Keyword Tool Options-Which one to Use?

How to chose the right keyword tool

There are so many keyword tools out there I’m beginning to lose count! They all have  strengths and weaknesses, none are perfect by any means! The challenge is trying to find out which one suits you best and which one will help you succeed with  your Internet Marketing Strategy!

Each keyword tool uses different datasets which provide you with the keyword data that you are looking for. Some use only a fraction of the data when compared to others which can lead to inconsistent keyword data being returned from different tools.

Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign. Using the wrong keyword tool can limit the opportunities for your business and may result in choosing inappropriate keywords.  If you have never used a keyword tool,  you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Which is more accurate?
• Which one has the functionality that suits you best?
• Is there one Keyword tool that is more intuitive than another?

The most productive thing to do, could be to use a mix of 2-3 different keyword tools and develop your keyword strategy decisions based on pooling the data and functionalities of all three together.

Try using the strengths of each product while also being aware of their inconsistencies. Explore the different functionalities of each tool and try to find out as much as you can about the dataset they use, i.e. where do they get their data from?

As we’ve said a Keyword research task is the foundation of any internet marketing strategy. All website strategies are built around different keywords as they define your target market . It’s essential to keep up with changes in keyword trends and find those keyword niches that are going to drive targeted traffic to your website that results in sales.

Just quick note on that, what type of keyword phrase are searches using?  The graph (stats from Hitwise) below gives a very good insight into how searches search and the impact for online sales:

Keyword Phrase Length

You can see that as searchers evolves, they are using longer and longer words in their search phrases. This is an important note to keep in mind as you develop your keyword strategy.

The purposs of keyword research is not just about finding out which keyword phrases people are using in their everyday searches and choosing a selection of those to target for your website.

It’s also about new keyword generation, discovering niche keyword strategies and drilling further down and finding as many different variations and descriptions of different keywords that will help drive more traffic to your website.

Let’s have a look at a few different Keyword tools including; Wordtracker, Wordstream, Google’s Keyword tool and KeyWord Discovery.

So where do they get their data from?

Let’s start with Google’s free keyword tool. This tool allows you to generate keywords by either pointing to a website directly or by typing  in keywords, either way will result in a list of keywords with monthly stats.

Google Trends allows you to view up to five years of trend data on searcher behavior. The Traffic Estimator provides insights into potential traffic and predicted CPC for a given keyword.

All of Google’s tools only pull data from Google’s database which is the biggest by far! Let’s face it, there’s not many search engines or news portals that are not on the Google Network at this stage.

Some keyword tools like Google’s tend to return results that are more focused on what is most popular instead of maybe giving you some good ideas for potential long tail keywords. It’s these long tail keywords that are most likely to open up new niches for your business and help you grow sales.

Just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t mean it will be worthwhile to try and rank highly for. I thought the Wordtracker KEI was useful in that respect, because I was able to just concentrate on keywords that had a higher probability of ranking highly for rather then just seeing lists of very popular and competitive keywords.

In some cases some inferior keyword tools pull data from small meta search engines with very limited data sources.

Wordstream boasts that it aggregates over 1 billion unique keywords, representing over a trillion search queries and hundreds of millions of related terms from diverse keyword sources including search engines, Internet service providers and browser tool bars.

This huge database enables them to supply thousands of long-tail keyword suggestions – far more than most subscription-based tools like Key Word Discovery or Wordtracker.

That’s great if you’re looking for keyword suggestions, but what if you want the exact number of searches that people carry out on a keyword? Google’s keyword tool is probably the most comprehensive in this field.

You need to make sure your keyword tool gets it data from both major and minor search engines, and will give you data from a variety of heavily trafficked sources.

Word Tracker boasts that it has a keyword database of over 350 million queries and an advanced keyword suggestion tools.

It also has some useful search features like; datasets from book listings on Amazon, web page count information from Google, listings information from eBay, web site usage information from Alexa. But again, how accurate are these? Take a look at the following examples:

When I did a broad match search on the populatity of the key word: iPhone using the Keyword Discovery eBay listings search Tool it showed the following results:

How could there only be 923 searches for the term “iPhone” on eBay in a whole year. Yes, it does show that this particular keyword is significantly more popular then others underneath it but I would imagine its no where near the real number of times people did a search for “iPhone” on eBay in the last year. So why have this functionality? Is this not misleading for a Search campaign?

In terms of keyword suggestions and keyword idea generation, Google doesn’t compare with some other keyword tools. The “drill down lists” that Wordstream will provide for you are astonishing. If you’re looking for keyword suggestions it will bring back thousands of key word variations in both broad and specific categories, you can then email these lists to yourself for free.

Using Wordstream I can use the related keywords to build out a better keyword list than I can get from WordTracker, alone, and perhaps, from Google’s Keyword Tool – which is more focused on sales.

Lets see how key word data can be inconsistent on different keyword tools. If I search for the term “Swimming Pools” in Keyword discovery, Wordtracker and Google’s Keyword tool what will happen?

I used Keyword Discovery &WordTracker for searches on “swimming pools” for the past year in their so called “Google Databases“:

I got these results:

• Wordtracker: 2,240,000 per year
• Keyword Discovery: 806 per year (how could there only be 806 searches for “Swimming Pools in Google for one year)

I then did the same search in Google’s Keyword Tool for one month and 2,200,000 searches were done.

This just shows you how much less data some keyword tools use when compared to others.Thats not to say they are useless, they may have a lot of other useful functionalities for keyword research such as competitor analysis and suggestion tools. In terms of Search Volume results though, I think Google’s Keyword Tool is the most comprehensive!

KeyWord Tool Comparisons

I prefer Google’s Keyword tool or Wordtracker to a lesser extent because it has a significantly larger number of search queries in its database. As seen above when you are using Keyword Discovery, you are only getting the numbers (KEI, Count) for a tiny percent of the total number of search queries on all search engines. This is due to inability to access the same information that Google has access to regarding keyword searches.

There really isnt much between Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker.  Keyword Discovery does provide more search features and returns a larger keyword list. It’s also better suited to people building AdSense sites, but Wordtracker has been around a long time and has many admirers.

Wordstream has gone for a totally different approach. It offers the same keyword suggestion capabilities as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and similar tools, but layers on keyword analytics, keyword grouping and organization, and integrated content authoring tools.

From what I can see its almost like a content management system for keyword campaigns!You also don’t have to pay for keyword lists unlike both Keyword Discover and Wordtracker.

Being able to link your AdWords account allows you to automatically push the changes you make in Wordstream directly to your AdWords account, saving both time and money. You can also set up Ad campaigns and set bidding prices for PPC campaigns in Wordstreams interface.

Its integration with Google Analytics means that the keywords you research in AdWords will be based on actual keywords that people are searching to find your site. That in itself makes the keywords entered into AdWords more relevant, reduces guesswork, and eliminates the need to input your keywords into AdWords manually.

With its Keyword Niche Finder Tool, marketers can type in terms related to their business and receive a list of the most popular and relevant keywords for their websites, along with the most interesting keyword niches or clusters.

Marketers and website owners can leverage the results from The Keyword Niche Finder to build and structure intelligent website information architectures or create new subsections of their existing sites to drive traffic and collect new business opportunities.

After doing this research I’d probably use Wordstream for keyword generation and for setting up and managing niche keyword strategies. Id use Google’s Keyword tool for providing me with the comprehensive search volume results of keywords which not many other keyword tools can accurately provide.

Have you used these Keyword Tools? What other tools do you suggest? How many keyword tools would you use for the same campaign?

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