Keyword research and tools have changed a lot since I started with affiliate marketing. Tons of new services have popped up - some are good, most are not. My own use of tools has changed completely in the past 2 years. Back then I used Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery as my primary tools. As more tools came on the market I tried them all, but none were worth switching for me.
Lately though the best tools out there, in my opinion, are free. The top of the list is the Google keyword tool. They have made significant updates to the tool, especially in the last 6 months. The keywords it pulls and the way you can group them together is very good. If I had just one tool to use, this would be it.
In addition to the Google keyword tool, MSN adcenter excel plugin has always worked very well. It pulls some different words than Google which can give you a good mix to add to any campaign.
Of course your brain is the best keyword tool. There are some things out there to help with thinking of keywords like an online thesaurus and dictionary. Lastly, a simple but amazingly effective freeware keyword tool that I love is by Overware software. It may not look like much, but it works perfectly for combining words and phrases together to generate new key phrases. Plus its pre-loaded with all the sales words.
With all the great free options these days, I don’t think its really necessary to pay for keyword service.
So what are your favorite tools?
Till then, Jean
NicheBot and Google Keyword Tool is enough for me
Some local windows tools for grouping and expanding the phrases.
I enjoy keywordspy kind of tools. I’m not sure how “accurate” they are for what they claim to do, but I know it gives me a lot of horizontal keywords I may overlook in a new niche.
I like wordze for making long lists. Other than that Google keyword for coming up with ideas that I wouldnt have thought of myself. But if I could find a free keyword tool that lets me put in dog and comes back with dog bones, dog food, dog games, dog leashes, etc, and then click on those and get even bigger lists, that would be awesome.
so Chad… how about spy tools? not recommended for noobs?
Nope, not at all. If they were worth anything I would use them but I don’t.
I enjoy using the free tools at “tools.seobook.com.” Although, I do not visit often spyfu.com is another tool and of course Goolge’s keyword tool which is getting more and more fav reviews.
Hello Chad,
Can you please explain bit more how we can use thesaurus and dictionary to expand the keywords list taking an example like dating?
I like some of the spy tools like spyfu not because they are necessarily more useful for my own affiliate or ecommerce project keyword research, but because of the other ways they layer stats that are helpful to my bottom line with client work.
Example: client is vastly underspending on PPC vs their competitors. A screenshot or two from spyfu easily goads them into investing more - which shouldn’t require “goading” when they are making XXX% ROI off paid search but you wouldn’t believe how many times corporate clients will do this.
This is a great free keyword tool I started using recently from revenueWire:
http://blog.revenuewire.com/keywordsetup.exe
Chad,
how do you feel about KeyCompete.com - where you can go in and look at competitors keywords for any site they have, and also see all of the sites within a certain keyword? To me, it seems like it could destroy the industry, because if I wanted to, I could copy any profitable campaign.
I am using just NicheBot and Google Keyword Tool. think should have a try some new feature
Congrats! That’s pretty impressive. While there are many successful offers out there, to run one in the green for two years straight is a great accomplishment!
Two people above said they use NicheBot and Google KW Tool. I have an unused membership to NicheBot, and was thinking of quitting to just use Google.
Please, could you expand on why you think adding Nichebot to Google KW tool is worthwhile?
Thanks!