Everybody has been worried since Google took away using the keyword for free so the question is how do we deal with this? Well there is a number of options for us IMer's I am going to go over. Keyword tool has moved Rather then be free for anybody to use you need to sign up with adwords and you can then use the new keyword planner which is identical to the previous version. Free Alternatives Google isn't the only one who can show you what keywords are out there and how much traffic they get. Spyfu is a great free alternative that doesn't cost any money. Also Bing has a keyword tool as well you can check out here. http://www.bing.com/toolbox/keywords Paid Alternatives But if you want a superior version to that I would recommend market samurai. It cost 150$ but it does a number of things such as showing your how competitive the keyword is by showing how many links a website ranking for the term has etc. Its 150$ a one time fee so no have to pay for things down the road. That being said tell me what you think. I believe this isn't the end of the world, there still many ways for us to figure out good keywords.
Honestly, no keyword tool is really necessary if you: Have familiarity of your niche; Know basic words or phrases that describe your niche; You continually keep content, link profile and marketing initiatives keyword relevant; Understand that your domain name derivative - especially when category extensions roll out - will mean little; Understand basic dictionary/thesaurus research Keywords Tools are 'suggestive' at best; Google's algorithm takes into account word associations and content titles to determine what you're trying to convey.
I think people use the keyword tool more to view the amount of searches a keyword has monthly. When I sign a new SEO client I used it to show me the amount of potential visits they could get monthly based on their keywords.
True. Forecasting is important for SEO; personally, I never forecast too far out, or make any 'safe bets' on future traffic, especially with Google's ever-changing algorithmic schema.
A kw tool is necessary as a means of providing an objective metric as to what words within the niche people are actually searching for, and to what extent. it's also one of the only ways to separate which terms are higher paying for CPC purposes, and which variations truly are low competition from a SEO point of view.
Very valid points, melprise. My work is almost always 100% organic, making any CPC necessities moot. I almost always know the niche's 'hot/trending' subjects simply by using Google Trends; from there, knowing keywords that people will search for is relatively easy...(only because I've been working on SEO projects since Google came out)
But Google Trends only shows you the relative value of the trend. If the value is "50", you cant tell anything about the volume/amount of monthly searches of the keyword. It was totally essentially.
I'm still using Google Keyword Tool - I think it is Google Keyword Planner.... and what I think is as long as Adwords is there would be any keyword tool which would be free for all.
yes...keyword planner is totally for adwords users...Google should have kept the keyword tool for non-adword users....
All the keyword planner is, is the keyword tool reorganized to make the Adwords campaign purpose more front and center. The ability to use it as before for free organic SEO is still there, just more obscure.
Below is a list of some free keyword tools you can try out. https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/sign_in/ http://www.goodkeywords.com/good-keywords/ KeywordDiscovery.com http://keywordmixer.com (this is not keyword research tool, but is helpful for sorting your keyword lists) http://www.wordstream.com/keywords (this is an awesome tool to get hundreds of long tail keywords related to your niche)
so true, but when you have many sites in many niches you'll end up just studying your niches and doing nothing else