Jan

Keyword Research Tools – Part Two

While I previously talked about the Google Keyword Research tool, today I am going to talk about using the free part of Wordtracker. Wordtracker is another keyword research tool to use, but it works in a different way from the Google keyword research tool. There are many a SEO guru who love Wordtracker, and I can see why. I personally get all I need or want from the Google tool, but others might prefer to use Wordtracker.

Wordtracker comes in two versions: free or paid. Because write online for money, I try to keep my spending to a minimum. So while I will pay for quality eBooks and education, I don’t want to pay for something I can get for free elsewhere. As such, this entry will focus on the free version of Wordtracker in this post.

How Wordtracker Works

Every day, Wordtracker collects about 1.7 million search terms from Dogpile.com and Metacrawler.com. They combine the information from these sites and determine about how many searches were performed across all search engines. They use this in their keyword research formula.

They take the number of keyword searches in their database and divide it by the total number of searches in their database. Then they multiply that by the number of searches across all search engines as described above. And then they get the estimated number of daily volume of searches for the keyword.

I am a word person, and I do not like numbers, so I am more than content to leave the algorithms and the math to the pros.

Using Wordtracker

So when you get to the Wordtracker page, you type in the term you want to search. In my example, I used the word “acne” and told me that they determined that “acne” was searched 836 times. It also shows me the top 100 searches. But “acne” is really broad, and I don’t like write articles that are too broad. So, instead, I choose a more targeted keyword phrase, “homemade acne treatments”, and click on that. It tells me there are 84 searches.

From the free version, you aren’t going to get more than that. I have colleagues who enjoy the paid version. Again, I prefer the free keyword research tool from Google, but it’s good to know you have options.