Knowing which keywords and terms people are finding your site through Google with is very important. If you don’t know how people are finding you, how can you improve your chances of being found? Google provides a free and easy to use way to see every keyword or phrase that people punched into Google to land on your site.

This information can be very beneficial to you if used the right way. It’s also how bloggers find out the funny and ridiculous terms people punched into Google and landed on their site.

This post is assuming you have Webmaster Tools set up and have added the code to your site. For information on how to do that, go here.

First, login to your Google account and head to Webmaster Tools. If you only have one site here, it will be the only one listed. If you have more than one, simply click on the one that you are working with.

You’ll now be at a screen that looks like this:

Click on the “search queries”.

Here, in the upper right you can change the date range if you’d like. It will be set to the past 30 days.

Scroll down and you’ll see a list. These are your top performing keywords, listed in order of most clicks to least. You’ll also be shown other key information such as your click-through-rate and your average position in Google for each term.

Click on any of the keywords listed and you’ll be brought to a new page where Google will show you which exact page/post on your site that keyword is leading people to.

This stuff is so important to know! If you see a keyword there that you wouldn’t expect, take action. Go back to the corresponding post and make sure it is completely optimized. The difference between the 6th and 4th result on page one of Google can be HUGE! Take a look at a snippet from one of my sites. You can see that the keywords with results at or near #1 get amazing click-through-rates. You can also see how fast those clicks drop off as the results go down the page.

You can clearly see the importance of ranking as high as you can for keywords and thanks to the free info provided by Webmaster Tools, we get some insight as to what is working and what isn’t.

To quickly find low competition, high search keywords that can make a huge difference in your blog’s traffic and income, check out Long Tail Pro. Get started today with a 10-day free trial and see the magic that it can do for you!

Finding great keywords is only half of the battle. Once you’ve done that, it’s important to regularly monitor them through Webmaster Tools so you can see what is working.

Questions? Ask away!