SSWT Internet Marketing Forum

Hi Lynn and others,

I posted some concerns about my Wordtracker research in the 20K thread (please forgive me for that). Now Lynn has asked me to post it here:

I used the free version to look up keywords for my niche of living abroad. I included as many keywords, including Long Tail ones, as I could think of related to that. Then they add in "associated" keywords. But the ones I plugged in and the associated ones they gave me mostly ranked poorly.

Wordtracker lists along a bar on the top a numbered ranking system starting with "Poor" and moving along to "Good" and then "Excellent." Each keyword you've selected gets a rank number so you can see how your keywords are ranked -- whether Wordtracker considers them good keywords to go with, or excellent or poor or whatever.

So far, almost all my keywords were considered too competitive or just not searched enough. So they're not usable.

Two of the "associated" keywords they gave me, however, ranked either "good" or close to "excellent." Both would be considered highly competitive at first glance, so I was surprised at this finding.

But, as someone knowledgable about the general topic, I saw quickly that, although they're desirable and therefore heavily searched, they'd be difficult for just anyone to tackle. One activity is legally available to only a select few, and the other would present credibility problems to anyone who can't do the activity regularly.

Note that Wordtracker's free version gives you rankings based only on MSN, not Google, Yahoo or any other search engine. You've got to get their paid version for that.

Could that be part of my problem?

Ana

Hi Ana,

When you refer to WordTracker's "ranking system", do you mean KEI? If so, you want to disregard that altogether. KEI is skewed. The calculation takes the number of search results into consideration, which is not an accurate indication of "competition" at all...

I used WordTracker's one-day subscription with satisfaction fairly often in the past, and I analyzed the data with (aff link). That provided great power in going beyond KEI in my evaluation. He's currently updating KRA, so it's unavailable for now.

But WT has discontinued the daily sub, and the cheapest is the $30 one-month deal. So I've been looking around, and (non-aff) looks promising. I can analyze its results in KRA, as well, and it has a one-day sub for $7.95. They call it a trial, but it's been up for some time

Another keyword source I've used with satisfaction is NicheBOT, and Andy does have a keyword analyzer for that one: (yet another aff link).

Lane

Aside from Wordtracker you can also use for your keyword research the - a keyword research technology where you can also earn and even surpass what your competitors are making with Google Adwords and Overture. KeywordSpy gives you the key to their success: a good ad-campaign with the right keywords.