Whether you’re researching keywords for a PPC campaign or you’re looking for long tail keywords to optimize your site or blog, keyword research and keyword suggestion tools are essential to your work. Using a solitary tool to do the work might be fine for most applications, however, if you’re serious about your business, you’ll want to use more than one tool in your efforts. I’ve taken the time to review several keyword tools using the search terms Best Affiliate Programs and provided screenshots of the various tools in action.
Please note: This article is not a “Top Ten” list and the tools reviewed here are not listed in any particular order. Each keyword tool offers a unique perspective and this review is solely for the purpose of comparison.
WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool - http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Wordtracker offers a free keyword suggestion tool that allows you to search their database of over 330 million search terms. The keywords in the database are collected from Dogpile and Metacrawler and are updated on a weekly basis. The free tool will return the first 100 keyword suggestions which should be sufficient for most SEO and PPC needs. Here’s a screenshot of a sample Wordtracker search for the terms “Best Affiliate Programs”
As you can see, Wordtracker gives you the most popular keywords related to your search terms as well as the number of times per month the keywords were searched for. Wordtracker offers a paid subscription service that allows you to go deeper and retrieve complete lists of keywords. They offer a 7 day free trial to the subscription service if you’re interested in taking Wordtracker for a test drive.
KeyCompete - http://www.keycompete.com
KeyCompete is an online tool that lets you identify and analyze keywords your competition is using in their PPC campaigns. When you use the KeyCompete tool, you can not only type in keywords to search for, you can type in a competitors url to search for the terms they’re bidding on with Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Here’s a screenshot of a sample KeyCompete search for the terms “Best Affiliate Programs”
Given the results of the search shown above, you can click on a domain name and see exactly what terms the site is bidding on in Adwords. The advantage to KeyCompete is that you can quickly discover what keywords your competitor is using to drive PPC traffic to their site. The disadvantage is that if your competitor is not using PPC advertising, you will not be able to see their terms. KeyCompete offers only limited functionality for free, to get full access, you can either subscribe to their service or buy lists of specific searches for $10 a pop. Either way, KeyCompete is an essential tool for serious PPC marketers and SEOs.
Keyword Discovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
Keyword Discovery utilizes over 180 search engines world wide to compile keyword statistics into one of the most powerful Keyword Research tools available. Using this tool it is possible to generate huge lists of head and tail keyword terms for whatever niche you’re trying to market or optimize for. The reports generated by this tool are organized by search volume and start with the top head terms down to huge lists of relative tail terms. Below you can see a screenshot of a sample Keyword Discovery search for the terms “Best Affiliate Programs”.
The screenshot above is from the free search tool and you can see there is a great deal of information returned using it. The subscription tool is availabe for a monthly of yearly fee and in my opinion, Keyword Discovery is an essential expenditure for anybody looking to maximize their SEO or PPC efforts.
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
Aaron Wall and his SEO Book franchise are an industry standard. The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool is no exception in that it certainly delivers word class data for keyword mining. First off, the tool will suggest the most popular keywords and it also show you how many searches are being made per month across the major search engines. Below you can see a screenshot of the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool for search terms “Best Affiliate Programs”.
As you can see, this tool is quite useful if you are setting up PPC campaigns for not only Google Adwords but it can benefit Yahoo search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter campaigns as well. Of course, this tool is also fantasatic if you are just mining keyword for organic SEO purposes. The tool is free and it provides a wealth of information at your fingertips.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
No keyword mining effort could be considered complete without a trip to Google’s own Adwords Keyword Tool. If you’re doing any type of SEO work or PPC marketing, Google’s tool is the alpha and the omega of a successful keyword search. Below you can see a screenshot of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool for the search terms “Best Affiliate Programs”.
As you can see above, Google’s tool returns related head and tail keywords as well as the average number of searches per month. The tool also shows volume trends per month which can be very useful if you’re planning seasonal PPC campaigns or if you want to optimize a site for holidays, seasons or specific times of year. The tool also tells you the month in which the highest number of searches has occurred. Google’s keyword tool is completely free of charge and is one of the most important tools for keyword research and analysis.
I’m sure there are many other keyword research and keyword suggestion tools available on the internet but the ones mentioned here are the ones I’ve used time and again when researching keywords for PPC or SEO. If you know of any other tools, please feel free to leave a comment here to share them with us.
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Happy Publishing,
Dave
Hi Dave,
I do agree with the terms you specified in the keyword research. I tried all tools which you speciffied, But it not more effective like google adwords. Can you suggest me which one is the best free keyword suggestion tool other than Google adwards for long tail keyword research?
Chandru,
I think Keyword Discovery is great for generating long tail keywords but the free version doesn’t go as deep as the paid version because it stops after 100 keywords.
SEOBook makes some great tools, and his keyword suggestion tool works perfectly! I use it in all of my marketing campaigns, alongside Google’s Adwords keyword suggestion tool, of course.
I love SEOBook’s tools. I can’t believe Aaron Wall gives that much to the community. If you haven’t bought his book, it’s the only e-book I’d ever recommend buying. The only problem is that the thing is as long of a read as the Holy Bible.
Hi, I m newbie about blog, etc. But I found great information about keyword tools in here. Thanks for suggestion.
I just build up my blog for one month, my blog ranked top with the long tail keyword best online money making secret (without searches in the keyword tool), but can’t squeeze in top few pages when i shorten it to a more competitive keyword @ online money making. It’s really hard to target those competitive keyword after researching a good keyword with these keyword tools! But it’s a good start for me, really need more idea to get in those competitive keyword!