Grouping keywords and phrases manually yourself usually takes a lot of time. For most SEOs and PPC specialists, grouping keywords is not only time-consuming but it's boring, hard-to-do and definitely not fun.
That's why many sophisticated digital marketers are moving towards a more systematic process for grouping and categorizing keywords. Common tools used for grouping keywords are Excel, Adwords Editor, desktop keyword grouping software and online grouping applications.
When looking for the best keyword grouping software, it's important to look for several features.
1. Efficiency - Some tools group keywords in mere seconds while other tools take several minutes. I've even seen tools that take up to 15 minutes to group a small list of 500 keywords or so. In my opinion, if a program can't group 1,000 keywords in less than 10 seconds, the program is not efficient and it will only waste your time.
2. Maximum Uses - Some online keyword grouping tools only let you group 1,000 keywords at a time. If the tool you're using can't handle the amount of keywords you need to group on a consistent basis for all your projects, this will obviously present a problem.
3. Price - Most keyword grouping tools are bundled with other SEO or PPC tools as part of a service. These fees can range from $39/mo. to $359/yr. You can find free tools for grouping keywords online too. One good example of a such a free tool is Adwords Editor. Although Adwords Editor isn't solely a keyword grouper tool, it does have a lot of useful functions that allow you to create draft keyword grouping structures. One of the tools within Adwords Editor is Keyword Grouper. The way it works is you dump a lot of keywords into one adgroup, then run Keyword Grouper on that adgroup. Keyword Grouper will generate the common terms within the adgroup allowing you to identify common themes.
4. Industrial-Strength - Make sure the tool has the capacity to process 1,000s of keywords. Some tools choke, die and stop working if you input too many keywords. To make sure the software or program is worth keeping, I would suggest inputting a list of a couple thousand keywords. With keywords in hand, paste them into the tool you're using to test the ability of handling large lists. If it can't handle that many keywords or takes over 2 minutes, move on.
5. Export-friendly Format - It's absolutely essential to have a program that allows you to export the keyword groupings in a format that is useful to you. Some tools out there do a good job creating keyword groupings, but then allow you to download the results in a format that requires a lot of manual work to manipulate into a format that's user-friendly. The most common types of formats you should look for are .xlsx, .xls, .pdf, .csv, .txt, .html to name a few.
6. Ease of Use - Software programmers don't always think of the end-user. Usually programmers don't have a good understanding of the needs of an end-user. Any good keyword grouping tool simply accepts a list of keywords, processes them into logical groups, and that's it.
7. Settings and Flexibility - Look for settings such as: specifying the minimum number of keywords per group, group each keyword into its own group with different match types, ability to specify different match types, merge singular and plural keywords together, ability to ignore stop words, ability to easily change settings on the fly to preview the different potential output.
So there you have it. Seven features to look for when evaluating keyword grouping tools. Since grouping keywords is an important task that determines website structure for SEO and account structure for PPC, finding the right tool that works with your current process is essential.
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