If you’re a search engine marketer, you’ll be glad to hear that Google recently updated its keyword tool to include traffic estimates. Although this may not appear ground breaking at first, estimating actual search engine traffic has been rather difficult since the disappearance of Yahoo’s overture keyword tool after their panama update.

Up until now, only semi-reliable tools have existed such as the ones offered by KeywordDiscovery, WordTracker, and Spyfu. With Google, search estimates are provided by keyword in a previous month format as well as average monthly search volume:

Implications

One video i caught on Robin Good’s site discussed that by using AOL’s organic search engine ranking data, search engine marketers can see exactly the kind of traffic they can receive by achieving a #1, #2, Etc position in Google. As the vlogger discussed, this will play an essential role in planning search engine optimization campaigns.

In addition to the above, I find that the above tool will provide useful for preemptive ROI analysis for paid search engine programs. As prospective clients will continually demand more analysis on how their hard earned dollars will be spent, this above tool can easily be used to estimate search volume and the associated PPC click costs to determine the “investment” portion of the equation. When combined with a predicted response and close rate, an initial ROI baseline can be determined.

As these are likely only a few new implications, I think its safe to say that this tool will become an essential component to any search engine marketer’s toolbox.