My article on keyword popularity research pointed out the major flaws with all keyword analysis tools.
To overcome those flaws, a more comprehensive approach needs to be taken. Simply relying on a single tool is not enough. There are five key parts to keyword analysis and web page optimization:
1) Find popular/traffic driving keywords
2) Determine keyword health
3) Determine the level of competitive difficultly for each keyword phrase
4) Practice onpage optimization for each web page
5) Practice offpage optimization for each web page
This article will discuss the set of keyword suggestion tools that should be used to do comprehensive keyword research and find those popular and traffic driving keywords.
The tools listed here should help web masters determine answers to two major questions:
What are alternative suggestions for a keyword or a keyword phrase?
Is there potential traffic for this keyword?
Most tools answers both of these questions at the same time.
Web masters can, at the very least, glean a sense of the amount of traffic for a keyword. Discovering the actual amount for a keyword is impossible. These tools can let a web master know that there is enough health in a keyword to consider pursuing it more fervently.
There are two main tools that web masters to use to find the answers to these questions. The first is the Yahoo Search Marketing Keyword Selector Tool (formerly known as the Overture Keyword Selector Tool). Use this tool to gauge the traffic a keyword phrase garners from Overture search users. Remember, Overture traffic data tends to be overinflated especially for popular terms. The key is to see if the keyword phrase has any decent amount of traffic. Also, look at the other keyword phrases that Overture suggests. Any others that are useful and have a decent amount of traffic?
Next mosey on over to Wordtracker. Enter a few of the keywords that have promising traffic according to Overture. Actually, only the very first screen in Wordtracker is of interest. The left pane will provide some alternative keywords. The right pane will produce the count or traffic numbers. The count number is from it’s Dogpile/Metacrawler data. There is no need to purchase a Wordtracker subscription. The number of interest is the count not the KEI. The count is the same no matter which search engine is used. Even though the free version of Wordtracker is pulling AltaVista data, the only thing it is pulling from AltaVista is the competition number. The competition number and KEI are not of interest at this point. See my Wordtracker review for more details.
Remember that Overture’s number is for the last month. Wordtracker data is over the last two months supposedly.
Want an easy way to see both Wordtracker and Overture data all from one source?
Head over to Nichebot. Nichebot offers all the essentials that are needed to find keyword alternatives and keyword counts from both Wordtracker and Overture. Read my Nichebot review for more details.
Another excellent resource that provides Wordtracker and Overture data side by side is Digital Point’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. This tool displays alternative keywords provided by each tool as well as an esitmated count per day for each keyword. This count/day is confusing especially in regards to the Wordtracker data. However, according to the Digital Point, the values are legitimate.
Another excellent tool for helping determine traffic potential is the Keyword Activity Tool from SEOToolset.
What are some other resources for finding alternative keyword phrases?
Gigablast provides “Gigabits” for each keyword searched. A keyword nugget or two maybe found. Read more about Gigablast Gigabits.
Snap provides a list of alternative keywords for every keyword searched. This information can be found in the far left column of their site. Next to each keyword is a “Search Count” number. I do not know whether that number is a daily/weekly or monthly number. Their site does not indicate. However, to get more specific results use their Keyword Statistics tool. This tool allows users to search on keyword phrases over various periods of time.
Clusty is another search engine that provides “clustered” search data. The data is grouped in the left navigation bar according to logical groupings. Searching “paisley socks” provides results grouped as follows: Clothing, Women’s Trouser Socks, Men’s Socks, etc. These grouping labels can provide additional terms to add to a keyword phrase. For example: “womens paisley trouser socks”, “mens paisley socks”, etc. Plug these phrases into Digital Point and see if there is any traffic for these terms.
Most of the above tools are free. I currently do not recommend any of the heavily marketed pricey keyword analysis tools.
Use keyword suggestion tools to brainstorm. Use them to think about new keywords. Use them to think about keyword phrases that could be used in conjunction with primary keyword phrases. Take the alternative keyword phrases gleaned from these tools and plug them into Nichebot/Digital Point/SEOToolset to determine if there is a decent level of traffic for these terms.
