How to sign up for AdWords

To access AdWords and the Keyword Planning Tool, follow these instructions! If you do not, you may end up in a perpetual loop where AdWords will not let you proceed without inputting credit card information!

Set up a free account: look for the "Start Now" button, click it, and then follow all of the instructions.

Important:  Be sure you click the "Skip the guided setup" link, or else you'll be in a perpetual limbo where Google will continuously ask for your credit card information before it lets you access the AdWords tool you need to determine CPCs for your keyphrases!

Next, ask the planner to help you generate ideas (click the "Search for new keywords..." area):

Next, input some keywords you're considering, input your site's URL, make sure you're just searching for data from the United States, and then hit "Get Ideas."  You can, if you want, choose a specific category that relates to the product/content that your optimization efforts are centered around.

Next, check traffic estimates:

You're trying to drive traffic to your web site, so you're looking for keyphrases that will drive traffic. If the "average monthly searches" number shows a dash, that means there's not enough traffic for Google to estimate. That's a problem -- that keyphrase will not generate traffic. If the keyphrase might generate 100k-1M, that means 100,000 to 1 million searches a month in the U.S. -- that's a lot of searches. That's both good and bad. You're trying to drive traffic, so you need keyphrases that generate searches. But those that are high in volume are also very competitive. You need a balance of related keyprhases that will generate traffic that won't be too competitive to rank.

Remember that even if you are good enough to get the site to the No. 1 organic ranking spot, you'll still just get a 30% click-through rate -- so, the average monthly searches do not equal the amount of traffic you might generate. You'll at very best get 30% of that range. Explain that in your paper.