait?  You said there were no other ads.  Correct.  That means they wasted money in their ad campaign. Or at least that's how it appears to me.  A lone advertiser is bidding up the price of their own keywords.  Maybe someone has more information about this point.  It would be great to hear from them about it.

Do you know any neat SEO or Adwords tricks?  Share them in the comments!  Comming up: The Adwords Experiment Week 1!