(Photo Credit: Jeff McNeill) This is a special edition of SEO University where I have a guest post by Elisa Gabbert. Elisa was introduced to me by Byron Gordon, a great guy who I’ve worked with for a couple of years at the Search Engine Strategies conferences here in Toronto. When Byron asks me to check something out, it’s usually good!

Byron said I should check out WordStream’s new keyword tool located at http://www.wordstream.com/keywords. For years I’ve been a fan of using Google’s free tools, namely the Google Keyword Tool and the Google Traffic Estimator Tool. They are both free, provide great data, and it comes directly from Google – what more could you ask for?

I posed the question to Byron and he put me on to Elisa who wrote this guest post. I look forward to your thoughts on WordStream vs. Google after you read the post.

“At WordStream, we recently launched a new free keyword tool. One of the questions we get asked frequently is how the tool compares to the Google keyword tool (in fact it gets asked so frequently we put it in the FAQ).

Let me try to run down the pros and cons of using each tool.

Where Google’s Tool Is Better

Google’s keyword tool is similar to many of their products in that it has two core strengths: it uses Google data, and they give it away for free. If you’re in a market (and there are many) where Google is the dominant player, having access to Google’s data can definitely be useful. And Google has a lot of data.

The tool also provides several columns of numerical stats including both local and global monthly search volume and search volume trends, as well as information like advertiser competition and estimated average CPC which can be useful for the PPC advertiser. Aside from keywords and related terms, WordStream’s tool currently only shows you an estimated relative volume.

Where WordStream’s Tool Is Better

Google’s keyword tool taps into the company’s huge data sources, but they’re not giving you full access to that data. For example, a search for “britney spears” returns 72 results. Performing the same search on our tool yields over 37,000 keywords. We only show you the top 100 within the tool itself, but you can enter your email (or sign up for a free account) and we’ll send you the full list, all 37,563 keyword phrases, free of cost. So we are giving you a lot more to work with, including many long-tail terms, and this is really valuable for large PPC accounts or affiliate marketers especially.

Another advantage to our keyword tool is a greater diversity of keyword sources. We aggregate search query data from Internet Service Providers, browser toolbars and search engines—amounting to more than a billion unique keywords and over a trillion search queries—and we carefully weight the data to avoid bias toward any particular source. So our data is more comprehensive.

The “related keywords” feature allows you to select related terms and synonyms and include them in the results with your original query. Again, this is important for keyword expansion and can tell you what other phrases your audience may be using to search for related topics.

There’s also a filter feature so you can weed out terms that aren’t relevant to your search.

Finally, WordStream’s keyword tool is faster than Google’s. You get results pretty much instantaneously.

In the end, the point of using any of these tools is to get keyword suggestions, and it’s important to remember that they are in fact just suggestions—many of them may be irrelevant to your website or business. The more data you start out with, the more usable, actionable keywords you’re going to end up with after you drill down and figure out which terms are going to be most relevant and valuable for you. Then you can get to work optimizing your web copy and PPC campaigns based on those keywords, which in turn gives you more data to analyze (like which keywords drive the most traffic and conversions, and which aren’t delivering any value). This creates a cycle of data-driven decision making.

Our view is that keywords in and of themselves aren’t worth anything. It’s what you do with your keyword list that matters. That’s why we developed the tool. We hope that dedicated search marketers will stick around to learn the benefits of keyword management—tools and strategies that help you group, organize and act on all that raw keyword data to get real results in return.”

Elisa Gabbert is the Content Development Manager at WordStream, a software manufacturer specializing in keyword discovery & management software for SEO and PPC. To get in touch with Elisa, you can send a note to egabbert at wordstream dot com, follow her on twitter, or check out the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog, where she’s a regular contributor.

What do you think about the WordStream Keyword Tool? Are you going to give it a try? I would love to hear your thoughts on the tool if you comment below!

In my last Twitter University post (9 Reasons Why EntrepreneursShould Be On Twitter – Twitter University) I discussed why it was important for business owners to get involved with Twitter. Today I wanted to showcase a few examples of entrepreneurs who are active on Twitter and were able to generate significant traffic increases to their websites.

On EvanCarmichael.com, Twitter has recently become the number four source of traffic. It’s Google, then Yahoo!, then AOL, and then Twitter. Twitter sends more traffic to my site than Ask, Bing / MSN, Wikipedia, Digg, and Facebook. What’s also interesting is that Twitter visitors view 40% more pages and spend 73% more time on my site than visitors from Google. I don’t have any numbers on how well the traffic converts, which is typically a problem for social media referrals, but the growth in the Twitter numbers is impressive nonetheless.

I also wanted to share with the results that other bloggers are experiencing. Let’s start with one of the most popular blogs in the world, TechCrunch. TechCrunch recently released their traffic numbers (For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)) and Twitter is the number two referring website after Google. Twitter accounts for 9.7% of TechCrunch traffic, up from 1.8% six months ago, out of millions of visitors. According to TechCrunch writer Erick Schonfeld:

“Some people use it to share their daily thoughts and observation. But it is increasingly becoming clear that one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor. Twitter is not just about micro-media. The most powerful Tweets are those which point elsewhere. Or to put it another way, the shortened link may just be the most powerful type of micro-media there is. Those retweeted links are turning Twitter into a social broadcast media that rivals any other on the Web. “

Another popular blogger who has been on Twitter is Jeremy Shoemaker, a.k.a. ShoeMoney. Shoemaker has been on Twitter for almost one year and it is also the second largest referral of traffic after Google (For Those Who Still Don’t Get Twitter). Twitter sends him over 25,000 visitors every month and, similar to results on my website, Twitter visitors look at more pages and spend more time on his site than Google visitors. According to Shoemaker:

“You would probably be surprised to learn that less then 5% of the twitter traffic came from my tweets. Just engaging in the twittosphere has been amazingly rewarding. But if you still “don’t get it” its cool. Less competition.”

Chris Brogan, a community and social media blogger, recently shared how he has managed to double the traffic to his website using Twitter (How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog). According to Brogan:

“Since I started using Twitter, I have more than doubled my blog traffic over the last several months, and I can tell you how. I ask my following in Twitter for love three times: once when I post the blog, again if it takes off well in the comments section, and sometimes a third time if I want to really amp the traffic via StumbleUpon. I mix these requests in liberally with all the various ways I help others using Twitter, and so it doesn’t come off like I’m perpetually pitching my own stuff. My current monthly rate of pitching others vs. promoting my own site is 75 / 25 in other people’s favor. That sounds fair, right?”

You also don’t need to be a top blogger to get results from Twitter. A great example is Daily SEO Blog, a website run by Mani Karthik, a self-proclaimed “Internet Enthusiast.” Karthik currently gets 25% of his traffic from Twitter and again, Twitter is the number two source of referring traffic, after Google (How much traffic can Twitter give ?). According to Karthik:

“For those of you still not convinced about what Twitter can give to your website, think again. Most of the sites, Twitter is already giving 1/3rd – 1/4th of its total traffic – those who have embraced the power of Twitter that is. DSB gets a nice 1/4th of its traffic from Twitter too, that is indeed a nice thing. What’s important is that 99% of the traffic is from other people’s tweets. So if you haven’t yet embraced Twitter, try it out this time around.”

My top nine reasons for why entrepreneurs should be on Twitter were:

1. It’s where your customers are
2. It’s where your customers will be
3. Twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website
4. People are talking about you
5. Connect with people you want to get in front of
6. Add credibility to your business
7. Stay on top of trends in your industry
8. Rank higher in search engines
9. Leverage the work you’re already doing

Hopefully today’s post has given you solid evidence for how Twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website and helps bring home some of the benefits of getting involved.

How are you using Twitter for your business? What kind of traffic results are you seeing?