I've used a number of keyword tools (mainly free ones) and I am starting to look more towards the paid keyword tools (wordtracker, keyword discover ...etc). My gripe is that as I do keyword research I really do not have an accurate tool that at least gives me a good direction. Sure I can use Google Adwords tool to find out if the keywords have any traffic and if they are worth the time. But I have lots of questions as to finding out other valuable information.... 1) Is there a tool that can get the competing pages from each keyword quickly? 2) Any formula that can "estimate" the difficulty of the keyword to SEO like SeoChat's Keyword difficulty tool? I try not to use KEI. 3) What about localizing your SEO efforts? Like for instance, taking the infamous "dog training" and appending "dog training new york"... I find this part to be the most difficult. 3a) Taking a list of cities and appending them to your keywords to find out if there is any traffic and the difficulty. Like for instance, I live in one of the largest cities in the US. Houston. There are a lot of areas that surround this city that encompass the Greater Houston Area. What if your trying to do SEO work for a local business and you want to find targeted keywords like "dog training" and finding "dog training houston"... sugar land, woodlands, clear lake, missouri city, stafford, etc..... how do you do this without making it an insanely tedious task? Can you recommend any tools that can solve some of these needs? Even if it is multiple tools.... Any help would be appreciated.
I use iBP (Internet Business Promoter) and I'm quite happy with it. It "spies" on your competitors keywords, it also tells you which keyword is easier to rank for, how many searches a keyword has/month and what is the competition in each niche. It's a good tool, but it's a bit pricey...
MicroNicheFinder is good keyword tool I use. It includes tools that let you know when you should and should not go after certain keywords. You can also use narrow and broad diggs that allows you to find additional keywords related to your niche. I also like Keyword Elite, includes so many different tools to help with your keyword research.
To combine KW's: http://www.keywordmixer.com/ Continue your list of areas around Houston and then save that list. Do the same for larger cities around the country like Chicago, LA, New York, Miami, Washington DC., and Atlanta. Completing one city and its surrounding areas each day, will give you a dynamite list to work with after a couple of weeks, right? Then take your root keywords and use the keyword "mixer" to affix them to your "city and surrounding area" lists that you've been compiling. Good luck!
one word. Market samurai. Actually they are 2 words lol. I use this tool and I can say this is the BEST keyword tool ever. Give it a try and see for yourself