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GP Michal · 2007-10-11 19:30:23

Hi ya'll,

Good ol' Gypsy once said that one should not rely solely on ONE keyword research tool in order to get a complete picture of the value of a particular keyword or keyword phrase. As a matter of fact, he recently wrote a SUPER article that listed a few of the good tools out there.

My question is this....which combination of tools is the best? I purchased a 1-month stint on WordTracker recently and really liked it. I went to the Nichebot site and saw what they had to offer and it looked pretty promising. Both vendors offered the opportunity to "pay as you go" in one way or the other. The problem is that if you try to use too many tools it could cost you quite the pretty penny. WordTracker can cost about $60/month or $350/yr....you decide which offer suits your needs. You can even purchase it for one day if you want. Nichebot offers some type of monthly fee and also some kind of "pot" that you draw against by keeping track of usage points (I think).

Speaking about WordTracker...

They claim that they use two major metacrawlers--Dogpile and Metacrawler. The say that using these crawlers are better than what the other tools use because they give a more accurate picture of what is actually being typed into search engine search fields by humans. Other tools, eg Overture, will give results that are skewed by software that tend to pump all kinds of auto-generated KWP's that some researchers use to see if any of the KWP's have any popularity or not. WordTracker's metacrawlers, on the other hand, only result in KWP's that are actually hand-typed into the SE seach fields. Anyone have any insight to all that?

So...what's the best BUT least expensive combination out there? Where's the best bang for your buck??

GP

TheGypsy · 2007-10-11 20:09:28

Well dood..... ( yer a mad man today huh?)....

For a single project, depending on the depth of research, I would likely go with the PayAsYouGO .... for example I doubt you'd burn through more than $15-20 at NicheBot on this round of research... which should last you many months.....

So WT and NB should be a good start. NicheBot also gives LSI and WordTrend data (and Keyword discovery actually) so there are many goodies there....

The problem with most of them is;

1. Acurate search totals - none of them are getting fata from the Big 3 so it will never be 100%

2. Competition metric - as I outlined in the article on KeyWord research - there are a few ways to guage competitiveness (using Google) and most of these tools use some type of hybrid thereof or worse, some will use Total Instances (core results)

This is not only the reason behind using more than one tool ( finding commonalities) but it also highlights the need to get down and dirty somewhere along the line to establish how tough the Top 10 are going to be.

Also of course is looking at the PPC prices as well... often prime targets will also be the more expensive :0)

There is no guarantees - the major engines do not give us REAL data with which to work.... so we do what we can

GP Michal · 2007-10-12 11:53:00

Well now...here's the cost for Nichebot:

Pay $1 for a 14-day trial with access to all premium features of various tools. i.e. Wordtracker, LSI, Keyword Discovery etc.

Afterwards--$9.97/mo. gets you 50 credits/mo. to uses towards the premium features of the KW tools and of course the regular features of all of them.

So...not only do I have to research KWP's for my home page, I also have to research them for all my category pages (about 10). Do you still think $15-20 would do it?

TheGypsy · 2007-10-12 14:20:38

Well, I wouldn't be so worried about a granular program right down to each and every product.... I would be more interested in researching the money terms and general market terms...

Once you have targeted, 'picnic baskets' 'wicker picnic baskets' and so on.. the actual model/brand name should be a no brainer. I wouldn't be researching ANY of that stuff.....

One note of interest, the LSI tool can generate some great lists of terms and phrases that can be used in the content of the site. This helps with relevance related ranking mechanisms... when targeting a term, semanitcally related words and concepts help to establish a theme.

GP Michal · 2007-10-13 07:47:13

Good point about LSI and looking for related phrases for your content.

As far as the individual products, I wasn't going to research them. You're right...it's really a no-brainer.

On my home page (as far as products are concerned anyway) I have 3 section links mingled in with 7 category links all listed in a vertical menu. The 3 sectional links take you to a respective category page with anywhere from 4-6 category links. Two of the "loose" category links on the home page could actually be merged in to a section. I guess I didn't think having a category page with only two category links on it was important enough to consolidate the 2 category links into a section on the home page. What do you think about that?

Does having section links mingled with category links in the same vertical menu portray a sense of disorganization? I was afaid to consolidate too much because when a potentional customer landed on my home page I wanted them to see the varitety of products I offered. i.e. if I grouped coffee, barware, and cutting boards into a section called, let's say "Other products", the customer would not immediately see the variety that was offered.

Last edited by GP Michal (2007-10-13 07:48:55)

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Site Reference Forums

#1 2007-10-11 19:30:23

Keyword research tools...which one(s) is the best??

#2 2007-10-11 20:09:28

Re: Keyword research tools...which one(s) is the best??

#3 2007-10-12 11:53:00

Re: Keyword research tools...which one(s) is the best??

#4 2007-10-12 14:20:38

Re: Keyword research tools...which one(s) is the best??

#5 2007-10-13 07:47:13

Re: Keyword research tools...which one(s) is the best??

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