Money Secrets

Ah yet again, we’re back to the subject of keyword analysis and which of the zillion or so keyword tools is the best. I’m biased of course, so I guess this post will hardly be classed as an objective review of all the available keyword tools out there. In fact, I’m not going to offer a review of any of them. You all know what they are already.

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have gone with the Google Adwords keyword tool. It’s free, it works and what more could you want.

Fast forward to just a couple of years ago, and I’d have told you to rush out and buy Keyword Elite. Actually, Keyword Elite is still a very good piece of software. Awesome in fact.

But hands down, for researching keywords, niche markets, competition… the best tool on the market today is Market Samurai. And it does so much more than research keywords that you have to see it to believe it. (sounds a bit like one of those infomercials on the shopping channels, lol)

But the truth is that, regardless of which particular tool you go for, as long as you make sure to actually analyse and research the keywords related to your market, niche, domain, articles…, etc, then you’ll be way ahead of the competition anyway.

You can always elect to just use Google’s own keyword tool. It’s free, and you’re getting your information straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak. After all, any keyword software out there is going to pull its results from Google’s tool anyway so just cut out the middle man right?

That’s fine.If all you want to do is research keywords at the basic level. And you have the time to check out the results Google throws at you.

Because researching keywords isn’t just about finding ‘key’ words or phrases that relate to what you’re writing about or what you’re trying to sell. It’s about knowing whether you can rank for those keywords. How strong is the competition; how long will it take you to get to the front page of the search engines; will you ever be ableto get to the front page of the results; are the people typing in those keywords looking to buy something or just surfing for information…

That means checking out the SEO of each of your competitors websites. Are they using the keywords in their meta tags? Is the keyword in the url? How many backlinks do they have? What sort of backlinks do they have? Anchor text, LSI, keyword density… the list just goes on and on.

This is why you end up looking for software that will do the keyword analysis for you. Because otherwise, you spend all your time researching keywords and there’s no time left over to put the results of that research to use.

That’s it. If you can do it, (and you can :>&gt, then the investment made in buying the right keyword software is a pittance compared to what you’ll earn back from it.

Like I said, I’m biased. Being an IM super sleuth () I could no more imagine being without Market Samurai than I could imagine being without Google.

Let’s start the new year with a new look at keyword research. And let’s admit that we’ve all been led down the garden path by the so called experts when it comes down to checking out your true competition for any given keyword.

It’s this simple when it comes to keyword research people.

My reasoning is simple. The people on the first page have already beat those that are targeting the keyword. Whether those first page results are targeting the keyword or not, doesn’t matter one iota. They are ranking for it. If you want to be on the first page, they are the ones you have to beat.

Why?

Because your audience isn’t searching with quotes.

I know we’ve all been told to check out the competition and you absolutely should. But you need to know who your competition is. And it’s not the people targeting your keywords. It’s the people who are ranking for it.