Yesterday, we took a look at Market Samurai’s Keyword Research module – and how Market Samurai gives you more raw keyword data, more accurate results, and more detailed analysis and filtering tools than any other keyword software – and does it at a lower cost.

Today, I received an email saying: “But [XYZ more expensive keyword tool] can do 100% of what Market Samurai can do.”

Not true…

…But it made me think – maybe they just didn’t know what Market Samurai actually did?

Are You Getting Everything You Can Out Of Market Samurai?

There are so many features available in the “Market Samurai toolkit” that it’s so easy to miss or forget about one or two – and miss out on the benefits that they can provide you with.

So today, I want to share with you some of the specific features that you have access to inside Market Samurai – in JUST the Keyword Research module – and how you can use them.

Call it a Market Samurai “refresher course” – looking at all of the features that are available to you right now, and helping you to get value out of features that you may have otherwise forgotten about or overlooked.

But, before I begin – just a quick warning…

Because Market Samurai gives you more raw keyword data, more accurate results, and more detailed analysis and filtering tools than any other keyword software – this is going to be a BIG post! …So I’ll do what I can to keep this brief.

Are you ready?

Let’s go!

GENERATING KEYWORDS

When it comes to generating keyword lists, Market Samurai gives you focused, high-quality keyword lists based on the keywords the search engines want to see.

Because you’re getting the keywords that the search engines want to see, not keywords that could distract search engine algorithms when working out what your site is about (hurting your rankings), you get better results. (BIG concept – I’ll go into it more in a later blog post.)

And because you’re not having to wade through and filter out thousands of long-tail junk keywords (with no traffic), you spend less time on keyword research to get to the same end result.

- #1-2: Keyword Sources -

The two primary sources for keyword generation are Google’s Keyword Tool, and Google’s Search-Based Keyword tool.

1. The Google Keyword Tool

The Google Synonym Tool (known by most marketers as “the Google Keyword Tool”) is particularly helpful for generating lists of synonymous and semantically related keywords.

2. The Google Search-Based Keyword Tool

The Search-Based Keyword Tool is valuable for finding the most profitable, most popular long tail keywords (and Market Samurai is the first keyword software to utilise this data source).

Together, there isn’t much that these two tools miss – with the one exception being extreme long-tail keywords (keywords with traffic levels too low to provide any substantial benefit for SEO or PPC advertising).

And because you’re asking the search engines what they want to see, you get an up-to-date list of highly targeted, high traffic keywords that Google “wants” to see when it is ranking a web-site (instead of an untargeted keyword list that includes keywords that could hurt your rankings) – meaning you spend less time doing keyword research, and get better results with less time and effort.

- #3-4: Traffic Filters -

Because targeting keywords requires an investment of time, effort, money and skill – it’s important to only focus on keywords with enough traffic to make your investment of these commodities valuable.

Market Samurai allows you to filter out keywords with low levels of traffic, during in the keyword generation phase, so that you spend less time doing keyword research, and are left with a much more focussed and targeted list of keywords for your needs.

3. SEO Traffic Filter

This option allows you to filter out keywords with low traffic levels for SEO-optimized sites, and quickly focus your attention on only the highest value keywords – saving you time in keyword research.

4. Adwords Traffic Filter

Likewise, the Google Adwords Traffic filter quickly filters out keywords that have very low levels of Adwords traffic, and are unlikely to give you a substantial return for the time you invest creating ads and targeting the keyword.

- #5: Phrase-Length filters -

You can also filter out keywords that have too few, or too many words.

This is helpful for quickly targeting, or avoiding, either long-tail keywords or short-tail keywords.

- #6, 7, 8: Positive / Negative Keyword Filtering -

Market Samurai also has the most in-depth Positive and Negative keyword filtering in any keyword tool.

6. Positive Keywords

Inside Market Samurai, you have the option to filter keywords based on Positive Keywords.

While Negative Keywords are keywords (or parts of keywords) that you want to avoid, Positive Keywords are keywords (or parts of keywords) that you want to focus on exclusively in your keyword list.

Inside Market Samurai, you can remove all keywords except for selected Positive Keywords by clicking on the tick icon beside the keywords you want to focus on.

You can also focus on specific words or phrases by clicking on those words or phrases and then hit the tick button – or by typing the words you want to see inside all of your keywords into the Positive Keywords box before hitting “Update”.

7. Negative Keywords

Removing individual selected Negative keywords can be done by clicking the “x” icon beside the keyword you want to remove.

You can also remove any keyword that contains a specific word or phrase – by clicking on the word (or words) within the keyword that you want to avoid, and then clicking the “x” icon.

OR just type in a word or phrase into the “Negative Keyword” list box and hit “Update”.

8. Show Removed

If you ever want to see your whole keyword list (excluding any negative or positive keyword filtering), you can click the “Show Removed” button.

- #9: Add Keywords -

This is a handy tool if you want to analyze a couple of keywords specifically, and ignore other related keywords…

Or, if you want to add a specific keyword to your generated keyword list for comparison.

- #10: Add Permutations -

This is a unique tool to Market Samurai – and something that allows you to find the optimal keyword combination to use.

When it comes to keyword data, computers often mess up…

They put keywords in the wrong word order – so instead of seeing “trout fishing lures”, you might see “lures trout fishing”.

The difference in word order can make a big difference to your results – if your site is optimized for the wrong keyword combination, you’re not optimized at all!

The “Add Permutations” tool allows you to check which word order is best for a keyword by comparing all possible options. This is particularly handy for unlocking the often overlooked value of low PBR keywords (I’ll get to this in a minute.)

- #11-16: Import / Export Keyword Lists -

If you have an existing keyword list (from your web site logs, an old Adwords campaign, or even from another keyword research tool) and you want to access Market Samurai’s in-depth keyword research for those keywords – there are several ways you can import those keywords into Market Samurai.

11-12. Import / Export Keyword Research Lists

If it’s just a few keywords – typing into the “Add Keywords” box, and hitting “Add” is a quick way to go. But for longer lists, you can use the “Import” buttons to import keyword lists from saved text files.

You can also export keywords generated in Market Samurai to text files.

13-14. Import / Export Negative Keyword Lists

Are you planning to run an Adwords campaign? Already recognise the value of Negative Keywords?

Great! – Just export your list (or copy it from the “Negative Keywords” box) and paste it into your Google Adwords account for better quality clicks, and to avoid wasting money on unprofitable, untargeted traffic.

15-16. Import / Export Positive Keyword Lists

Similarly, you can import and export positive keyword lists to help you to target and focus your keyword research later.

ANALYZING KEYWORDS

It only takes one glance at Market Samurai to see the depth of research that it provides on keywords.

For most people, the sheer amount of data available to you for your keywords will not fit on a single screen. (In the screenshot below, I needed to use a widescreen monitor.)

- DATA TYPES -

- #17-19: Broad, Phrase, Exact -

Broad, Phrase and Exact-match keyword data is available inside Market Samurai for all keywords.

This shows you exactly how many people are typing in your keyword – exactly, in phrase-order, or in any order.

Market Samurai was the first keyword software to provide Broad-Match keyword data based on actual Google searches – before going one better, and incorporating both Phrase-Match and Exact-Match keyword data too.

17. Broad Match

Broad match data tells you how many people are searching for the words inside the keyword – in any order, mixed with any other additional words. It’s a good indicator of the longer term traffic for a keyword – the type of traffic that an established site will pick up.

18. Phrase Match

Phrase match data shows you how many people are searching for the keyword phrase in the order that you see it appear in – potentially with additional words at the beginning or end.

It’s an indicator of medium term traffic, and helps you to get the right word order for your keywords.

19. Exact Match

Exact match data is the number of searches for the precise keyword. It’s also an indicator of the short term traffic that you might expect for the keyword if you’re targeting it through SEO.

- ORGANIC DATA -

Market Samurai measures the potential value of “free” traffic from search engines – helping you to find the most profitable keywords to target for SEO, and allowing you to focus on the keywords that give you the biggest potential benefit.

The types of Organic Traffic data that Market Samurai brings together for you includes:

- #20: Total Searches -

This is simply how many people search for the keyword per day on Google.com, and Google’s search partners (e.g. AOL’s co-branded Google search engine).

Just like all traffic figures inside Market Samurai’s Keyword Research module, these statistics are most accurate available, and exist for Broad, Phrase and Exact Match and are targeted to your chosen region or language – allowing you to do keyword research for any keyword market in the world.

For the first time with Market Samurai, you’re able to get accurate keyword information for any keyword, language or region – opening up new markets to you, and taking away the need for any keyword “guess-work”.

- #21: SEO Traffic -

It’s deceptive looking at the total searches for a keyword. It’s easy to think about how great it would be to have all of the searches per day land on your site – when in reality, only a percentage of those people will ever visit ANY site.

Market Samurai’s unique SEO Traffic score (SEOT) is unique in that it gives you the maximum amount of traffic that targeting a keyword is likely to give you.

This is based on analysis of millions of actual search engine queries, showing 42% of all clicks go to the FIRST listed result.

Using this data is the most simple way that you can get better results from your keyword targeting – the higher an SEOT figure is for a keyword, the more potential traffic you can capture from SEO for your web-site. Simple.

- #22: Phrase-to-Broad Match Ratio (PBR) -

This tool saves a lot of wasted time and effort optimizing for bad keywords – a risk of using any other keyword software available, as PBR statistics are only available inside Market Samurai.

Computers don’t understand language like humans do, and will often mess up the word order of keywords. So instead of giving you the keyword “trout fishing lures” (which most people search for), they might suggest “lures trout fishing”.

If you’re optimized for the right keyword in the wrong word order – you’re not optimized at all.

You might get rankings, but you won’t get the maximum traffic for that keyword.

A low PBR score is a warning sign that your keyword might not be in the right word order. (The “Add Permutations” tool can help you to work out the right word order. See above for details)

- #23: Trends -

Some keywords are seasonal – “flowers” is popular around valentines day, “ski” is most popular during the northern hemisphere’s ski season but has a smaller second peak during the Australian/New Zealand ski season.

With Market Samurai showing you daily traffic estimates from the past month, this figure can fluctuate.

By displaying seasonal traffic trends for the keyword, you can accurately predict likely future search demand for the keyword in Google.

Edit: For consistency’s sake, in Market Samurai the trend graphs are displayed as January to December charts.

We found that Google would often display the charts with inconsistent time frames (with the beginning of the chart being anything from 12-15 months prior) so it was often confusing looking at the charts. So re-ordering them as January to December charts ensured consistency for Market Samurai users, and helped to improve on Google’s already good work.

If you hold your mouse over one of the bars in the chart, a tooltip will appear showing which month the bar represents.

Thank-you to Frank Dobner for pointing out that we forgot to mention this. Thanks Frank!

- ADWORDS DATA -

This data represents the paid, cost-per-click traffic that is available from Google Adwords, and includes:

- #24: Adwords Traffic -

A highly accurate estimate of the amount of traffic an advertiser can expect for a top-ranked ad in Google Adwords (seen for the first time in Market Samurai).

Using this data, you can focus your Google Adwords advertising on the keywords that are most likely to give you the maximum number of customers.

- #25: Adwords Cost Per Click -

This figure is both represents the “market value” of a single keyword-targeted visitor, and how much you can expect to bid to consistently achieve the top spot in Google Adwords (not position 1-3, but position #1).

While other tools provide Cost Per Click estimates, Market Samurai is the only tool able to provide this highly targeted data.

- #26: Adwords Click-Through Rates -

What if you could predict the expected click-through rate for your ad, before it was even running, and use this figure as a benchmark to tell you whether your ad is performing well or poorly.

This information could help you to lower your costs per click and improve your quality score – meaning you could get more visitor traffic from Adwords, with less cost.

By bringing together accurate traffic estimate data from several sources, Market Samurai is the first (and only) keyword research software able to do this for you.

- COMPETITION -

A lot of people waste a lot of time and effort targeting highly competitive keywords for SEO or Adwords.

By measuring the competition that there is for a keyword, and targeting high-traffic low-competition keywords, you can get better results with far less time, effort, cost and skill.

- #27: SEO Competition (SEOC) -

This is the number of web pages that mention your selected keyword phrase. In general, the fewer web pages that mention the keyword phrase, the faster you can get rankings.

- #28: Title Competition (SEOTC) -

Market Samurai users requested this feature, and we delivered. This figure shows you the number of web pages that contain the keyword in their title tags (in any word order).

With the keywords that you place in the title tag of a web page being a HEAVY search engine ranking factor, often you can get very fast front-page rankings by targeting keywords with very low title competition scores.

- #29: Title Competition to SEO Competition Ratio (SEOTCR) -

This is the ratio of the number of sites that mention a keyword phrase, to the number of sites that have the keyword in the title tags of the site – and can be used to find under-optimized keyword markets.

Keyword markets that have very low levels of keyword optimization will have low SEOTCR scores.

- #30: Adwords Advertiser Count (AWA) -

This is the number of ads that are running for a keyword phrase.

While some other keyword tools DO provide Adwords Advertiser counts, they do not provide statistics on the total number of advertisers – instead, they count the number of advertisers on the front page of Google (which is usually between 8 and 11 results).

Because Market Samurai provides more accurate data in this area, you can get a better insight into how competitive the keyword is in Google Adwords, and focus your efforts on the least competitive and most profitable keywords.

- #31: Adwords Competition (AWC) -

This measure of competition is provided by Google, and provides a sense of scale showing how many advertisers are bidding on a keyword when compared to all other keywords.

This general guide is another way to work out whether a keyword is is going to be high, medium or low competition – and focus your efforts on the lowest competition, highest value keywords.

COMMERCIAL VALUE

Not all traffic is created equal.

Some keywords bring in more customers, or people who want to spend more money.

If you know which keywords are used by “browsers”, and which keywords are used by “buyers”, you can target the highest value, most profitable keywords first – and make more money with less effort.

- #32: Online Commercial Intent (OCI) -

Market Samurai was the first tool to provide OCI data
measures the likely buying habits of people using the keyword

if the score is high (above 50%), it’s likely to be a keyword used by people wanting to buy
if the score is low (below 50%), it’s likely to bring in more browsers than buyers.

Using this tool, you can focus on more profitable keywords.

- #33: Adwords Value (AWV) -

Ever wanted to know which keywords would be most profitable to target?

AWV gives you the maximum value of traffic (per day) that you could receive by targeting the keyword – for Adwords.

Both AWV and SEOV are unique to Market Samurai – and help you to target the most profitable keywords, and avoid worthless keywords.

- #34: SEO Value (SEOV) -

Ever wanted to know which keywords would be most profitable to target?

Just like AWV – SEOV is the total maximum value of traffic (per day) that you could receive by targeting this keyword through SEO, rather than Adwords

The way it is calculated is simply the market value of traffic for a keyword, multiplied by the amount of traffic that a single site could potentially receive. As a result, this figure takes into account both the value of the keyword, and the amount of traffic – so it’s a good way of focusing on the most valuable, profitable keywords.

FILTERING KEYWORDS

- #35-47: Columns and Sorting -

35. Sortable Columns

Market Samurai columns are sortable – so, by clicking on one of the column headings, you can sort all of your keywords by that piece of data.

Want to see which keywords have the highest traffic levels, value, or competition levels? – Just click the relevant column heading, and the keywords will be sorted in this order – highest to lowest.

Want to reverse the order, and see the keywords listed from lowest to highest? – Just click it again.

36. Tooltips

By holding your mouse pointer over a column heading, you can also see a description of the data in that column.

37. Fixed Column Headers

…And as you scroll down, all keyword columns remain visible – like this (note keywords)…

These are all little features that help you to analyze keywords faster and more easily.

- #38: Filtering -

Finding the best keywords to target used to take time and effort.

On the one hand, you want high-traffic keywords.

On the other, you want low-competition keywords.

PLUS – you want to make sure that your keywords are valuable – that people are using them to find things to buy.

Sorting keywords isn’t enough. Which is why Market Samurai created 14 keyword filters – allowing you to filter out low-value, low-traffic, high-competition keywords and have a focussed list of the best quality keywords to target.

DEEPER ANALYSIS

- #39: Easy Keyword Tabs -

Market Samurai uses Keyword Tabs – allowing you to keep research for multiple keywords together in one project for easy reference.

It also means keywords are grouped into sets of relevant keywords – all of them in the same relationship groups that Google wants to see.

- #40: “Quick Tab” Key Icon -

Beside each keyword is a key icon. Clicking this icon will allow you to open up a keyword in a new tab – so that you can “dig deeper” into interesting keywords, and find additional relevant keywords.

- #41-43: Color Coded Keywords -

You’ll also notice that Market Samurai has different colors for different rows of keywords.

41. Active Keyword

The orange keyword is the main keyword in the current tab, and will always be visible (even after filters are applied) for you to compare other keywords against.

42. Open Keyword

The green keywords are keywords that are open in other tabs, showing you that you have already “delved deeper” into that keyword.

43. Zebra Striping

The rows are also “zebra-striped” – with alternating background colors on rows (light grey / white). This helps you to read keyword data more easily.

- #44: Clickable Results -

Beside relevant pieces of keyword data, you’ll see a small green arrow (which turns orange when your mouse pointer hovers over it).

The arrow signals that clicking on this result will open the raw data source in a new window, allowing you to seethe actual websites and advertisers that you may be competing against in that marketplace.

You can also click on the Trends graph to see historical trends for the keyword.

TAGGING

- #45-46: Keyword Tagging -

Have you ever been asked for keywords or tags for a YouTube video, social bookmarking submission or blog post?

Within seconds, you can have a list of highly targeted keywords for this purpose using Market Samurai.

Just select the best keywords for the job (by placing a tick in the tickbox to the left of the keyword) and then click “Copy Tags”

You have two options for tags…

45. Copy Tags (Comma Separated)

The first is comma separated – for blogs and most social bookmarking sites. They typically look like this:

guitar lessons, guitar lesson book, bluegrass guitar lessons, lead guitar lessons, slide guitar lessons, learn guitar lessons, download guitar lessons, beginning guitar lessons

46. Copy Tags (Space Separated)

These are used by some social bookmarking sites and video sites, including Delicious.com, and they look like this:

guitar-lessons guitar-lesson-book bluegrass-guitar-lessons lead-guitar-lessons slide-guitar-lessons learn-guitar-lessons download-guitar-lessons beginning-guitar-lessons

EXPORTING

- #47: Export to CSV -

Market Samurai allows you to export your full keyword research data to a CSV spreadsheet, to archive, share with others or even give to clients – just by clicking the “Export” button.

- #48: Export to Text File -

As I mentioned before, you can also export keyword lists to text files from the Keyword Generation page. This is not limited to your researched list – you can also export your positive keywords, or your negative keyword lists for use in Adwords or elsewhere.

(Note: Going back to the Keyword Generation page and exporting your keyword list as a text file is different after you have applied filters – as you will only see keywords that meet your filter criteria)

REGIONAL TARGETING

- #49: Region & Language Targeting-

Have you ever considered the potential to make money in large search markets outside of the United States, largely ignored by internet marketers?

Here you can find high traffic, high value “niches” with scarcely a competitor in sight – and dominate the industry yourself.

Market Samurai allows you to do keyword research in 234 countries, regions and territories – giving you access to more keyword markets than ever before – making Market Samurai quite possibly the only global keyword research software able to target any major language, country or region in the world.

- #50: Language -

Likewise, Market Samurai is able to give you accurate keyword research data for any major language – allowing you to tap into practically any market that exists online.

For the multi-lingual users of Market Samurai, this opens up whole worlds of untapped opportunities online.

- #51: Adult Filtering -

Market Samurai also allows you to avoid, or include, adult-related keywords among your keyword research results.

(These options are available to you when you begin a new Market Samurai project file.)

PUTTING KEYWORDS INTO ACTION

- #51-52: Add to Rank Tracker -

If you plan to optimize your site to rank well for a keyword, you can tell Market Samurai’s rank tracker to track your rankings for the keyword from within the Keyword Research area.

The two options that you have for this work in different ways:

51. Rank Tracker Tickbox

By ticking this box, you add the main keyword for the tab you have open to Rank Tracker.

You will be asked if you want to categorize the keyword (to keep your keywords in a treelike structure in Rank Tracker), and if you want to assign a specific target page that you have optimized for that keyword.

52. Rank Tracker Drop-Down

Using this option, you can select several keywords that you plan on targeting (by placing a tick in the tickboxes beside those keywords) and then add them all to Rank Tracker at once.

This 2-second process saves you time and effort, and allows you to track your rankings more easily.

- #53: Begin Using a Keyword Immediately -

Market Samurai is about more than just keyword research – it’s about getting the maximum amount of value out of a keyword, using the minimum amount of time, effort and expense.

Remember – keyword research is just the first step in the process…

If you want to unlock the potential value of a keyword, you need to actually DO something with the keyword.

With Market Samurai – once you’ve found your keyword, you’re not “left in the cold” to try and make the keyword work by yourself.

You can begin using Market Samurai’s tools straight away – to go into deeper SEO analysis, research topics to write about, find and promote affiliate products, publish content to your web-site, build high-quality backlinks, and track your website rankings – all at the click of a button.

…

…But I’ll stop here – because today I’m just sharing the features available to you inside one module within Market Samurai – just the Keyword Research module.

This is literally 1/8th of what Market Samurai can do for you (just 1 out of 8 Market Samurai modules) – we haven’t even touched the other 7 modules (SEO Competition Analysis, Rank Tracker, Find Content, Promotion/Link Building, Monetization, Adwords, or Publish Content!)

And it’s obvious just by looking at this that you have access to more in-depth keyword research data than in any other keyword research software available today.

I hope you’ve discovered something new today that you can begin using right now.

Brent

P.S. – This is the bit where I explain how new readers can get access to Market Samurai…

If you want to try Market Samurai for yourself, you can get free access to the keyword research module (and all of the features above) – plus trial the other advanced features inside Market Samurai – you can get your copy here.

If you already own Market Samurai and would like to upgrade to the paid version (and get lifetime access to all 8 modules inside Market Samurai) the place to upgrade your copy is here.

P.P.S. – Several people have asked for a PDF version of this blog post.

Scott Harvey helpfully obliged – and now you can download the PDF of this blog post here. Thanks Scott!

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When we released Market Samurai to the public, for the first time in August last year, we offered one BIG unique feature that no other cutting-edge keyword research software had ever offered.

This unique feature wasn’t the highly accurate keyword traffic estimates (available for the first time), accurate SEO and Adwords click estimates (still unique to Market Samurai), highly accurate market value of traffic estimates, or the “OCI” tools to measure which keywords were being used by buyers (again, another first).

And it wasn’t the no-cost updates that Market Samurai users continue to enjoy – practically every time they open the software.

(Sure, Market Samurai included a heap of “world-firsts” and “innovations”. And yes, Market Samurai continues to provide the most in-depth keyword research available anywhere.)

But the most revolutionary feature of Market Samurai’s Keyword Research tools was the price tag:

“Free.”

(Completely free – not “limited free”, not “trial free”… Fully-functional keyword research software, for free.)

That’s Right – Market Samurai’s Keyword Research Tools are Free

I’m not kidding.

(A lot of people still don’t believe us when they find out – they email support to tell us about a “typo” or a “bug” – they can’t believe they’re getting something so incredible for free!)

If you’re reading this and don’t believe me – and you have a trial copy of Market Samurai installed (even an expired trial) – open it right now.

Notice that there is no “Paid Version” or “Trial” icon next to the Keyword Research module?

There never has been.

It’s always been free.

Trial access to the other advanced modules inside of Market Samurai will expire (if your trial period has already ended, then it will have expired already) – but you will always be able to use the Keyword Research module for free.

Use it! You have full, unrestricted access to the most advanced Keyword Research tool available – bringing together more raw keyword data than any other keyword tool!

(If you don’t have access to Market Samurai yet, and want to get access to the Keyword Research tools (and trial the other advanced features for 12 days) you can get access to Market Samurai for free, here.)

Why Give Away Market Samurai’s Keyword Research Tools for Free?

On the surface, it may seem crazy…

Market Samurai’s keyword research tools are by far the most in-depth tools for keyword research available anywhere – and we’re making them available for free, with no restrictions?

But the reason is simple…

Keywords WANT TO Be Free

In Chris Anderson’s latest revolutionary book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”, he explains how the internet is turning previously costly and hard-to-acquire information into abundant commodities – available at a cost too cheap to meter.

One of these previously costly, hard-to-acquire commodities is Keyword Data.

Every year, the computer processing power, storage and bandwidth costs required to harvest, analyze and distribute keywords has become smaller – to a point where the cost of providing keyword data is now almost zero.

This has seen the keyword research industry split into two parts:

• The Old Players whose big price tags, expensive software and monthly data fees made sense in an era where keyword data was scarce, expensive, unreliable and difficult to access.
• And a New Generation of keyword research tools (like Market Samurai’s Keyword Research tools; Google’s Wonder Wheel, Keyword Tool and Google Insights; and Wordtracker’s Lab tools) all being offered with a price tag of “Free”.

One is sinking – and clutching hold to a business model that is no longer justified, delivering less-and-less comparable value to users every day.

The other is growing at an exponential rate – providing keyword data to thousands of new converts with the lure of better value.

And it’s not just better value-for-money (after all, you can’t get much better value for money than “free”).

It’s also a better depth and quality of tools provided, with many free options outpacing even the most expensive paid keyword research tools – leading in both new innovations and sheer depth of keyword research – and leaving their expensive rivals to play catch-up.

Given this choice, it was an obvious decision…

One market was dying, one was growing…

It made sense for Market Samurai to follow the growing market, and make its keyword research tools free.

In the immortal words of ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky – “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

If users were moving toward free keyword research tools, meaning sooner-or-later all of the best keyword research tools would (inevitably) become free, it made sense for us to get ahead of the market, and become free – sooner rather than later.

So that’s exactly what happened…

Market Samurai brought together the best, highest quality, most valuable sources of keyword data – for free. And it continues to move fast to work alongside more free keyword data sources as they become available, keeping users at the cutting edge of in-depth keyword research.

By giving away something of true value, for free – Market Samurai went from being a completely unknown piece of software, developed and used privately by a handful of anonymous internet marketing geeks (us) – to being one of the most widely used and respected internet marketing tools today.

So what pays the bills for Market Samurai?

The way Market Samurai makes money – and the reason people buy – is on the other side of this equation…

…Actually DOING SOMETHING with keywords – and turning them from something that is worthless and intangible – into something valuable.

Keyword are together WORTHLESS, & EXPENSIVE:

A keyword, by-itself, is WORTHLESS…

Saved on your hard-drive, or displayed on your screen – it has no value. It’s just a few tiny electrical impulses – perhaps just a few bytes of data, or a few pixels on your screen – and is no more or less valuable than any other pixel or byte on your computer.

In other words – a keyword, by itself, is completely worthless.

A keyword only becomes valuable when you put it to work.

Until you put the keyword to work – by using it to target potential customers through Google Adwords, SEO, or some other means – it can’t make a single cent, or bring you a single website visitor.

Here’s where keywords are EXPENSIVE…

In order to make the keyword valuable, you need to put it to work.

And in order to put the keyword to work, you need to do something to it.

You need to set up a targeted Adwords campaign, or create some SEO-targeted content, or to do something that unlocks the value inside the keyword.

The True Cost of Keywords

The true cost of keywords – the factor that limits you, or stops you from exploiting thousands of them right now, this very second, for your own personal gains – is NOT the cost of finding them.

(We all know that keywords are abundant, and free – and we can find thousands of great quality keywords in just a few moments using Market Samurai’s Keyword Research module – which, again, is free.)

The true cost of keywords is Time, Money, Effort and Skill.

To target a keyword, you need to invest (usually un-equal portions) of each of these commodities if you want to unlock the potential value of the keyword.

• Targeting a keyword through something like Google Adwords will cost money (to pay the per-click costs) and give you an almost instant result, but takes effort to set up.
• Targeting a keyword through Search Engine Optimization might be free, but it takes time until you see a result, and there’s a lot of effort required to write articles and build lots of links.

And both of these require a level of skill (knowledge and expertise) if you expect to be successful.

Time, Money, Effort and Skill are almost unavoidable in internet marketing.

(I say “almost” because there are alternatives for making money online that require very low levels of time, money, effort and skill – but these are called “spam”, and in many countries this business model will likely land you in jail.)

This is how someone targeting 1 or 10 high-quality keywords will often make more money than someone with 100,000 or 1,000,000 keywords – or why some people make fortunes from a keyword, while others in the same market lose money (think “dog training”).

This is because it’s not the keywords themselves that make money. Rather, it’s how someone invests their time, money, effort and skill putting the keywords to work.

Market Samurai Puts Your Keywords To Work

Market Samurai never set out to compete against the other keyword tools that are out there – you’ll see the other keyword tools are the ones competing against Market Samurai.

Market Samurai always had one goal.

To Kick Down the Barriers that Limit People’s Success Online: the Scarce Resources of Time, Money, Effort and Skill.

By reducing the time, effort, cost and expertise it takes to DO ANYTHING with keywords – Market Samurai helps people to get faster results, with less effort – meaning better rankings, more website visitor traffic and bigger profits.

If you look at every feature inside Market Samurai – and every one of the dozens of innovations released to users since Market Samurai was first launched – you see this theme:

- Rank Tracker –

Monitors and tracks your site’s rankings faster an easier than before, giving you more accurate insights into your true rankings in all major search engines, for all of your targeted keywords – so that you have the skill to see if your SEO efforts are profitable, (or telling you if an SEO strategy is a waste of time, effort and money.)

- SEO Competition –

Gives you the skill to know whether you are likely to rank for a keyword, so that you can assess how much time, effort and money it will take to rank – avoid keywords that are too difficult or costly to target through SEO, and focus on the most profitable keywords for better rankings faster with less effort and expense.

- Promotion –

Assesses link-building opportunities, giving you the skill to know which pages are best to target for high-value, high-quality link building (the type of links that give you the best, fastest ranking boosts) so that you don’t waste time or effort targeting poor opportunities.

- Find Content –

Assesses the quality of content on the web, giving you the skill to know which articles are considered by search engines to be high value – so that you can either save time and effort researching high-value keyword targeted articles to write for your own niche site – or you can republish low-value articles and save time writing your own article and attract traffic by making the “authority source” your site.

- Monetization –

Helps you to find the most profitable affiliate opportunities online, write and publish an ad quickly, with no copywriting skill and very little effort required, and track results (so that you can find the highest-converting affiliate offers for your site) – meaning you can do more marketing in less time, and make more money.

- Publish Content & Adwords -

(Not yet publicly available – but you can bet that the full feature set of these two modules will help you to unlock the value of keywords with less time, effort, cost and skill – and help you to get better marketing results, faster! )

Faster, Easier and Better Results = BIGGER PROFITS

It’s not the keywords themselves that make money. Rather, it’s how you invest your time, money, effort and skill putting the keywords to work that determines your success.

The faster, easier and easier it is – the more you can achieve.

Even though Market Samurai can’t do *everything* for you [yet] – it DOES give you the ability to achieve more, with less time, effort, cost and skill.

Each of these time-saving, results-boosting tools focuses on a single pivotal area of online marketing, and helps you to get better results from that area – with less time and effort.

(In fact, the key reason why they’re all in one tool – rather than having one keyword tool, one SEO analysis tool, one link building tool etc – is because the time wasted loading and switching between tools adds up very quickly, and is better invested into actually making money!)

And users who sign up for a 12-day trial of Market Samurai get get to trial these advanced features for 12 days at no cost – as well as getting full access to the keyword research module inside Market Samurai.

…And It All Starts With Keyword Research

As for the Keyword Research module – although it’s free, it’s also the most valuable, most important module of them all – the element that makes everything else work better:

- Keyword Research –

Helps to pick which keywords are the best to focus on and target first – because targeting the best, most relevant, most profitable keywords – you get a better return on the time, effort, money and skill that you invest into your marketing.

This is how someone with 1 or 10 high-quality keywords makes more money than someone with 100,000 or 1,000,000 keywords…

…Because, in the end, it’s not the keywords themselves that make money. Rather, it’s how someone chooses to invest their time, money, effort and skill actually putting the keywords to work.

Faster – Easier – Cheaper … Getting More Done while actually Doing Less … Making Bigger Profits From Your Keywords, Sooner.

Are You Using Market Samurai?

First-Time Users: – If you don’t already use Market Samurai, and want full access to the world’s most in-depth keyword research tools – for free – you can get your copy for free here, now.

Free Version Users: – If you do use Market Samurai’s Keyword Research tools, but don’t already have full access to Market Samurai and want to use its advanced tools to make your keywords work harder – with less effort – click here to upgrade your copy.

Paid Version Users: – If you’re one of the thousands who already have full access to Market Samurai – you’ve already made the right choice.

For you – there are even more revolutionary time-slashing, results-making features in development – so the next unexpected bonus update is probably just around the corner.

.

40 Comments »

For most people, writing effective sales copy (even for a simple ad) takes a long time and a lot of effort.

But most people write their ads the hard way.

They open up a blank Word document… Then, carefully craft a written sales pitch by hand.

It’s no wonder it takes a long time.

If you’re going to write effective ad copy this way, you need 4 things:

1. Sales Skills – to be convincing in your pitch and make the sale;
2. Writing Skills – to communicate your message effectively;
3. Technical Skills – to upload the ad to the web;
4. PLUS an investment of your own Time & Effort – to make it happen.

Are You a Natural Web Copy Writer?… What, You’re NOT?

Most of us aren’t born with natural talent in writing, salesmanship and technology -

Sure, there are natural Sales-People, natural Writers, and people with good natural Technical skills – and sure, it’s possible to build these skills over time…

But if you’re lacking in just one of these areas, and you’re trying to turn your website traffic into dollars – chances are:

• You’re Spending Far Too Much Time and Energy Creating Affiliate Ads;
• You’re Not Getting the Results You Want from Your Ads;
• OR – You’re Simply Not Writing Ads At All

All 3 options suck, suck, and suck!

But hey – it’s okay!

The 3-Minute Solution to Copywriting Woes…

Writing copy is hard – and it’s a BIG barrier to making money online that stands in MOST peoples’ way…

That’s why we created the Copywriting Tools inside Market Samurai’s New Monetization Module – to make it even easier to make money online.

And using Market Samurai’s Copywriting Tool, you can write an affiliate promotion in 3 minutes flat – without even typing a word.

View on YouTube: Watch “Writing Ad Copy” on YouTube

How To Write An Ad in 3 Minutes Flat:

The secret to being a great ad copy writer is knowing how to COPY great ads

Okay, I say that tongue-in-cheek…

…But think about that for a moment…

If you’re promoting a product (particularly as an affiliate), and the sales copy that is being used to sell the product on the main site is making sales already – it makes sense to use it!

Market Samurai helps you to do this – letting you use “chunks” of existing sales copy as the basis for your own ads.

And the best part is – it takes away the need for sales skills, writing skills, technical skills – and lets you create an ad in just a few minutes.

Here’s how to do it:

Select a Product

As you’ve seen already – Market Samurai helps you to search the 4 main affiliate marketplaces (Clickbank, Commission Junction, Amazon and PayDotCom), filter out the bad offers, and short-list the good.

Choose a Template

I picked a blog sidebar ad here – because I can put this on the side of my blog, and it will appear on every page of my blog – meaning I can monetize my entire site with one ad.

Select a Good Headline

Just scroll through the list until you find a good one…

Then just drag-and-drop in… No Typing Required

Insert some Compelling Sales Copy

I like picking a “chunk” of text that gives the reader a reason to want the product – then a chunk that tells them what the product is about – then a chunk telling them to buy.

It’s up to you how you use the chunks.

You can choose to use the chunks as-is (where allowed – which can potentially maximize your conversion rates because you’re using already high-converting copy), you can mix in your own text, or you can take existing chunks and tweak them with your own words. It’s up to you.

Insert a Picture

OK – you don’t have to do this… But it takes like an extra 10-20 seconds… And it looks pretty!

(Oh yeah, and it grabs the readers’ attention too – and more attention means more sales!)

Insert a Button

We have 117 bright “call-to-action” buttons – in red, green and blue – ready for you to insert directly into your ad… Just drag and drop them in.

(Did I mention – more attention means more sales?)

Put In Your Affiliate Link

With a click, your affiliate link gets automatically generated and inserted wherever you have selected.

Tip: I like making practically everything on the ad clickable. Heatmap studies show people frequently click on images in addition to calls to action and buttons, and more clicks means more sales.

You can also obfuscate (hide), shorten, and track clicks on your affiliate links with a click – using one of the tools that Market Samurai integrates with already.

(Tracking clicks is brilliant – because it helps you to work out which ads are working, and which ones aren’t.)

Publish…

Market Samurai will publish to your blog at the click of a button – so you don’t need any technical skills to publish your ad, and there’s no extra time or effort needed logging into a separate system or uploading files by FTP.

…And You’re DONE!

Simple.

Market Samurai takes all of these tasks (tasks that you would have otherwise done manually, with much more time and effort) and streamlines them all into quick steps that you can complete in a few seconds.

HERE’S WHY EVERYONE SHOULD USE THIS TOOL…

Because in just a few minutes, you have an affiliate promotion set up – and you’re turning site traffic into money.

It’s never been so fast (or so easy) to find a product, write an effective ad, publish it, promote a product and make money.

Using Market Samurai, each step in the affiliate marketing process takes just a few seconds to complete – rather than spending an hour (or potentially more) researching, writing and uploading an ad.

Remember…

You’re seeing how much time this saves for just one ad – for one blog – in one niche.

If you’re using niche marketing to earn a full-time income, the process can save you HOURS, or even DAYS – and allow you to monetize dozens of blogs in the time it previously took you to monetize one or two.

And that’s before you even consider the potential $$$ gains.

This is Where Market Samurai Pays For Itself…

The best part is – it only takes a few well-priced affiliate sales using the Monetization Module, and your investment in Market Samurai has paid for itself.

If you already own Market Samurai, this tool is yours already. Use it now!

If you don’t own Market Samurai yet, you can get your copy here.

Brent

===

Edit: A few people raised the issue of copyright infringement in comments below – and whether Market Samurai is promoting copyright infringement.

This is absolutely not the case – and will never be the case. (We’re “Noble Samurai” – not “Evil Ninjas”.)

Let me start by saying: When dealing with a legal issue, it’s important to remember that every country has its own laws relating to copyright – so the only advice I can give here is to say if copyright law is of concern to you, you should get specific legal advice about how to treat copyright in your own specific circumstances.

There are a lot of considerations around copyright – such as Fair Use (how much is copied, how it’s used, whether it devalues the original work, etc).

As someone who runs an affiliate program – we happily give permission to affiliates to use portions of our sales pages to promote Market Samurai, because we want them to make sales.

(This is win-win-win – we win when a customer buys Market Samurai, the affiliate wins when someone buys Market Samurai, and the consumer wins because they get accurate information about what our product does do.)

Remember though – Market Samurai’s Copywriting Tool allows you to “use the chunks as-is (where allowed…)” or tweak and rewrite them. This was specifically addressed in the blog post above.

Don’t be afraid of tweaking and rewriting text – it can only take a few seconds to tweak, edit and rewrite the text inside Market Samurai and make it your own.

And it’s still much faster to tweak and rewrite existing (profitable, converting) sales copy using Market Samurai’s tools than it is to create your own sales copy from scratch, starting with a blank Word document.

But if you’d prefer not to tweak or rewrite anything – do some research on the law in your area, or contact the copyright holder to get express permission to use small pieces of their sales letter to create your own ads.

72 Comments »

It’s never been easier to turn website traffic into cash.

We’ve lifted the lid on our new Monetization Module – and paid Market Samurai users can upgrade and start using it for free right now.

View on YouTube: Affiliate Marketing Software: Market Samurai’s Monetization Module

 

Affiliate Marketing Makes Sense…

You earn up to 75% selling other peoples’ products (so you don’t need to create your own). There’s no support, no refunds to process, no administration hassles – you just concentrate on marketing and making money.

But if it was really so easy, we’d do it all day every day.

 

…But it Takes a LOT of Time and Effort.

The truth is affiliate marketing takes a surprising amount of actual work.

We create content, attract traffic – but never fully monetize the traffic that we receive.

So we miss out on hundreds – perhaps thousands of dollars in ongoing sales.

…All because monetizing that traffic using affiliate marketing takes too much time and effort.

That ends today.

 

Introducing Market Samurai’s New Monetization Module

Today, we’re making affiliate marketing so easy, so fast, and so lazy to monetize traffic that it will be the most fun part of having a web-site… (well, besides collecting your commission payments!)

Here’s how we’re going to do it…

 

Step 1. Searching for Products

Let’s find the best affiliate opportunities in our marketplace.

Searching – The Hard Way:

If you’re doing this manually, you’ll need to log into the 4 key online affiliate marketplaces – Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction and PayDotCom.

Then, battle their (usually sucky) product search results – full of irrelevant junk and keyword spam – and try to find the great products that the searches overlook.

Then analyze the results manually, and select the best opportunities from among all of the products you found.

Then write down the details of the product – the product name, the URL, the affiliate link, etc – so that you have this information for later.

Every little bit takes time – and that time adds up.

10 minutes searching, 10 minutes analysis, 10 minutes recording product details for the products you find… that’s 30 minutes… multiplied by 4 affiliate marketplaces.

That’s 2 hours searching for products – IF we do it the right way.

So we’re left with a choice:

A) Cut corners and potentially miss out on opportunities.

OR

B) Take a full 2 hours searching for the best affiliate opportunities.

Searching – The Market Samurai Way:

With a click of a button, Market Samurai retrieves the top, relevant products in your market – from the affiliate market places you select.

View on YouTube: Affiliate Marketing Software – Find Affiliate Opportunities with Market Samurai

Tell Market Samurai to filter the results based on price, commissions, popularity and more – and Market Samurai will only show you the results that you want to see.

Then just click on the best ones to add them to your short-list.

…And you’re done.

Market Samurai’s Monetization Module even connects into its own affiliate search engine – to make sure you don’t miss out on any great affiliate opportunities.

And it does everything that you can do manually in 2 hours – in a matter of minutes (perhaps even seconds!)

Click to View Full Image

 

Step 2. Copywriting Your Ad

If you’re not a natural writer or salesperson – then this can be the most daunting and draining part of affiliate marketing.

Copywriting – The Hard Way:

You open up a blank word document…

…Then, start writing.

• You Choose an Ad Format – long-form, blog post, review, sidebar ad, etc
• You Research the Product – and work out what to write about
• You Write a Compelling Headline – capturing people’s attention
• You Write some Review Copy – building desire for the product
• You Insert and Edit Images – for a more attractive ad
• You Insert an Affiliate Link – the critical link in the chain
• Then you entice the reader to click…

For someone with some solid writing skills and some natural salesmanship, who can also edit images well, it might take 30 minutes to create a 1-page review post.

For the rest of us mere mortals (who don’t have all of these skills), it’s probably more like an hour.

Copywriting – The Market Samurai Way:

This is my favourite part of the Monetization Module…

Check it out…

You choose an ad format.

You read through the “ad chunks” Market Samurai pulls out of the [already converting] salesletter – and you drag-and-drop some relevant ones into your sales letter. (No writing or sales skills required.)

Drag-and-drop in a product image. (No technical or image editing skills required.)

Drag and drop in a buy button (or click to insert an affiliate link)

And add your own personal touches. Edit, rewrite, format – or, just leave it as it is!

Because you can pick-and-choose the best chunks of sales copy for your ad, it’s like having a world-class copywriter in a box telling you what to write.

And this means you can create a compelling affiliate promotion in 10 minutes – or even less – not 1 hour.

Click to View Full Image

 

Step 3. Formatting & HTML Programming

This is where technical skill takes over

HTML Programming – The Hard Way:

How sharp are your HTML programming skills?

The guys in the Noble Samurai team can format an ad with clean, search engine optimized, template-ready HTML code in 10 minutes flat – but they’ve practically programmed their entire lives!

For the rest of us “normal people”, it can take 30 minutes to create the HTML code for the ad – even longer if you struggle with the technical side of things.

HTML Programming – The Market Samurai Way:

If you were using Market Samurai’s “copywriter-in-a-box” inside the Monetization Module, then you don’t need to worry about programming any CSS or HTML…

It’s already done.

While you were creating your ad, Market Samurai was formatting it as HTML for you – ready for you to upload. With no extra time, no extra effort, no technical skills required – and no additional software.

 

Step 4. Uploading it all

The final step – getting it online… Where it can make you money.

Uploading – The Hard Way:

Let’s be honest – there’s no fun way to upload text and images to the web.

You open up an FTP program, connect to your server, navigate to the right directory, upload your images, insert all of the HTML code onto your site via a content management software or FTP upload, check that all of the files get uploaded successfully…

However you do it, it’s a pain in the butt – and together everything can take 10 minutes or more.

Uploading – The Market Samurai Way:

Just choose where to publish – click publish – and watch your ad go live.

You also have access to four options to hide your affiliate links from customers, other affiliates’ and vendors prying eyes.

And because the affiliate link cloaking tools that Market Samurai uses can give you click-through stats, you can find out exactly which affiliate ads work – and which don’t.

 

It’s Never Been Easier to Do Affiliate Marketing

Putting together an affiliate promotion used to be difficult and time-consuming.

Now, it’s the easiest (and probably most profitable) thing you can do for your web-site – and it’s actually fun.

You “shop” for a product to promote, click a few buttons, and within minutes your promotion is up and running.

 Click to View Full Image

If You Own Market Samurai Already…

To use the Monetization module – all you need to do is open up your copy and download the latest update.

If You Don’t Own Market Samurai Yet…

If you are not yet a paid user – the Monetization module is included in your Market Samurai purchase (at no additional cost) – along with all of Market Samurai’s industry leading Keyword Research, SEO Analysis, High-Authority Linking and Rank Tracking tools – AND all future KILLER upgrades (like this one!)

With a few well-priced affiliate sales, Market Samurai will pay for itself.

Chances are, you already have content online that you can monetize right now – and every day you wait, you’re losing real money from missed sales.

 
Get it now, here.

Brent

P.S. – Tomorrow, I’m going to be taking you through the most revolutionary part of Market Samurai’s new monetization module – and show you how you can use it to write a sales letter in under 4 minutes.

95 Comments »