Keyword Researcher Review

How Does It Work? Why's It So Different?

There have been keyword tools around for many years. I've used and liked many of them. They are all based on Google Keyword Tool (GKT) - which you can play with here. The problem is that Google doesn't provide very good data in this tool. For example - lets search for: "camera for travel" in GKT - I'm searching worldwide - and I select "close match" otherwise most of the results will just be about cameras not camers for travelling. I get a grand total of 17 results.

Now I do the same search in Keyword Researcher - in fact I did two searchers: "* camera for travel" and "camera for travel * " I got 71 results: some of which were really promising: "best digital camera for travel photography" "what to look for in a travel camera".

Why do I like these titles? Because they include up to eight keywords! What do you think the chances that a wizzley article might rank for "what to look for in a travel camera" - we'll give it a go - I'll link when I've published that article!

So why so many more results in Keyword Researcher, which uses Google's own "auto suggest" feature (see the video if you don't understand what that is), than the "official" Google keyword tool? Frankly, because its not in Google's best interest to tell any of us all the very-long keyword phrases, people type into Google.

The Google tool is designed for people who are buying adwords ads - if say, Canon, could bid on the term "what to look for in a travel camera", it would pay a lot less than bidding on "camera for travel" - Google would make less money. Oh and evil, spammy Internet marketers would use the tool to create focused, quality content, which may rise to the top of the search results, outranking Google's big brand customers (Nextag, Amazon, Walmart, Canon). Not happy all around - for Google.

But, but you say, I must know whether that keyword gets any searchers! I need to know: 

• I need to know how many competiting websites there are.
• what the cost per click for Adsense. 
• I need to know how many searchers there are.

Lets take them one at a time.

Value of the Competiting Websites Metric

Virtually zero - look at the first page of results (use scroogle.org for non-personalised results - not Google) - does ever result on that page have the EXACT keyword in the title? In the VERY unlikely result of a yes - move on.

Value of Adsense CPC Metric

Virtually zero - who here has got CPCs very much lower than this metric? Yeah though so. You will NEVER get this figure, its what the advertiser pays, the BEST you'd get is about 40% - the reality - probably 1/2 of that, even less given that mostly ads display that are "interest" based not, and not relevant to your site's content.

Value of The Search Volume Metric

Complete fantasy-land. Even using the "exatic match" option (nothing else is even close), this is very rough approximation. You know its one thing to work hard to rank for #1 for a term. That's the business we're in. But to rank #1 expecting 1000 visitors a month and getting 10 - that's heart-breaking, speaking as someone who's done it. 

Getting 1000 visitors and making $2 is pretty bad too. 

On the other side I've made good money from sites that get only a few hundred search visitors a month. Finding searchers who are desperate to buy is FAR more profitable than just getting lots of tire-kickers to your site.

There are two ways to know how much traffic a term gets:

• run a pay per click campaign (don't ask me all I know is it costs money); 
• rank #1 (or at least on the first page) for the term and look at your own traffic.

If you put some of those results from Keyword Researcher back into GKT - you will get zero results - no one searchers for those terms. Well they do - because they find my pages, using those terms, here on Wizzley and elsewhere, those zeros sure do add up! We don't know what the minimum is for a term to show up in auto-suggest (and therefore Keyword Researcher) - but its a lot higher than zero!

And the easiest way to rank #1? Build a Wizzley article, get it ranked, notice if you are making any money. Then, and only then, consider building a website in the niche - but test at Wizzley first

Not a member of Wizzley yet? Sign up here

Maybe, maybe not. You see you also need to use the software between your ears. Hopefully you figured out that in the list above - that, given that its February 2012, you probably want to change those phrases with 2011 slightly... 

You need to know, or learn about, what you are writing about, that way you will speak the searchers language and you are far more likely to find the profitable keywords doing that, that picking random terms from any tools. 

Keyword Researcher is a good place to start though. 

The trial version of the software works just like the full version but only runs through A-M of the alphabet, not A-Z 

If you use my link - you will get $4 off the already reasonable price. Remember this is a one-time cost, there are no on-going costs involved with this product. 

HERE'S MY AFFILIATE LINK

Also if you are already a member of the Keyword Academy - you don't need this tool, a close variation is included in their tools.