Am I programming a Revoluntionary keyword research tool? Feedback appreciated

17 replies
Hi guys,

I'm new here so please treat me kindly. I've been doing SEO for quite some time now. After a while I became pretty fed up with the current "all in one" keyword research tools out there (e.g. wordtracker, wordze, etc, etc).

So I've decided to make a tool of my own, I have a working version but its not yet in a state where it could be sold as a product, thats what I'm working on now.

I've been coding it for quite a while, but getting a bit bored of it now and finding it hard to keep myself motivated, I wondered what you guys think of it and whether it would be something you would buy.

Here's a screenshot of a campaign overview.



This screenshot shows some test keywords I decided to research, this 20 of them, the tool actually collected and researched over a million keywords in the end.

The seed keyword was "make money" and the tool went to ask.com and collected the related keywords and then the related keywords to those and then the related keywords to those and so on until it built a list of a million keywords, in fact it could get even more, I just left it running for a an awful long time thats all.

Then we have the "search volume" column, you'll notice that they're all marked 0. But soon that will be filled with the 'exact' search volume for each keyword according to google's external keyword tool. I chose to collect it from the external keyword tool because I believe it more accurate then the kind of estimates that something like wordtracker spits out. The data is coming straight from Google, its going to be a lot more accurate than any estimate extrapolated from a sample of ISP records.

Next we have the Yahoo columns. The tool goes to google types in each keyword and pulls the first 3 domains that come up (those domains aren't shown in the screeny, but you can change the options so they're shown if you like). It then does a link query on Yahoo for each of those domains and calculates an average number of links pointing to the top 3 domains for each keyword. This gives you a view of the amount of link building you'll have to build if you want to get a similar rank. I find that this is a much better way to judge the 'rankability' of a keyword then simply looking in google at the number of results that come up (which is what wordtracker currently does).

The tool will also check to see if an exact matcing squidoo lens is available, for example in the screenshot above "Ways for kids to Make Money" has a tick under the squidoo column, this means that Ways for Kids to Make Money is available (it might not be now, been a long time since I checked). This is useful if you wanted to rank for that particular term since squidoo often makes it easier to rank for a term if you can get the exact matching lens.

The tool does the same for domains as well, for example, checking to see if WaysforkidstoMakeMoney.co.uk, WaysforkidstoMakeMoney.com, WaysforkidstoMakeMoney.org.uk, WaysforkidstoMakeMoney.org, WaysforkidstoMakeMoney.net, WaysforkidstoMakeMoney.us are available (you'll notice at the moment only .co.uk is being checked for). This is incredibly useful as getting the exact matching domain in my experience can get you first page listings without much link building at all, I've done it many times and others have also demonstrated it.

The tool has 3 primary uses.

1) Cast a net see what I can get. You enter a few seed keywords and tell the tool to grab an infinite number of related keywords (e.g: it never stops looking). It will scan and analyse thousands of keywords. Then all you do is filter the results to get promising niche ideas e.g:

I like to filter keywords to only shows ones where the average number of links is below 4,000, there are more than a thousand searches being performed every month and there's also a .co.uk domain available.

Then I sort by the number of searches and scroll through the list. All these keywords will be easy to rank for and have enough searches to make them profitable. I just buy the domains for the best ones and make a site built around it. In this way you can find a lot of overlooked keywords where there's simply very little competition but a tonne of searches being performed

2) The second is very similar to the first except you only filter for keywords where an exact domain is available and the sort by search volume. Then buy the domains that get the most searches and sell them. I think its good for a domainer who wants to automate their research.

3) Finally you can put in a few hundred keywords all based around a certain niche and tell the tool not to get any related keywords but just show data for the ones you've entered. This way when a client comes to me and says "I want to rank in the dog niche" I can put in a few hundred keywords and based on the data I get back I can say, "well, I know I can rank for this keyword, and this one because the competion is below 4,000 links and there are exact matching domains available. This is how many searches are being performed." Or I can use it and find that there just aren't any keywords that look easy to rank for and simply turn down the job.

Based on my personal experience I know I can rank on the first page if the average number of links is below 4,000. There is a notes section to the tool where you can write down your results as you go. You can start off with low competition keywords and the better you get at ranking for keywords the harder the keywords you can take on.

So what do you guys think, is this something you'd personally find useful? The idea is it would run on your hosting, so the data you collect is your own and not shared with others, there also would be no monthly fee, just a one off purchase of the script. If it's totally poo, just tell me, or maybe if there's any features you want that you just can't find elsewhere, tell me so I can add them.
#appreciated #feedback #keyword #programming #research #revoluntionary #tool
  • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
    There's a lot of good stuff there.

    I would like to see some measure of on-page SEO in the competing sites (like Micro Niche Finder's "SoC" - strength of competition).

    And another thing I'd like to see which don't see in MNF, is to be able to check for hyphenated domains as well as without hyphens. I know some people don't like them, but I'll take a hyphenated exact match domain name over something non-hyphenated that doesn't match.
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  • Profile picture of the author sloth456
    Thanks, Kevin! I was beginning to think no one was going to reply. I shall certainly lok at scraping onsite optimisation data, what kind of things would you like to see. I will also take a look at doing hyphenated domain whois checkups.
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBlackSEO
    I written a similar domain name checking script that extracted a load of keywords from one seed keyword and then checked to see if they were available as domain names, with and without hyphens. I found a few hundred decent domain names and bought a bunch of them for future use.

    Your tool looks pretty good. Expand on it and you'll have a worthy product! Well done.
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  • Profile picture of the author iw433
    Sounds like a very good tool, looking forward to seeing it in action.
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  • Profile picture of the author sloth456
    Thanks for the encouragement it's helped me no end
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBlackSEO
    This is quite similar to my seo toolbox once my new upgrades are all in place. I'm assuming that you'd be offering this as a self hosted script due to the amount of queries the script makes, to Google, Squidoo etc? If it wasn't for that it would make a good membership site / product. I had the same problem and didn't want to get my server blocked due to a high number of simultaneous requests.
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  • Profile picture of the author sloth456
    @andyblackseo - yeah thats one of the main reasons, although I could get round it with proxies. But one of the other main reasons is because I don't think everyone should share the same data, otherwise the best niches will be snapped up too quickly.
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  • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
    Onsite SEO data - both Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai do this, though in different ways - MS shows you in detail whether your keyphrase is in the title, URL etc for the first n search results in Google, while MNF just gives you a Strength of Competition score for the keyphrase as a whole, which is not as useful (it somehow clumps together allintitle, inurl and something else I can't remember right now, into an overall score).

    I expect you've already looked at the competing programs to see what they do, but if not, you probably should, so you can do them one better
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    • Profile picture of the author dotslash
      Looks a great tool, I'd certainly consider buying it. Although I love MS and use it every day - it's not that great at producing decent long tailed keywords.

      What would be useful is to be able to produce a usable list from all the results easily, basically being able to manipulate (add, delete keywords) from the results and produce/export a basic report - MS is very good at allowing you to manually filter results.

      Good luck
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  • Looks like Yahoo is our data source. I don't think many people would be interested in a Yahoo specific tool and Google just loves to block IP's. I'd compare what you are doing to other tools and services like Keyword Research Pro ... which uses Google and other data and is an interface like yours and Keyword Country which provides a lot of video training. I promote both and use Keyword Research Pro.
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    • Profile picture of the author sloth456
      @internetmarketingIQ

      I only use Yahoo to find out how many links are pointing to the top 3 domains in Google for all keywords researched.

      In the past when I first started doing SEO I thought to myself - why would I want to query Yahoo, should I not ask Google how many links they've counted? I wanted to know which links Google found important, not Yahoo. So I did all my link quieries with Google. But I soon found that wasn't useful at all because if you do a link search on Google it will only return a tiny fraction of what it has actually recorded and used for calculating rankings, whereas Yahoo returns a lot more.

      How would you like it to work?

      @dotslash - There is a filter system already built not shown in the screenshot, the export feature is yet to be built but it will be, is there anything about micronichefinder's export and filter options you really like in particular?

      @Kevin - I certainly thought that it would be a better idea to show the onsite data in seperate parts like market samurai and then let the user decide how competitive they think the keyword rather than an all in one score which is calculated according to the vendor's idea of how competition should be scored.

      Thanks for all the great ideas I really appreciate it.
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  • Profile picture of the author graham41
    Hi,

    Suggestion offer a free training course on this new tool along with the tool itself to warriors here. Give it a month of possible usage after which it stops working in return for genuine feedback.

    If the feedback is good. You can then complete development. Offer warriors say limited at 50 the free product in return for QA.

    After a couple of months release the final training course in this forum with a limited time able to receive the final product for free in return for solid genuine testimonials, which you will put on your sales page.

    So you have a quality assured product fit for purpose , given the seal of approval by the most savvy forum membership on the net with testimonials to die for ( and all real).

    G
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    • Profile picture of the author sloth456
      Great suggestion Graham! I shall certainly be giving away a number of copies before launch. Thank you
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBlackSEO
    Sloth456.... It's great seeing ideas come to life aint it I'm shooting a pm over to you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Ames
    It looks cool. Sorry if I'm dense, but will it automatically do phrase and exact match as well as broad match?

    make money online
    "make money online"

    Does it allow me to save the list of keywords to a CSV file? Can I save them to run again?

    I would like to be able to click on any of the keywords it finds and do a deep dive on those as well.

    Historic data.

    What would be cool is to save any list, then show increasing or decreasing volume of searches when the list is loaded and run again.

    The number of advertisements (competition) for each keyword would also be cool. Historic on that as well...

    ok I'll leave you alone.
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    Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. -Winston Churchill

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    • Profile picture of the author Hackbridge
      I'd like to be considered for beta testing please? I have MNF and I could compare the results side by side.Brian
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    • Profile picture of the author sloth456
      Hey some great ideas there! I was doing just an exact search, but it would be pretty easy to get broad and phrase match data too.

      All the data collected is saved in a database so once you have it you don't have to run the "research campaign" again, you just click on the previous campaign and all the data would come up instantly. There will definately be a CSV export function with plenty of ways to filter the data too.

      Historic search volume data would be really cool too, but I have no idea where to get hold of this data, unless of course the software just rechecked every month and kept tags on certain terms every month including who is in the top 3 and how their links fluctuate over time. Got any ideas?

      The number of competing advertisements would be awesome too, maybe with an avg cost per click for the keyword?

      Don't worry about giving me ideas, the more things this can do the more useful it will become to everyone.

      @Hackbridge - ok since you asked first, I'll let you know when the beta comes out and give you free access. But you might have to be patient, I'll work as fast as I can, but clearly it seems there's a lot more stuff people want added to it, so it might take a while before its ready.

      Originally Posted by Scott Ames View Post

      It looks cool. Sorry if I'm dense, but will it automatically do phrase and exact match as well as broad match?

      make money online
      "make money online"

      Does it allow me to save the list of keywords to a CSV file? Can I save them to run again?

      I would like to be able to click on any of the keywords it finds and do a deep dive on those as well.

      Historic data.

      What would be cool is to save any list, then show increasing or decreasing volume of searches when the list is loaded and run again.

      The number of advertisements (competition) for each keyword would also be cool. Historic on that as well...

      ok I'll leave you alone.
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