I thought long and hard about this topic for today. After just telling you to stop relying so much on Google, here I am publishing another article about SEO.
Well my timing may be a little off, but after realizing how lazy I’ve been with keyword research, I felt compelled to write this.
So I hope you’ll forgive me. 🙂
For the record, I still think you should spend more time diversifying your traffic. However, it doesn’t hurt to fine-tune your existing pages so they are fully optimized for SEO.
My Tumultuous Relationship With Keyword Research
If you follow my sites closely you probably know I am not a fan of keyword research. I will even go as far to say I hate it. All the analysis and number crunching gives me a headache.
Oh c’mon, I know I’m not the only one. 😉
The only time I ever did what I would call thorough research and analysis was when I created Flat Stomach Exercises back in 2005. Since I paid my hard-earned money for Site Build It!, I figured I might as well make use of the built-in brainstorming tool.
My strategy has always been to do a quick check in either SBI!’s Brainstorm It! tool or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, review the top 10 results in Google to get a true feel for how competitive the phrase is and then choose my keywords. I rarely took the time to do any extensive analysis.
For the record, I’m not bragging about this. As the search engines become more competitive, of course I could benefit from spending more time researching long tail keywords.
Market Samurai Hype
I’ve read the many blog posts and articles about Market Samurai over the last year or so. Quite honestly though, I didn’t put much stock into all the glowing reviews because they were usually tied to an affiliate link.
I really don’t want this post to turn into one of those articles. Even though I am an affiliate, I will give you the good and the bad regarding the software after my recent test drive.
The Good
1) Thorough reports. The SEO Competition section is my favorite, hands down. I love being able to see an overview of the top 10 ranked pages for any phrase and all the information like the age of domain, number of page and domain backlinks, etc.
I know other tools have similar features, but I really like how MS gives you the big picture with a lot of different stats.
One thing’s for sure. It becomes quite clear how important the age of the domain is when it comes to rankings – especially for more competitive phrases.
Not that this was a surprise, but seeing the MS matrix just further solidifies that theory if you have any doubts.
2) I like the all-in-one aspect. You really are getting multiple tools in one. You can analyze domains, research monetization options, track your own keyword rankings, and research competition without ever leaving the tool.
There’s even a place to write and publish your content. Not sure I really see much of a need for this, but perhaps some people find it handy.
3) The filters. It took me awhile to figure out how to use them, but I like the various preset options you can adjust depending on your needs.
For example, if you’re using MS to find better long tail keywords for your articles like me, you don’t need the filter set as high as someone who may be searching a new website idea.
The Bad
1) Not intuitive at first. Perhaps I was having an off day when I downloaded it, but I didn’t find the software to be very intuitive.
I kept getting hung up on the Keyword Research screen and couldn’t figure out why my keywords were mysteriously disappearing when I went to analyze them. I later learned it was the filter and was able to adjust accordingly.
Fortunately MS provides video tutorials so that helped get me on the right track, but I’m still learning.
2) You need patience. Depending on the query you’re running, it may take awhile for the reports to finish. Given the amount of data that is being processed, this is understandable, but it still can be bothersome.
3) It may create analysis paralysis. This can happen with any research tool, but even more so with tools like this because the reports are so thorough.
Market Samurai uses a color-coded matrix that’s based on the traffic light system to tell you how competitive a phrase is. Red means the competition is high, yellow means it’s medium and green means it’s low.
Below is a report of a long tail keyword I found that looks “decent” according to MS because it’s mostly green and yellow with very little red.
I can see how this tool could consume and overwhelm people who are new to keyword research. It’s natural to want to find a keyword that shows almost no red and all green. But the truth is, any keyword worth going after these days is going to show signs of saturation.
Of course you should use the MS data as a guide, but at some point you have to do physical research to see just how saturated the niche really is.
Yes, the MS matrix may show a phrase is too competitive, but if you go look at the actual results and discover that most of them are low-quality sites, how competitive is the term really?
For the record, I did some SEO competition checks on keywords I already rank well for. In many cases, the grid showed very high competition yet I was still able to achieve a top 5 rank. And I’m talking about newer pages, not older pages that have been ranking well for years.
That is proof you can’t go by the tools alone — which is one of the reasons I have been hesitant to rely on keyword research tools too much.
The Value is in the Long Tail
Anyone who has a great deal of SEO traffic will tell you that the value is in the long tail keywords. These are phrases that are longer and not searched for as much so they are often easier to rank for.
Sure, they are not going to bring you a lot of traffic individually, but that traffic adds up over time when you start to rank for many different phrases.
The vast majority of my search engine traffic is from long tail keywords — not from the competitive phrases you may assume.
Don’t buy Market Samurai (or any tool for that matter) expecting to master a top ten rank for a bunch of competitive, broad keyword phrases. The real value in tools like this is finding those untapped long tail keywords that are less competitive and often easier (relatively) to rank for.
Using Market Samurai over the last couple of weeks has caused me to change a lot of my content and begin focusing more on longer tail keywords. I’ve revamped a ton of pages, so it will be interesting to see if it makes any difference over time.
When I first created my site I was very good about doing this, but I’ve gotten lazy and comfortable over the years. Can you relate?
Conclusion
I did purchase the pro version. Once I became more comfortable using the tool, I knew I would use it beyond the 30 day free trial.
Definitely watch the videos first. I’m not one who likes to read the instructions before using something new, but it’s a must if you want to get the most out of MS. I even published a tutorial in case anyone needs the “quick start” version. 🙂
Even though I bought Market Samurai, I am certainly not ready to say this is a must-have tool. I’m going to give it some time and report back later. I know there are many of you who swear by it, but there are also those who are doing just fine using the free keyword research tools.
Having said that, I’m glad I bought it and will continue to use it. It’s definitely forced me to revert back to my old habits of doing better long tail research before publishing content. I wrote four articles over the weekend and I took a lot more time researching “better” keywords to target.
Have you ever purchased a keyword research tool or do you prefer the free tools? What is your keyword research strategy like when you create new content? I’d love to hear from you!
Could you rate Market Samurai in a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest? I’m quite curious because you said that it is not really a must-have tool.
I’d give it a 5. I use Long Tail Pro a lot more now because it’s easier than MS in my opinion. http://www.2createawebsite.com/longtailpro
Hi Lisa,
I just signed on with Bing because…I’m just not liking the “Ivory Tower” known as Google too much so I’m glad to hear it. I’m really going to be checking out all of these tools in the next few months because I want to find what works well for me and my sites. Thanks for responding and I have to say, I LOVE your blog. I’m definitely working on creating an environment like this on mine within the next year or so. Great job, awesome insight!
I think in the next 3 months (or less more than likely) I’ll start investing in keyword research tools because I am really working the SEO and making sure I don’t put all my eggs in the Google basket. I do have a question: Do you have any data on Bing? I’m looking into their webmaster tools and just wanted to see if there was any info out there on Bing search, their tools, etc.
Thanks
Hi D. Dixon
Actually Market Samurai now uses Bing’s results and they also have a Bing Webmaster Tools section that you should sign up for and submit your site just like Google has a Webmaster Tools section. I don’t get nearly the traffic from Bing that I get from Google but it’s still worth creating an account.
I use MS daily as well as every part of Brainstorm and MKL, each can tell a story a different way.
I’ve also bough MS, I soon realised I would want to use it after the free trial ran out. Everything it offers, you could do for free yourself (maybe except for finding backlinks for competitors), but it would take a long time and effort that is better spent wrting content and promoting site.
The one thing that I don’t trust it on completely is reporting on backlinks (I believe it uses majestic SEO), which is important when deciding whether you have a chance of ‘beating’ your rivals to a good spot in the SERPs. I am not sure if there is any really good tool on the market for that right now. The most accurate way I can see links to my pages is with Google Webmaster tools, but, unfortunately you can’t use that on sites that you don’t own 😉
This was nice to know. I just posted a question about this. Keyword research can be a beast.
Lisa if you have SBI why do need MS doesn’t SBI do the same thing
Market Samurai is more detailed than SBI!.
The black hat method is good for the website but the google banned the site that the big problem Therefore i prefer the use white lablel seo but it is very costly. In the market more rsearch one is keyword stuff etc
I must admit I have an on again off again love affair with keyword research. I, too, utilize Market Samurai as well as Googles free tools but I am not consistent enough.
My goal is to become more consistent in other tasks beyond content creation.
Hi Lisa,
After a lot of trial and error I finally arrived at a keyword research process that works for me.
Essentially, I use Micro Niche Finder or the Google Adwords tool to short-list a few keywords which have enough volume. Then search for those terms in Google and if there are a few websites on the first page with Page Rank 4 and below, I go after them.
I’ve provided more details and illustrations of how I go about it in my article below. Would welcome feedback from you and others here.
Thanks
Amit
Hi
I came across your website and noticed you’ve blogged about Market Samurai. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me whether you are a user or a fan, or have some kind of affiliation with them or all three! So I hope you don’t mind me posting a reply on the subject?
I thought it would be worth getting in touch as I’m sure you know a lot of Market Samurai customers have been experiencing issues with keyword ranking checks. According to Market Samurai’s recent blog posts, for the moment, their users can only check Google from their local PCs causing performance, reliability and accuracy issues.
So on the off chance you were a user, or your website’s visitors are; I thought I’d see if you were interested in entertaining/evaluating/recommending an alternative to Market Samurai for keyword ranking (and more)?
If you’d like to have a look at what we can offer you, and/or your website visitors/clients – then drop me a line. Perhaps we could even create a special coupon code for you and your users?
Kind regards
Darren
I have kinda stopped using so much longtail keyword research too. I had a trial membership to a site once that had an amazing tool.
Wow… really? This does actually seem a bit of a shameless plug for Market Samurai, honestly. I have it. I think its “OK”; it crashes – A LOT – and, as has been said by many many many people and I happen to agree – why would you want anybody telling you anything about how relevant keywords are OTHER THAN the King, Google?
AND you’re paying for it to boot. AND the ‘training’ that Ed and the guys give is NOT very good. NOT very informative. NOT detailed. In short.. yea.. its a lot better than a lot of other ‘make money online’ training I’ve seen, but that’s really not saying much.
I’m a new visitor on your site but after this post.. I dunno.. sorry.
Great tips about SEO articles and keyword research. I personally feel that manual research is the best and most fruitful. it is of course time consuming but the best option on a long run!!
Cheers!
I think Market Samurai is good, why you told not to use it, please explain, thanks,
and your articles is very interesting, thanks
These are good specially when you are planning to begin a microniche website and you know that you ought to have a good keyword in the domain as wel…
Great, Even I do a lot of keyword research, now I feel in Good Company!
A less expensive alternative to Market Samurai is Microniche Finder. It has most features a new Internet Marketer can use.
Ellie
I have recently thought of buying Market Samurai but the price is really expensive. For a student like me,I find that to buy things like MS, I need to think about it throughly.
Thanks for the honest post, Lisa.
I use Google Keyword Search tool and it gives me a very good idea about what to write on. i will try the 30 day free trial of Market Samurai and compare the two. Thanks!
bookmarked it so I can keep coming back for more. The problem is that especially for beginners, the sheer volume of data and stats can lead to information paralysis. If those pages aren’t optimized, don’t have backlinks, aren’t aged, etc.
Good keywords are important, but getting the right keywords that is a science it its own right, I agree Lisa, I am not to keen on keyword research either, but it is needed.
I am a first time visitor your website. Love it!. bookmarked it so I can keep coming back for more. I love keyword research but then again I would it keeps me in business
Well Lisa, you have said it all. Keywords research is a necessary evil, we hate it but can’t do without it at least if we are serious about making any meaning results with search engine traffic
I find it hard to get the right keywords and I am not really good at keyword analysis. Thank you for sharing this information. It has helped me understand things regarding getting the right keyword.
I use a combination of the Adword keyword tool along with Keywordspy. Keywordspy helps me find keywords that my competition is ranking for then I can plug in a few of those into the keyword tool to determine my top 10. Certainly long tail is better because it’s less a research term and more a buying term so it’s much more preferable. I’ll take 10 sales off 100 visitors over 1 sale off 1000 visitors any day.
The long tail keyword battle has become quite competitive with all the sniper sites just looking to feast on these. Twitter can be an excellent resource for trending long tail keywords, but then you battle being the low man on the totem pole go after the new ones. They key is having an established site that is fluid and response enough to go after hot long tail keywords.
It was the first time that I heard about Market Samurai .I don’t have any idea about this thing.But with your article,I’m learning.Thanks for the post.
Great useful post.Really helps to improve traffic..Thank you for sharing.
Hi Lisa! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I just remembered what I have done before, I was doing same as what you did. Searching for keywords is really time consuming. So my patience had taken me over, so I stop. Thanks to Market Samurai, it lessen my burden.
Market Samuri has a thorough research, but tends to be slow and is hard to use in comparison to some of the new ui friendly and fast tools.
Hello, thanks for your posts, I am trying to pick up some traffic and they have been really helpful.
You say through using that software, you learned how important age of a site is for search rankings. Does that mean us newer blogs don’t have much of a chance because no matter how long my blog is around, all of the blogs that are older than mine will always be older than mine.
Keyword research is really important for me. I’ve changed my keywords a few times over the past 12 months and it’s really helped me hone my SEO campaign for the better.
Oh and don’t underestimate Google Analytics. It reveals a ton of long-tail keywords most people don’t even realize they are ranking for. I’ve found some real gems to target just by keeping an eye on my analytics.
If you notice you’re getting good traffic in analytics for a keyword, but do a search and find you are only ranked 9 or 10, then you can specifically target that keyword for a higher ranking. If you’re already getting traffic in the 9 or 10 position, then you know you’ll get a lot more by working to move your position up.
Great advice, DJ. 🙂
Hi Lisa,
Honestly, when I first started out I spent way too much time trying to find that “perfect” keyword. Listening to all the gurus, it had to have certain characteristics like x amount of searches per month, x amount of competing pages, etc. etc.
Being new, I just didn’t think I could compete because of what everyone was telling me. So I just kept looking for that perfect keyword….and I never found it.
Then, I wised up and realized I could compete fairly easily for a lot of the terms everyone said were “too competitive”. You really have to be careful about competition because most people look at it the wrong way.
They think, “Oh, this keyword term has 5 million competing pages so I should pass it up.” However, the number of competing pages means virtually NOTHING as to how competitive the keyword is. If those pages aren’t optimized, don’t have backlinks, aren’t aged, etc. then they really aren’t competition at all and you can blow them out of the water with even just a little SEO.
I think a lot of newbies don’t realize this and get caught up in looking for the perfect keyword.
I’ve tried a lot of different keyword tools, but like you I’m not a real big fan. I always seem to find myself back at the free Google keyword tool and do just as well finding keywords with it as I do with any other tool.
As my knowledge of SEO has improved, I don’t even bother looking at competition that much. I just pick a keyword I’m interested in going after and go at it because I have enough tools in my belt to know I can compete in most arenas.
Besides just the free Google tool, I think SECockpit is my top pick for keyword research.
Hello Lisa, I’ve been reading your post and watching your videos for a month now. I am fairly new at this and find your thoughts to be very beneficial and honest. I’m probably not quite ready for Market Samurai, but I at least now know about it.
Great post, Lisa and very honest and to the point. As you know I love MS and I do try to do keyword research as often as possible.
Have a great week!
You know, I dislike keyword research as well, maybe even more than you do, but it’s required.
As for the long tail keywords, I’ve noticed the positive aspects and focusing on them as a means to build even more traffic.
Hmm, looks like it’s time for me to use market samurai..
Keyword research is of course a vital aspect to a marketing campaign, and MS is a fantastic tool. The problem is that especially for beginners, the sheer volume of data and stats can lead to information paralysis.
I’ve been using a tool called Niche Sensei, which I bought on Warrior Forum for $7, which gives fast simple stats on Google’s top 10 for your keyword, and helps me decide quickly if a keyword’s a go-er and move on the content creation. After all, no content=no money!
Thanks
Kelly
Lisa congratulate you on your initiative very good to see that there are still people who cares about the next
Market samurai is a great tool for keyword research. I too have a paid version and using it for research for my business. As you have said there some things which I too dont feel very comfortable with but altogether is a good tool.
I used to work a lot on keyword research. The most easy and simple keyword tool is google keyword tool. But I have an advice, don’t stop in the data that you get in the tools. Try digging deeper by using google traffic estimator to find out the real traffic of a specific keyword.
Your right not intuitive at first, but with a little learning you can get a lot of value out of Market Samurai. Regarding the long tail it is worth the work… I’ve found it converts excellent!
Nice review on MS, I was wondering if what are your thoughts about Scrapebox? I am planning to buy a software, but can’t decide over the two.
Never tried that one, Sanjay. I’m still knee deep in MS right now. lol
Just this morning I did some research to find new keywords to optimise for because my initial keywords are all in 1st position. I think it’s definitely an important part of optimisation so you can gauge whether a word or phrase is worth optimising for with regards to time and money.
The first time i use their service, i was not happy with it because of the slow gathering of data. But, looking at the advantages of the tool, i don’t worry any more. Thanks for the tips.
Hi Lisa,
I have been using MS since I started. I did not understand much t first so made the mistake to go after volume and ignored competition. It’s a tool that grows on you now it’s a key part of my routine. Traffic Travis is pretty cool too and it indicates the difficulty for each key word.
Nik
NicheFinder and SBI are great, they showed us the most important thing I think I’ve learnt so far, find the market and the keywords then find the audience and then finally the product. For ages I was trying to pick a product and then go and find the market, chase the audience. I’m going to try Market Samurai out and see how it compares.