Keyword Rersearch - Tools & Tips

Hi there guys, I work in SEO, code sites and so on, I was a developer and site designer before so I love the technical element to SEO over the "you need a few good meta keywords to rank #1" sales BS.

I am a n00b in this forum but I have been working in the industry for a few years. When it comes to keyword research, I've used many tools at work

IBP (Internet Business Promoter)
Web Position
WebCEO
Hitwize

(all licensed)

All the good free ones:
SEOBook toolbar
SEOQuake
Search Status
Firebug
and so on....

And at home for my own sites, all the above plus

GTrends
Keyword Elite

Now I'm doing some KW research with another company and they have a budget that I wanna cut into

It's gotta be for whitehat programs unfortunately but the Keyword tools should be ones that will help me harvest a good selection of KW's I can present with data to a client for their site.

Any recommendations on SEO tools to compliment these along side the SEO work I'm doing would be much appreciated too - basically I want some tools to make my life easier.

WebCEO seems to give some totally BS on search volumes that seem a complete joke! And I'm not happy to present to clients.

For the KW "Advertising" it gave "<10 searches world wide" Yeah!???! Ok then? and no metric as to what this figure is or where it's from?!

Any tools you'd recommend? I've been using Keyword Elite from home and am pretty impressed with this and it's results, however it seems to come from a bedroom programmer lol (NOT KNOCKING IT) That said it's good, although after searching the forums these tools all get such mixed reviews.

I've used the search and again, such mixed reviews?! Anyway nice to get an opinion on this...

Thanks guys

I tried pretty much every tool out there and finally all you need is your brain, google keyword tool and the google search itself Its really that easy...

lol, well yea and a lot of time... However anything you'd recommend? To buy? Not my budget lol

Sippy79 said:

I tried pretty much every tool out there and finally all you need is your brain, google keyword tool and the google search itself Its really that easy...

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I agree with Sippy79 it's time consuming but very effective. I have several keyword tools but it's hard to beat those two Google tools. I am constantly building sites and it boils down to good keyword research equals profits.

cool, well how many keywords would you harvest, on average? I know this is VERY generic, and a bit unrealistic, but just a mean average, It's nice to get an overview of this.

seomedia said:

cool, well how many keywords would you harvest, on average? I know this is VERY generic, and a bit unrealistic, but just a mean average, It's nice to get an overview of this.

Click to expand...

I keep sites closely targeted to keywords so I'd rather target fewer keywords per site I build and just build more sites around related keywords. I generally target one main keyword per site with around 10 to 12 LSI keywords. This is the combination that works for me but everyone is different. It's best to really test what works for you and each niche can also perform differently. This is my 7th year of building sites and I'm constantly testing different ways but I keep coming back to this formula because it has worked well for me.

ezcoin said:

I keep sites closely targeted to keywords so I'd rather target fewer keywords per site I build and just build more sites around related keywords. I generally target one main keyword per site with around 10 to 12 LSI keywords. This is the combination that works for me but everyone is different. It's best to really test what works for you and each niche can also perform differently. This is my 7th year of building sites and I'm constantly testing different ways but I keep coming back to this formula because it has worked well for me.

Click to expand...

Pretty exactly how I optimize my sites. This receipt works best for me, well said

Sippy79 said:

I tried pretty much every tool out there and finally all you need is your brain, google keyword tool and the google search itself Its really that easy...

Click to expand...

Yeah I agree. I've pretty much given up using keyword tools to estimate traffic. Before I used to try and estimate the profitability of something by estimated number of searches *.43 (traffic for position 1 acc to Aol) *.01( typical conversion rate).

In the end I found this to be largely ineffective. I still use Google KW tool external and SKtool as well as wordtracker and many others to give me a starting point for what people are searching for but generally not traffic, although you can use it to see the order of search term's popularity, just not the exact number of searches.

After that it's a case of taking those keywords - running them through a few kw programs to try and get some longtails, put it into google and look at the page titles and the phrases surrounding them as well as the page text of those pages, meta data etc and then into forums, sb sites etc - anywhere where people gather.

Finally adwords is quite an expensive but effective way to do kw research.

Adwords keyword tool's results are FLAWED big time. Those results come from a multitude of sources. They also include in that search count the number of people who clicked an ad on a page with adsense.

That's not a true way to get a real number of searches for any type of keyword. The best way have found is by using a system that is laid out in a very good ebook called Digging for gold. And NO It's not my book but you can Google it.

There is a very detailed way to do kw research that I won't even try to explain here. But it works very well, I use it with all my clients.

You will have to get an adwords account & spend about 20-30 dollars with adwords to get a real count on searched for a keyword. But, he explains in detail how to set up the account and use the built in Google filters.

Thats what works for me.

Sippy79 said:

I tried pretty much every tool out there and finally all you need is your brain, google keyword tool and the google search itself Its really that easy...

Click to expand...

Lol, I like what you say, so you get 1 thanks

I tried loads of different KW tools online and they all give very different results.

Now the problem comes when you have a background working as a data analyst in big companies where they expect a high degree of accuracy from your reports and then one day you get into KW analysis.

The KW stats are crap with most of the tools i have tried. They are inconsistent with the other tools i try and you just know when the tool is talking crap. As soon as it does it once..........i just delete it.

I got this gut feeling that the newbs get the shit data and the smart guys get the more accurate data.

For now guys.............. you will have to wing it and trust your instincts.

Most of the stats data is serious shit from most of these tools.

The smart monies on finding better methods of analysis than free KW analysis tools.

A bad workman blames his tools..........Does he Bollox!

It seems many don't like keyword tools, but I've read that c0mpete.com gives good keyword related info, the paid service at least.

Well there is some real interesting info here however Ive had access to accounts on adwords with spends around 100,000 dollars and more a week. So I've compiled so VERY comprehensive click through rates from these. However I'm still after a general recommendation for as to what works well with you guys

Keyword Country is really good for finding the high paying ad*sense keywords.

well thats need alot of time