For anyone using or planning to Google’s keyword tool to select keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes: DON’T.

In a recent blog post, Michael Van De Mar points out that Google’s Keyword Tool External (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) is designed to help people select appropriate keywords to target for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising purposes, but the keywords generated do NOT necessarily reflect what keywords people are searching on in general.

He drew this conclusion after optimizing his webpages for the words suggested by the Google tool. Indeed, he achieved high rankings in the natural search engine listings on both Yahoo and Google, but got minimal clicks. His conclusion: Google’s keyword tool may indicate which keywords are worth targeting for PPC purposes, but NOT for SEO purposes.

The reasons? Firstly, the words generated by Google’s Keyword Tool External are based on data on Google’s search network, which includes everything from Ask.com to parked webpages, not on what people are searching on using the Google search engine, much less any other search engine. Secondly the keyword tool gives worldwide, not regional, numbers.

I agree with Mr Van De Mar. I don’t recommend using Google’s keyword tool for choosing keywords for which to optimize your webpages. Certainly not when there are better tools available, such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. However, the tool CAN be useful for REFINING your SEO strategy. For example, if you know what keywords are being highly contested (indicated by high bid prices) that’s a sign that there is value in those keywords.

Source: Michael Van De Mar, “Why The Google Keyword Tool Is Useless For SEO, Even With Exact Numbers”, Smackdown, July 15, 2008

There are more indications that spending on Internet advertising is growing… at the expense of spending on traditional media advertising.

Last year, the top 100 U.S. advertisers in the U.S. - responsible for about 41 percent of total advertising spending in that country - pulled about $1 billion from their TV and newspaper ad budgets and poured it into online advertising.

According to Ad Age, the top 100 advertisers’ 2007 expenditure on TV, print, radio and web advertising was flat, growing just 0.3 percent over the previous year to reach $61.3 billion. However, since online display ad expenditure rose 33 percent to $4.2 billion, a significant chunk of ad spending was transferred from  traditional media to online media.

Meanwhile, prominent search engine marketing firm, SearchIgnite – which has about $350 million in annual billings - says that in the second quarter of 2008 its clients increased their search marketing expenditure by around 10 percent over the previous quarter. The increase in spend was apportioned evenly across each search network - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live.

Does anyone seriously see this trend reversing? While economic conditions may well temper advertising spending in general, I can’t see anything other than online advertising continuing to erode traditional media advertising.

Perhaps the only ones who are (and should be) doing more offline advertising (and marketing in general) are Internet marketers!

Sources: Erick Schonfeld, “Top 100 Advertisers Shifted $1 Billion To the Web Last Year At The Expense Of TV And Newspapers”, TechCrunch, June 23, 2007, Bradley Johnson, “Top 100’s Ad-Spend Growth Grinds to Halt”, Ad Age, June 23, 2008, Michael Learmonth, “Search Marketer: Search Spending Up 10% In Q2″, Silicon Alley Insider, June 25, 2008