Keyword Collecting

[Zombie Master]

I have a client who thinks he wants to invest in a program to help gather keyword phrases for his business. He's looking at Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.

Although I have some limited acquaintance with Wordtracker, I have not used Keyword Discovery. Is anyone familiar with these products or does anyone have a better suggestion (s).

Many thanks.

[arthurakay]

I've used WordTracker, and I like it because it gives information like 'number of competing websites' and 'keyword effectiveness index (KEI)'.

I've never used Keyword Discovery, so I can't compare the two.

When I put together a list of key phrases, I also like to look at what Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter suggest... also, I would take a look at your analytics data to see what phrases you're currently getting traffic from. Are they what you want to target? If so, great - just optimize your pages a little more around those words. If not... time for more research.

[Zombie Master]

Thanks, Art. Good input.

[alhefner]

The practice of "gathering keywords" can become a bit of a distraction too. It is important to find the higest quality keywords and develope content around those but don't get to the point where you are going in too many directions at once.

Two or three good key phrases that match high quality search terms related to the business is much better than trying to optimize for dozens of different keywords or phrases. An exception is where you have a shopping site with hundreds or thousands of products. With that, you will want to optimize each product page.

[Zombie Master]

Thanks, Alhefner, I appreciate your advice but I've been doing this since 1992 and, as you know, we all have our different slants on these things. I actually worked on staff for AOL with the person who developed the first keyword systems on the internet.

Here's my call on it. Knowing what keyword phrases are being used is essential in developing good text for both the visitor and for the search engines.

Again, no harm intended but I really was asking if anyone out there was familiar with these programs or knew of others.

[alhefner]

No harm done! You might check out this link to SEO Book: Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

It is kind of a collection of lots of different tools delivered in one page.

[Zombie Master]

Thanks, Alhefner... you're a gent.

[alhefner]

Originally Posted by Zombie Master

Thanks, Alhefner... you're a gent.

20 years in the navy and I still get called a gent??? Where did I go wrong?

[Zombie Master]

well, we're off topic here... no harm done... builds the community... but you ran into a Marine.

[doj464]

I live eat sleep and die by nichebot. It gives me access to google paid search estimated clicks, wordtracker and keyword discovery for under $15 / month. I also find it alot more convenient than keyword discovery and wordtracker.

Jim Morris provides very up to date keyword research data as well. You can check out his blog at: Beyond keywords, we take keyword research and search engine optimization to the next level by entering the mind of the consumer, it's a treasure trove of data.

I have no affiliation to him and nichebot other than the fact that I am a rabid user. It saves me over $80 / month (cost of wordtracker & keyword discovery) and provides me way more value.

The only other keyword tool that I would suggest is spyfu or keyword discovery. SpyFu, keyworddisovery.com. They both take the google paid and natural search data and do some very cool competitive analysis with it. (I don't use them though, not worth my time.)

[Zombie Master]

thank you very much, doj464.

[jboeckman]

Zombie: I have used keyword discovery (KD) and word tracker (WT) and there are advantages for both. I decided to go with word tracker because of the ability to setup projects and some of the other nice features that agencies can use. I also had some troubles with the reliability of KD which was not good for me or my clients and that was the deciding factor between the two.

When doing research also look at SeoDigger.com to get ideas of what the competition is doing.

[Zombie Master]

Thanks, JB... good to know.