Best Keyword Difficulty/Competition Tool

I was hoping to see some answers and comments here. I am using wordze and it doesn't agree with any of the other free keyword programs.
I would hope that some of the gurus would be able to give us some ideas on how much weight we should give some keyword programs. Or just their thoughts on using these programs. Ive been out of the game for years so these programs are new to me. I always used the google search programs but I could not find that anywhere.
I mean I am searching dog clothes boutiques. I keep getting zero in wordze for my search terms or very low numbers but when i put that term in the search box I get millions of results and four or five paid ads for that string of keywords. So how does wordze say there has been NO searches for those words? I mean I must be doing something wrong and I've written to the powers that be but haven't gotten an answer yet.
So using these keyword search programs that can have a hefty price tag for a newbie are coming back with some unreliable data.....I think.
So besides SEO nuke what are people using successfully?

I've almost completely stopped using keyword tools...except for my brain. Sure, I may crank up a keyword tool to give me a few ideas, but for serious keyword research, nope. Don't use 'em.

Keyword tools aren't accurate enough.

When I'm researching an idea for a site, I want to know what people want and need. To truly understand the topic, I dive deep into it, ask questions, and really learn what motivates the end user.

That's something a keyword tool will never tell you.

The best keyword difficulty tools assess domain authority (reputation) and page authority.
Google uses PageRank as its metric for page authority. Google does not use metrics such as MozRank.
The best, and only, indication of domain authority as far as Google is concerned is the HomePage PageRank.
Total Page Reputation of a webpage includes the sum of its PageRank and its corresponding HomePage PageRank.
The averaged Total Page Reputations of the web pages on the top page of Google for a keyword is the best indication available of keyword difficulty.
Regards
David

There is no best. KW research is an art and not a science. It is not a question of what tools to use, but how to use them.

I only use Spencer Haws Longtail Pro tool and I recently wrote a very comprehensive tutorial about it on my blog. You can check it here Long Tail Pro Review and decide if you like it.

It really makes it easy to find and spot rankable keywords or targets for any Adwords campaign. I also used it successful for german keywords.

I was curious about this as well, and decided to do a study that compares the accuracy of 5 different metrics professional SEOs often use to assess Keyword Difficulty: Moz Page Authority, Google PageRank, Majestic CitationFlow, SerpIQ Competition Index, and the primary metric from my own software, CanIRank.com Ranking Probability.

I collected the top 40 Google results for 25 random keywords of varying difficulty (1,000 URLs) and re-ranked the SERPs according to each difficulty metric. My hypothesis is that a "perfect" measure of SEO keyword competition would rank the results in the same order that Google ranks them: e.g., a URL with PageRank 10 would always rank higher than a URL of PageRank 8.

The results?

Rank Order Correlation with Google Results:
Google PageRank - 0.21
Moz Page Authority - 0.27*
MajesticSEO CitationFlow - 0.19
SerpIQ Competition Index - 0.17
CanIRank.com Ranking Probability - 0.57

(0 means no correlation, 1 means perfectly ranking in the same order as Google)

For the most part, not very good! Granted, this is a hard test as most of these metrics are not intended to capture all search engine ranking factors (more on that below), but since many people assume a keyword where e.g., the top 10 results are all PR 7 is more difficult than a keyword where they are all PR 2, I think it's still a relevant test.

One bit of good news though for those who prefer free keyword research tools is that (although it's old school and much-disparaged), just glancing at the PageRank of the top results for a keyword (which you can do for free) is actually a more accurate SEO competitive analysis technique than many paid keyword difficulty tools.

Now, you may already have noticed why this isn't really an apples to apples comparison: most of these metrics aren't intended to consider keyword relevancy (either off-page or on-page). IE, the competition may consist entirely of PR10s, but if they're not doing a good job targeting the keyword, you can still compete with your PR1 (maybe ). This is the main reason our software is more accurate, because AFAIK only SerpIQ and CanIRank are trying to consider relevancy as well as authority.



--Matt

*Moz publishes a correlation of 0.34 from their own research, probably because they use more/ different keywords and a slightly different methodology

Your research there is totally flawed. Those metrics have little to nothing to do with a page's ability to rank for a specific keyword.

Keyword ranking difficulty can't be measured accurately by any tool. AdWords just tells you about the advertiser competition for a particular keyword. The best way to figure out this is to check the pages' metrics ranking for any particular keyword.

Just perform a simple Google search for the keyword and pick some pages from top of the SERP. Then look for inbound links to that page including links' quality and relevancy. This will generate an idea how much it is difficult for you to beat the competitors to rank your pages for that keyword.

Hands down SerpIQ

--> serpIQ.com

Read this guide line about keyword tools Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide

I am using Ultimate Niche Finder, one time fee, still working with keyword planner and provide sufficient data.

Keyword is the most important thing for a website if you talk about getting ranked on google because google crawl any website on the bases of keywords use some good tools as:
Soovle.
FreshKey.
Ubersuggest.
Google Keyword Planner.
WordStream’s Keyword Tool.
Etc....

For me long tail pro has been the best tool for keyword research. This tool combines the data from adwords with moz difficulty score and helps us to identify the low competition keywords.

He is my opinon and I hope it helps.

What your looking for is a tool that will look at the top ten results for multiple keywords and examine the potential traffic that you may get provided you can get your page onto the first page of the listings.

Then you need to be able to compare the metrics of those sites, for each specific keyword, with the basic metrics of your website.

This allows you to chose the right keywords to optimize for based on your websites authority and your ability to SEO on and off page in order to increase your rankings.

Typically you can do this manually using the Google Keyword Planner and Market Samurai by its a long a tedious process. I recommend everyone start out this way so you understand the process and can start doing it just by eye.

Then when you know you have the concept down I recommend you get SECockPit, which in my view is hands down the best tool for the what you described you want done.

Hope that helped.

Regards,
C

It is not dependent on the best tools, it depends upon how you are searching using these tools I use following tools:
# Google adward keyword tool,
# Open site explorer,
# SEMrush,
# SEOmoz.

use Google keyword planner this one is a best tool other tools are also same as Google Keyword planner cause he used API of Google keyword planner.

if you ask for a tool then I recommend Long Tail Pro. Otherwise, you can do almost anything with Google keyword planner... Good luck!

you can simply use google keyword tool if you just want some simple information,but if you want to go deep,market samurai is a very good chioce for you,they supply you a lot of useful,related information to that keyword,including your competitors information,and they also have free version,you can try that if you like

I have been searching for answers to the exact same question and I came across a site that asked some of the top Internet Marketers which tool they prefer. You should check it out. Oh, I am in no way affiliated with the site owner and you may have even found the answer you were seeking but just in case here it is. The site is Stuart Walker's, 'Niche Hacks' - I Asked 8 IM Experts

If you have found something that works for you, please let me know. I am still trying to decide which one I will purchase but it will probably be LTP.

I've also been looking for a keyword tool and can't decide mostly because of the monthly cost. I think I might just go with LTP.