If you do any amount of online advertising, I am sure that you have had quite a few forays into keyword research. I remember when I was starting out, I had lists of keywords scrawled out all over my desk. In the backs of notebooks, on random pieces of scrap paper, I've even scribbled some down on the back of an envelope!

Later on, I 'advanced' to storing my lists in Word documents on my computer. It was a step up, but still did not help much when it came time to organizing my online efforts. I wound up with multiple lists for the same campaign and inevitably I would wind up with duplicate keywords between the lists. Writing became a chore since I had to keep compiling the lists to make sure I hadn't used that keyword before.

All this headache and I hadn't even STARTED trying to mount a backlinking strategy yet. Needless to say I had to come up with a better method.

Enter.. Spreadsheets and Google Documents (soon to be Google Drive)

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grit Premium
Excellent article series. I learned a lot. I think I'm going to implement this strategy. Thanks.
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gooph Premium
Great idea! Thanks for the tutorial. I'm sure it will keep me organized.
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tport144 Premium
For a second there I thought you describing one of my campaigns! This is a great idea for keeping things organized and a great tutorial! I plan to start using Excel to get organized immediately! I use Excel daily at my "day job" and it never occured to me to use it for my projects.
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jchilders Premium
Yeah, I typically think of 'numbers' when I hear Excel. But it's pretty useful for organizing any type of data. If you are better at Excel, I'm sure you can come up with some pretty snazzy forms. My template was pretty quick and dirty, but it gets the job done. :)
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Leatnel Premium
Jon, this sounds like the ideal way to keep your keywords organized! I'm just getting started, again (long story), but my niche has soooo many aspects and thus, many keywords. I already have two documents of keywords, and a bunch written in my notebook. What better time to start organizing them, but at the beginning. I have a little bit of Excel experience, and plan on setting up a template right away.
Thank you very much for this tutorial. It was very helpful.

Leata
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jchilders Premium
Yes, this could definitely help focus on different aspects. You could easily sort your keywords and group them together by 'sub-niche', then tie them all together back to you main niche.
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Deezdz Premium
Great tutorial on staying organized Jon! I have different files in different places for all different campaigns...I haven't found a system yet but this seem like a great template to organize everything.
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jchilders Premium
If you want to keep everything in one place, you could use different 'sheets' within a single Excel document. One for each campaign.

If you do use a single file for everything, I would definitely keep updated copies in different places though, just in case one gets 'lost'. (recently had a harddrive die without warning and lost a bunch of stuff)
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