One of the biggest names in keyword research, Wordtracker, has announced the availability of separate UK keywords, rather than forcing British search marketers to depend on worldwide data including keywords from every English speaking region for their SEO campaigns. The ability to fine tune campaigns to the local market should not be underestimated and could lead to increased ROI, for UK marketers and those targeting the UK region alike.

Wordtracker CEO Andy Mindel told me “by using only UK specific keywords, marketers will be able to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. We collect uncompressed log files from the ISPs. From these we extract the keywords from the major engines including Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN amongst others, leaving just over 4% of the original Files. We then extract duplicate queries, robotic queries and generally de-spam the data. The extraction process is a lengthy one but we’re left with high quality keywords that represent just 0.038% of the original log files. However those quality keywords are like gold dust to people optimizing their websites. Online business is growing at a terrific pace and no company, large or small can ignore the potential of the web. Our database contains many millions of keywords from both the UK and the US. People no longer have to guess their best keywords, with our database, they will know.”

Wordtracker, a privately owned London business that started in 1997, provides keyword research services to search engine marketing professionals and website owners worldwide and has established itself as a market leader with more than 500 clients, including the likes of monster.com, and 80% of its turnover coming from the US. Although the new UK keywords option is only available to users of the subscription service, at no extra charge, there is also a free Wordtracker keyword suggestion tool available which gives webmasters up to 100 free keywords in each session.

Of course, Wordtracker is not alone in offering a UK specific tool as Google AdWords does likewise. However, AdWords offers no listing of specific search volumes unlike Wordtracker. A hugely important factor as far as marketers are concerned, and one which is always going to give companies such as Wordtracker the edge over and above search engine based offerings. After all, Google is never going to free its data for fear of being shot to pieces by spammers. You can use Google Trends to get a comparative indication of results, but it’s a poor compromise when lined up squarely against Wordtracker.