A lot of people ask me about the tools that I use to conduct keyword research for my projects. Keyword research is the most important part of the process of any SEO project. You see, you can master all the ranking factors. You can get all the links in the world, but if you are not targeting the right keywords, you are just not getting the best out of your traffic. Many bloggers, webmasters, and small business owners tend to be cheap when it comes to keyword research tools. People don’t mind paying $30 for a business lunch but paying $30 a month for a premium keyword service suddenly becomes too much to bear. In reality, all webmasters need to take advantage of at least one premium keyword research tool if they truly want to get the best out of their SEO campaigns. With that in mind, here are 8 services that I have used and continue to use for my own SEO projects:

Keyword Discovery: has been one of the best keyword research tools around for years. The data that you can dig up by using this service can help you plan those long-term SEO projects more effectively.

WordTracker: has been around for years. It’s a great tool if you are looking to expand your keyword list and find new keywords to target on your website. Provides you with the means to expand your keyword list and find the keywords that can actually drive traffic. It does differ from KWD as far as its data source is concerned.

Wordze: one of the better “classic” keyword research tools on the market. It tells you what keywords are getting how much traffic. A great way to find those hidden gems and optimize for keywords that are not too tough to get ranked for. I personally love all the convenience of the service. It’s easy to export things and get a decent amount of research done in no time (read Wordze review).

Compete: Compete is not a cheap service by any means. It can cost you a bit of money to get your hands on all the useful information that this service can provide you with. It can tell you how long people have spent on your website, and what keywords have brought you the type of traffic you are looking for.

Keyword Country: this is one of those tools that is not getting too much attention but is very powerful. It’s used by both Adwords and Adsense experts. Great way to put the right foot forward in a new niche.

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Unless you have gotten rid of your TV and unplugged your computer, chances are you have heard of Microsoft Bing. Microsoft has spent a lot of money getting the word out about Live.com (err… I mean Bing.com). I am not a big Bing fan, but I appreciate the fact that Microsoft is making chances to make things happen in the search engine market. Google has been almost too dominant, so I am pulling for Bing to grow and become a major factor. But as great as Bing is, there is something better than that around: BingTweets. BingTweets is a very cool Twitter + Twitter Trends + Bing mashup that lets you stay on the top of everything going on Twitter and get some search done at the same time.

So here is how Bing Tweets work. At the very top, you are reminded of what’s hot on Twitter. Whatever is trending on Twitter is going to show up in a bigger font. Once you click on a specific keyword, the Bing results are updated automatically to show you what’s already on the Internet about that trend. Your Twitter sidebar is also updated with the latest discussions about your topic.

BingTweets which has come about from a partnership between Microsoft and Federated Media is a great way to stay on the top of things on Twitter and have fun searching online on Bing. There was a time when people did most of their research on search engines. But after being on Twitter for months, I can tell you that there is no better place to get cool research done than Twitter. Whether you are looking for instant feedback, ideas on how to expand your business, or information on a specific topic, there is a good chance you can find what you need on Twitter. And just in case you don’t, BingTweets has your back. Who know Bingtweeting could be this much fun?

WebPosition is one of the best software solutions for SEO consultants or anyone who’s serious about search engine optimization. If you have been interested in the field of SEO for a while, you are probably familiar with all the free tools that you can use to measure your site’s success in the organic search channel against others. WebPosition is premium theme that goes beyond what you get with these free tools and helps you create professional reports for your consulting or small business. In WebPosition, you have a software solution that can track your progress in the organic search channel over time. It can also give you tips on how to optimize your pages for search engines to help you get more free leads.

WebPosition is a very intuitive software package. While it’s very capable, the software is designed to let anyone run reports and track results. All you need to work with WebPosition is a basic computer knowledge and SEO.

Here is what you get with WebPosition:

• Reporter: lets you run reports from multiple search engines and combine them all into one. You can also e-mail or export your reports.
• WordTracker Keywords: if you have a WordTracker account, you can use your WebPosition software to conduct keyword research right on your desktop.
• Page Critic: goes through your pages and lets you know what you need to do to optimize your pages for search engines.
• Page Builder: while Page Critic shows you how to patch your existing pages, Page Builder makes it easy to build your pages right from the start.
• Submitter: submit your pages to search engines easily with Submitter. It makes it so easy to set it and forget it (though you should keep your eyes open).
• Scheduler: set it and forget it like a pro with Scheduler. If you are running a business, you can’t afford to keep track of everything. With Scheduler, WebPosition get things done automatically.
• Meta Manager: lets you locate, modify, and delete duplicate tags.
• Link Defender: broken links can affect your search engine rankings. With Link Defender, you can catch them before it’s too late.

By outsourcing your SEO reporting and tracking process, you can spend more time focusing on more important business activities. In that regard, WebPosition saves you time and money in the long run. If you are a business owner or consultant, you will appreciate it.

The new Wordze is here! If you are not familiar with Wordze, it’s one of the toughest rivals WordTracker has ever had. These guys have been going back and forth in the past. But with the latest major update to Wordze, it’s not too hard to make a good argument on why you should be using Wordze. Not only the interface has improved dramatically, Wordze comes with a few features not seen in any other keyword research package. And it does help that they don’t charge a fortune for it. With that in mind, let’s see what the new Wordze has to offer.

The new Wordze interface comes with all kinds of options. But in reality, you should only concern yourself with the three menus:

• Research & Ideas
• Projects
• Services

Research Ideas:

Research and Ideas is where you get the meat of this service. As you can see in the above image, the R&I section, allows you to do your keyword research, dig up ideas, generate typos, and even come up with synonyms and other version of your keyword. The history option is very similar to what you see with Google trends, but of course it’s designed for keyword junkies, and it provides you with all kinds of information that you can’t easily get with Google trends.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is why most folks purchase Wordze. That’s the main purpose of this tool (just like WordTracker). Here you get a chance to filter your results to remove dubious entries such as adult, drug-related, or gambling keywords. I was very impressed with the speed that you get your results. It’s almost instantaneous. With some other keyword tools, you have to wait 30 seconds to 1 minute. So, it was great to see a keyword tool that values my time.

Once you run the research, you are going to get count, estimated 30-day traffic, KEI, and access to further analyis tools on Wordze.

This is usually where you will have to start. You can then use history, wordrank, and dig to do further analysis to figure out how hard it is to get ranked for each of your keywords and how you can expand your keyword list.

History (Trend):

The history tool is very valuable. I know WordTracker has worked its own version of trends, but Wordze is just superior in this area. Here is what I got for the term “credit cards:”

Sounds pretty straight forward right? Wait till you see the other information that you can get from this tool:

You not only get daily changes, but also traffic growth over the past 30 days for your keywords. You aslo can figure out what markets provide you with the best opportunity to succeed. I don’t know about you, but I can spend years playing with this tool.

WordRank:

WordRank is one of my favorite features on Wordze. It’s an amazing tool that analysis your market for you (based on your keyword) and let’s you know how hard it is to get ranked for a keyword. Wordze’s WordRank technology crawls the top search engines, checks back links, finds authority sites, and shows you PageRank, InTitle, and InUrl data. You can then compare your WordRank Index with KEI and R/S ratio. Here is what you get with WordRack:

What I love about this tool is the fact that it provides you with information on demographics as well. I am not just talking about breakdown by country. You get your breakdown by city as well!

Dig:

The Dig tool on Wordze is very similar to its counterpart on WordTracker, but it’s much easier to use, and it’s almost fully automated. All you do is provide the system with a keyword. You set it and forget it. You can download your report in excel when it’s ready. It’s one of the best ways to expand your keyword list.

Thesaurus:

This tool is designed specifically for folks obsessed with everything LSI. The tool may look simple on the surface, but it provides you with valuable keyword variations that you can use to further optimize your pages. Here are the options you have here:

• Related keywords: similar to the LSI keyword tool offered by Google.
• Synonyms: provides you with a list of keywords that are synonymous with your keyword phrase
• Coordinated keywords: similar to the first option, but it is much broader. Great tool to expand your keyword list and come up with cross-selling opportunities.
• Like keywords: another great option that helps you expand your keyword set.

Typo Generator:

The typo generator is another great feature that helps you target even more keywords. The good thing about this tool is that it gives you phrases and not just single words. Here is what I found for the term “credit cards:”

Some of these terms are being searched for a lot, so you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not targeting them. (more…)

Latent Semantic Indexing has been around for a while now. Many SEO consultants throw the phrase “LSI” around to impress their clients. After all, who wouldn’t be impressed by a 3 letter acronym that most people know nothing about. LSI is a system that helps search engines figure out how relevant your pages are based on the set of keywords that you are using on each and every page. You can easily find your LSI keywords by using Google Adwords tools. If you have used Google Adwords Keyword tool before, you have probably seen the “related keyword” option. By using those keywords, you help search engines find out exactly what your page is about.

You can optimize your pages by adding LSI keywords to them. But how do you find out what keywords work the best. Not all LSI keywords are created the same. You can always guess. But the better way is to monitor what pages are currently getting ranked high on search engines, and what LSI combinations are used on those pages.

Keyword LSI Spy is a cool keyword tool that takes the guessing game out of your LSI strategy. Keyword LSI Spy 2 goes through top pages in your niche and finds out the keywords that are being used to dominate the search engines. You also get the standard feature that you would get with any other keyword tool:

• The page’s wordcount
• URL Analysis
• Tag analysis
• Link analysis (internal/external)
• Character analysis
• Keyword analysis
• Keyword density

The LSI concept is not that hard to understand, but it’d be too time consuming if you do everything by hand. That’s why I prefer to outsource some of the process by using tools such as KLS 2.0. I know a lot of SEO purists rather do everything by hand, but there are better ways to spend your time.

With the cost of pay per click marketing starting to go through the roof in most markets, many marketers are turning to search engine optimization to drive traffic to their websites and reduce their costs. But there is so much you can do by optimizing your on-page SEO factors. Sure, it’s great to have a decent title tag. It’s a must to have your keywords in your H tags. But these are not going to get you to the top of the search engines in a highly competitive market. The more competitive a market gets, the more creative you got to be to build links and drive traffic to your website.

Web Traffic Machines is a unique set of SEO tools and guides that helps you go beyond what you read in books and find creative ways to push your site up the rankings. Now, before I go on and claim how great this package is, you’ve got to understand that it is different from most SEO packages available online. These techniques are not blackhat but rather creative. There is no chance of you getting banned for these tools, so rest assured you are NOT risking your site’s standing on Google by using these tools. So let’s see what you get with Web Traffic Machines:

1. Tagging & Pinging: most folks know what tagging and pinging are. But not many folks know how to properly use these to drive tons of traffic to their websites. If you are one of these folks, you are going to learn the right way to use these technologies to your advantage.

2. Video SEO: video may not be as novel as it was last year, but it is one of the best ways to find your way to the top of the search engines. Don’t miss your chance to dominate the search engines. Web Traffic Machines allows you to mass post your videos to many social communities and saves you a lot of time in the process.

3. Newsgroup: if you have read any SEO books recently, there is a good chance you have not heard about the power of newsgroups in driving traffic to your website. Newsgroups may be underrated, but you shouldn’t ignore them.

4. Forums: believe it or not, forums are still one of the best ways to attract new visitors for your site and business. But which forums should you be involved in? Web Traffic Machines solves that problem for you.

5. Yahoo!: Yahoo! is the most underrated way of driving traffic to websites. Yahoo! may not be as popular as Google, but it still is a big traffic driver.

6. Banner Exchange: banner exchange is not even recognized as a SEO technique. But it’s really the glorified version of reciprocal linking. It’s very powerful and can help you push your site to the next level.

7. Directories: directories may not be as important as they used to be, but they can still drive you traffic, and you still get some link juice. Web Traffic Machines finds you directories that are relevant to your niche.

8. Blogs: Web Traffic Machines comes with a tool that allows you to find WordPress and Drupal websites that you can get links from. Every link counts as long as you get it from relevant sites.

9. Chatbox: now this is innovative. You have probably seen sites that are using Chatboxes and Shoutboxes to communicate with their readers. With Web Traffic Machines, you can drive traffic to your website fast.

10. Images: a lot of folks laughed at me when I told them that I get more traffic from my images than from MSN alone. You can lots of traffic for your images if you play your cards right. Web Traffic Machines shows you how!

11. ICQ: ICQ has been around for years. But did you know you can drive traffic to your website from ICQ pages? I haven’t used this technique myself, but it’s on my to do list.

12. Video list building: Web Traffic Machines shows you how you can build enormous lists by taking advantage of video. This is not SEO, but it still a big traffic driver.

13. Classified SEO: the technique is pretty self-explanatory. A lot of folks use classified sites to drive traffic to their business. It’s a no brainer.

Web Traffic Machines has some great ideas for driving organic or free traffic to your website. The package is not for everyone. If you don’t know what SEO is, then you should probably start somewhere else. But if you are paying through your nose for PPC, then you should definitely give Web Traffic Machines a try. The videos included with this package walk you through the steps you need to take to optimize your site for the search engines. And the tools help you create traffic in an innovative fashion. But don’t take my word for it. Head on to Web Traffic Machines to find out for yourself.

Verdict: A-

SEOmoz has some of the best paid tools in the SEO industry. But they also have a lot of free tools that you can take advantage of to complete your SEO work. SEOToolbox comes with lots of useful free tools that helps you find out if you are maximizing your SEO opportunity. Here is what you get with SEOToolbox:

• Strongest Pages On a Domain: find your superstar pages on your domain.
• Who Else Is Hosted on my IP?: find out how many other sites are hosted on your shared IP.
• Check Inclusion: find out whether your site is included in Google index.
• Check Backlinks: find out the number of backlinks to your URL.
• Outbound Link Checker: find out your external links on your website.
• Check PageRank: if you are a PR junkie, you’ve got to see this.
• Find Domain Age: find out when was the first time your site was spidered.
• Check HTTP Status Code: figure out if you are using 301, 302 redirects on your pages.
• Check Index Pages: find out how many of your pages are indexed in major search engines.
• Whois: find out a domain’s registration information.
• IP Location: find out where your IP is located and how that can affect your SEO rankings.

There you have it. SEOToolbox is not exactly a groundbreaking SEO toolset, but it does come with standard free tools that you get on some other websites. Overall, you get the best SEO analysis by signing up for SEOmoz PRO. But even if you don’t, you still have plenty of free tools to work with.

SEOmoz PRO has a lot of cool tools, but Linkscape has created the most buzz in the past few months. Linkscape is the ultimate link analysis tool. Currently, the system covers 38 billion URLs made over 240 million domains which allow you:

• Linking domains: unique domains are linking to a page, subdomain, or to your entire website.
• Linking strategy: find out about your competitors’ linking strategies and beat them in their own game.
• Link quality: not all links are created equal. Use Linkscape to find out why!
• Link Partners: find link partners for your niche sites quickly.

That’s just for starters. Let’s see what exactly you get with Linkscape.

Now this is only the basic report, but you get a lot of information on how you can improve your websites. The advanced report provides you with more information, including inlinks to subdomains and your root domain.

The advanced report is so powerful. Not only it shows you all kinds of information on your domain that you can use to improve your website, you can also dig deep and go through your links one by one.  By clicking on links to URL and links to domain, you can go through each and every link and figure out which links are bringing you the most juice.

Another powerful feature that you get with Linkscape is the anchor text analysis report that allows you to figure out who’s linking to you or your competitors with what anchor text. You can figure out your competitors anchor text strategy, and what you can do to nullify it.

Believe it or not, the guys at SEOmoz have an advanced API available that you can use to get all kinds of data. That’s going to cost you $5000 minimum per month. This includes:

• Advanced full link data
• Advanced Website data
• Advanced Keyword data

Now I wouldn’t recommend anyone getting this $5,000+ monthly plan unless you have a lot of money and need to dig much deeper than most folks. Linkscape comes with enough features to keep you busy for a while, so don’t go spending $5K on API access before extracting everything there is from the standard Linkscape access that you get with SEOmoz PRO.

In the past few days, I have focused on SEOmoz tools that help you figure out how you are doing when it comes to building links. By analyzing the frequency and location of keywords throughout a page, Term Target shows you exactly why you are not getting ranked as high as you should. It assigns a grade to you, and while I wouldn’t take these grades literally, if you are getting a C or a D, you’ve got a lot of work to do. Here is how it works.

I have used my own site as an example here. Keep in mind the word SEO is not exactly the best keyword to use here. I like longer terms, but for the purpose of this demonstration it will do.

You get more than a grade from this tool. It also shows you the areas that you can improve upon. For instance, I don’t have the word SEO in my H1 tag (a shame!). The same can be said for H4 and my META Description tag. Just imagine running this tool for all your pages and optimizing them step by step.

Term Target is a powerful on-page optimization tool. In highly competitive markets, on-page optimization is not going to push you over the top, but it could hold you back. But in niche markets with less competition, your on-page optimizations can produce remarkable results. Overall, Term Target is one tool that you shouldn’t ignore and can help you get your SEO campaigns on the right track.

In the past few days, I have talked about how SEOmoz tools can help you get more done for less. BacklinkAnalysis is one of those tools. It makes spying on your competitors silly easy. All you have to do is enter their URL in the box and let the system search through their links and analyze them for you.

BackLinkAnalysis allows you to figure out who’s linking to your competitors. That way you can go to those link partners and ask them to link to you as well. If someone is doing article marketing, you can discover that as well. What I like about this tool is the fact that it shows you your competitor’s popular anchor texts as well. That way you can figure out what keywords your competitors deem to be important. Analyzing your competitor’s backlinks is a great way to figure out their link building strategy and duplicate it. It saves you time and lets you focus on more important things.