There is a common misconception that in order to develop a successful online business you need to be targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords.

This perception often causes a great deal of confusion and can lead to ‘Analysis Paralysis’ as people spend months analyzing keywords looking for the perfect opportunity. As a result they never follow through to create a complete and profitable business.

Last week, a group of us were discussing this problem and came to the conclusion that the reason this misconception is still so prevalent is that in the past, focusing on quantity versus quality DID actually work.

In the early days of Internet marketing, if you placed a large number of related keywords on a page or included them in Meta and Alt tags you could often get rankings that led to traffic.

Similarly, in the early days of Google Adwords, it was possible to load your account with thousands of keywords and generate a steady stream of traffic to your site.

However, while this may have been the case in 2003, it is very important to realize that THINGS HAVE CHANGED.

The old approach was a ‘shotgun strategy’ in which you targeted a large number of keywords, took a shot and hoped for the best.

With the continuous improvements in search engine algorithms and the development of quality metrics such as Google’s Quality score, this approach is no longer effective.

The mantra of “The more keywords the better” is a thing of the past.

The alternative to the old shotgun strategy is a new ‘laser like’ approach in which you explore your market carefully and then zero in on a small subset of specific keywords.

To understand why this laser focused approach is so important we need to examine something we call the ‘Iceberg Principle’.

According to the Iceberg Principle, finding a good keyword is just the tip of the Iceberg.

In order to transform a keyword into a genuine asset for your business, you need to undertake a range of tasks that most people unfortunately never get around to.

These tasks include:

On-page optimisation

Off-page optimisation

Obtaining high quality backlinks

Writing articles

Conducting targeted PPC campaigns

Etc.

The truth is that every one of these activities requires time and effort. Clearly, if you are trying to target thousands of keywords, following through on these activities becomes virtually impossible.

So, instead of generating lists containing thousands of semantically related keywords, here is the laser focused strategy that we recommend in today’s SEO environment.

To get started, use Market Samurai to generate a sample of keywords in your niche and then continually refine and filter these keywords until you find 5-10 keywords that have the following characteristics:

(1) They are highly relevant to your niche

(2) They have reasonable levels of traffic eg. 100 visitors per day

(3) They have acceptable levels of competition eg. Less than 30000 competing web pages

(4) They have low strength of competition ie. The top 10 sites in Google are not well optimized

Once you have identified and selected your target keywords, redirect your focus to the on-page and off-page SEO tasks necessary to transform your keywords into genuine traffic-generating assets for your business.

173 Comments »

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!

123 Comments »

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 »

Hi Team,

Market Research creates Market Understanding.

Market Understanding creates Market Leaders.

Market Leaders create opportunities in their markets – including the opportunity to choose the direction of your market, and the opportunity to make the greatest profits in a market.

But it all stems from Market Research.

If you’ve been reading Ed Dale’s blog recently, you’ll know that I’ve borrowed the “Market Research; Market Understanding; Market Leadership” mantra from him.

But today, I want to start making it “real” for you.

I want to show you a recently-added feature inside Market Samurai, and share with you some specific strategies for how to get the most value out of something that is so deceptively simple that practically everyone will overlook it…

…That is, everyone except you – because you’re reading this blog post right now.

So let’s open up Market Samurai, and open up some opportunities for Market Leadership…

Getting a Deeper Market Understanding

These new arrows appeared in the latest versions of Market Samurai.

Many of you have noticed them already (you’ll see them inside the SEO Competition and Keyword Research modules) – and their function is very simple…

Click them, and they will open up the raw data sources for you in a web-browser.

This means if you click on the Adwords Advertiser (AWA) numbers in the Keyword Research module, you’ll see the Adwords Advertisers for that keyword.

If you click on the Page Backlinks (BLP) you’ll be taken to a list of the external backlinks pointing to that page.

If you click on the SEO Competition (SEOC) counts in the Keyword Research module, you’ll see all of the web pages that mention the keyword phrase on their sites (all of your SEO competitors)

…And so on!

Simple, yes.

Important? Very.

The value of Digging Deeper

I’ll go into some specific examples of how to use this feature in a moment.

However, as I’ve mentioned already, the real value of going through this raw data manually is to become immersed in your market.

(Obviously this is for people who have already chosen a market – because if you did this for every market that potentially interested you, you could spend forever learning from other sites!)

By working out where, and how, your competitors are getting their links;

By working out what they are selling, how they’re marketing it, and what their price points are;

By working out what value your competitors are delivering to potential customers…

…You will understand the market better, and equip yourself to be the market leader.

And market leadership may be one of the few more valuable opportunities to you in your internet marketing.

What To Do Next

Open up Market Samurai, and start by clicking on the SEOC or AWA results in the Keyword Research module.

Use the results to “dig deeper” into your market and find out what you can discover about your competitors:

• What products do they sell, what price points are they selling at, and how are they pitching their products?
• Are there opportunities to improve your marketing strategy, and use some of their good ideas?
• Are there opportunities to get links from their sites? (Blogs, forums, links pages, etc)
• Are there opportunities to work together with the people who are already making money in the market?

Analyze the top 10 competitors in the SEO competition module too:

• What sites are they getting their backlinks from? Can you get backlinks from those sites too?
• Do they have any Government / Educational backlinks (.gov/.edu)? Can you also get links from the same places?

And analyze the content on the top sites in your market:

• What great information do they have, that you should also be talking about on your site?
• How are they communicating with their market / customers on an ongoing basis? (Feeding the flock)
• What value are they delivering to their market? How are they delivering it?
• With all this in mind, how can you deliver the greatest value to your customers? (Search engine rankings favor the value-makers)

This is how to cross over from using Market Samurai for SEO, to using Market Samurai for Market Understanding and Market Leadership.

So open up Market Samurai now, and play with this tiny new feature.

What do you discover about your market?

Brent

13 Comments »

Hi Team

This is something I’ve never told you about.

Some people have already worked this out for themselves…

And it’s the reason Market Samurai works the way it does today.

In Fact, Market Samurai was Built Around This…

Before Market Samurai was released to the public, we were using the same tools ourselves to do semantic site structure analysis for sites that we were building.

The reason was simple – with the right site structuring, linking and keyword use (all using semantically relevant keywords) we could achieve rankings with fewer links, less PageRank and less site-age.

And that meant a better return on investment from any SEO work we did.

“Better Results? Less Effort? How do I get this!?” I hear you say.

Well, let me show you what we were doing – and how you can do it yourself.

How to “Sharpen” Your Site – Samurai Style!

First, thing’s first…

You need to find a core site keyword – something that has high levels of traffic, high levels of value, and relatively low levels of competition.

Everything will revolve around this one core keyword.

Finding a Core Keyword

You’re looking for high-traffic, low-competition, high-value keywords here.

I like to set my Market Samurai filters to these levels: Above 80 hits per day in SEOT, below 100,000 competing pages in SEOC (although below 30,000 is best), above 15% phrase usage in PBR and over $1 in SEOV.

However, I personally like to see something that is better than the bare minimum levels.

SEO Analysis on your Main Site Keyword

Next, you’ll also want to do SEO Competition analysis to make sure you’re competing in a market where young, low PageRank, poorly optimized sites with few links are already ranking.

What I like about this example is the low PageRanks of pages appearing in the top 10, the lack of on-page optimization on most sites, and the low levels of Page Backlinks to the pages.

The ages of some of the domains, the fact that most sites have DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory backlinks, and the high number of domain backlinks make me think twice about this keyword.

I might still try it out – but with these factors working against me, my chances of getting that illusive top spot easily might be more difficult – and that means it may take a lot more work to get there.

Refocus your Keyword Research

Once you have this core site keyword, create a New Project in Market Samurai for your main site keyword this keyword – because we’re going to refocus our analysis onto this one keyword.

Start by generating keywords around this keyword using the Google Synonym Tool option with “Include Additional” selected.

Find Category Keywords

By tapping into Google’s Synonym Tool to generate keywords, Market Samurai is able to show you up to 200 related “branches” around your core keyword.

You’ll want to (again) filter out high competition, low traffic, low value keywords. The keywords we’re left with will be good for our web-site categories.

In this example, I performed almost identical analysis to before, when I was finding a core site keyword – however, I dropped my minimum traffic filter to an SEOT of 10 or above.

And then, there’s a little manual labor…

Remove any keywords that you see as being irrelevant to your core theme by clicking the “X” on the far right hand side of the keyword. And you’ll be left with a nice list of relevant, valuable, high traffic, low competition keywords – like I have above.

Article Keyword Research

Click on the key icon beside any of your category keywords it to open it up in a new tab – and do some more keyword research to find content topic areas within each category.

For this step, it’s handy to use the Google Search Keywords option, as well as the Google Synonym Tool with the “Ignore Additional” option selected. This will give you a nice “long tail” list of topics.

The next step is researching and creating web-site content in each one of these topic areas.

But how do you research these topic areas?

Find Content: Research or Republish

Market Samurai’s “Find Content” module is purpose-designed for this!

It was built to research the content that is already published on the web to help you to write your own articles, or to find articles that you can legally republish (although check the site terms and conditions before doing this.)

Click on the key icon beside the keyword, go to the Find Content tab, and begin research.

We can analyze the content based on authority factors here.

Content that has high PageRanks, Backlinks and Age might be a sign of good quality information – and a good article to research before writing your own article on the same topic.

Content that has low PageRank, Backlinks and Age might be content that you can republish on your site for testing the niche (because writing content is one of the most time-consuming parts of setting up a niche web-site) – and see if you can get rankings using someone else’s article on your site (a very promising sign if you do!)

(This is something unique to Market Samurai. I’m yet to come across any other software that analyzes the authority of a piece of content in this way.)

Next, we need links…

Get High-Quality Backlinks

Finding backlinks is easy. Focusing on the high-quality backlinks, the ones that will give you the best result for your time and effort, is difficult.

The Promotion module helps here, by showing the PageRanks, Backlinks, and the use of Follow/Nofollow on pages where you can receive backlinks.

You’re starting to see how all of this ties-in, and how each step impacts on all of the others.

And by putting it all together, we can get faster rankings in search engines, more traffic sooner, a better return on our time and effort on SEO, and better results in the long term – with less time and effort required.

But we didn’t do it for you.

We created “Market Samurai” originally (well before we released it) because we were doing these things ourselves – and we wanted to achieve the best results, faster, with less time and effort.

The Next Step

The next step is to just do it!

Market Samurai will give you the semantic keyword relationships you need for site structuring, for internal linking, for link-building, for tagging and more if you use the keyword research procedure I’ve described above.

If you don’t have Market Samurai yet – get it. You can download a free 12-day trial here.

If your trial has expired, you’ll be able to use the Keyword Research features still – but you will need to get the full version of Market Samurai to use the other features. You can purchase Market Samurai for lifetime access to all Market Samurai features here.

As I say, these semantic site structures can help you to get better results in search engines, with far less effort, and fewer links. So I challenge you to try using them for yourself using Market Samurai, and see the results you get.

Brent

53 Comments »

Hi Team,

Lately we’ve been sharing with you a bunch neat strategies for using some new keyword tools and resources.

We’ve looked at:

• Long Tail Keyword Research;
• Semantic site structures, and;
• Finding Niche Business Ideas.

I wanted to go into more detail about one tool that I mentioned briefly in my post on semantic site structuring (and by others in their recent comments here on the blog.)

The Google Wonder Wheel

This is the Google Wonder Wheel – another freakin’ incredible tool that Google has released recently that shows the semantic relationships between keywords – so it’s another great resource for semantic site structuring.

Essentially, if you want to know what the branches of your site structure should look like, this is a great resource to get ideas on what Google thinks your site should look like.

How To Get Access to the Google Wonder Wheel

Next time you’re searching in Google, look for the “Show Options” button.

Click this, then “Wonder Wheel”.

…And you’ll be able to play with the Wonder Wheel for yourself.

I Still Can’t Get Access

The Google Wonder Wheel hasn’t been widely released yet, (unlike the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool,) but Google Blogoscoped was able to work out how to give everyone access.

If you want to try out this experiment yourself, that’s possible. All you need to do is go to google.com and paste the following into the address bar, and hit return – that will set a cookie telling Google you’re taking part in the prototype:

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=4a609673baf685b5:TB=2:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1227543998:LM=1233568652:DV=AA:GM=1:IG=3:S=yFGqYec2D7L0wgxW;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

This should unlock the Google Wonder Wheel for you, which will now be accessible via the steps above.

How to Use The Wonder Wheel for Semantic Site Structuring

Because you’re using the Wonder Wheel to analyze keyword relationships for site structuring, the obvious place to start is with your site keyword – or the topic for your site.

From there, the “branches” off the keyword may be logical category ideas – the branches off them may be logical subcategories – and so-on.

(Obviously, by then analyzing the traffic, value and competition around the keywords in Market Samurai – and focussing on high traffic, low competition, high value keywords – you’ll be able to focus your site structure onto the most profitable keywords.)

Have a play with this – it’s a fun tool to have a play with and will give you a good idea of keyword relationships. But, as you’ll see, it can be slow way to do keyword analysis (because it only shows highly relevant keyword relationships – not the traffic strength of the keywords.)

So tomorrow, I’ll show you an even faster way to analyze keywords, and develop semantic site structures.

Brent

13 Comments »

Hi Gang,

When I first came across the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool, and did what I’m about to show you for the first time, I was gobsmacked.

It blew my mind.

I’ve never seen such an incredible resource full of ripe ideas for niche online marketing.

So if you’ve ever struggled to come up with a new idea for a web-site, this is going to blow your mind too:

Here’s How It Works…

You tell Google what you’re interested in, and it comes up with up to 800 relevant, high-traffic keyword ideas that you can put into Market Samurai to begin your research.

Now, imagine if you were getting in on the first wave – that many of these ideas lay untapped online – and that you’re one of the first people to be using the data in this way.

I know – it’s freakin’ awesome, isn’t it!

Brent

P.S. – One more handy tip. Obviously you want markets with relatively high levels of traffic (because a site is worthless unless it has traffic!)

So when you’re picking potential niches, keep an eye on the Monthly Searches column inside this tool, and focus on keywords with several thousand searches per month (they’ll generally be at the top of the page).

P.P.S. – After I stopped the video, I looked at the results that Market Samurai found for that keyword – the keyword I picked at random.

I found 14 of the keywords Market Samurai found around that niche idea had over 200 searches per day (SEOT of 80 or above, PBR of 15% or above), and fewer than 30,000 competitors (SEOC).

Random. First one I picked. Blind.

Did I mention? …Freakin’ awesome.

64 Comments »

WARNING: Advanced SEO Concepts Ahead

Q: What’s the fastest way to cause a riot at an SEO conference?

A: Just mention the words “Latent Semantic Indexing”.

It’s true.

Just about half of the people there will tell you it’s an incredible way to get top search engine rankings; the others will say LSI is a lie or a myth.

What I’m going to share with you today is probably going to cause some controversy, because I use the words “Latent Semantic Indexing” (or LSI)…

…So after I show you this technique, I’m going to put an end to these stupid LSI arguments once-and-for-all.

Perfect LSI Structuring

If you’re creating a site with an LSI silo structure, you can receive a big boost in the rankings that you receive in search engines – put simply, because search engines see you as being more relevant to the topic.

What I’m talking about when I say “LSI silo structure” is categorising content in a logical keyword structure, and grouping content on similar topics together, in a way similar to what search engines expect to see.

And, for the most part, they expect to see tree-like category structures – with categories, sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories all branching off one-another.

The problem is finding the right structure.

If you’re developing a new site, and you’re trying to get the best search engine boost from LSI, how should your content be structured?

What keywords should go where? What should your categories be? What topics should you be building content around?

Or, if you’re actually doing it as part of your core web-site, no-doubt you’re finding categorising content is a pain. You write an article, and then wonder where you should put it to get the maximum benefit.

So you’re always second-guessing the way that the content should be categorised for maximum SEO value – should it go in one category? Or another? – particularly when content can be related to multiple categories.

And once you’ve built categories, how do you know what other topics should go into that category to fill it with the “right” sort of content?

The Google Search-Based Keyword Tool isn’t just good for finding long tail keywords – it’s also fantastic for categorising and grouping keywords.

That’s because the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool is showing you structured, categorised, hierarchical keyword relationships – and blog/site structures tend to be structured, categorised and hierarchical.

And, where keywords are related to multiple categories, it shows you all of them.

Debunking LSI Myths

There’s a lot of confusion about whether or not “LSI” (or Latent Semantic Indexing) is used by Google or not – so let me clarify things.

There’s a lot of convincing evidence suggesting that “LSI” is NOT used by Google – largely because it doesn’t scale well.

(We did our own research and testing months ago to find out for sure. The more information you give it, the bigger, slower and less manageable the structure becomes. With the amount of information Google indexes, LSI doesn’t seem to be a logical solution.)

However, there’s also a HUGE amount of evidence proving that they at least use something similar – another way to work out common relationships between keywords, (as Stompernet also suggested recently.)

And there is a growing amount of evidence that suggests that LSI’d internal site structures, and the way pages are linked (from both within and beyond the site) “turbo-charge” search engine rankings. (Although this is something we won’t go into now.)

If you want to see LSI-style keyword relationships in practice, you don’t need to look far.

You only need to look at Adwords broad-match keyword matching, Google’s new Wonder Wheel, use the Google Synonym Tool, or watch some of the little-known Google Tech Talks where they show their internal related keyword generator being used, talk about how they developed it, and discuss organising information on the semantic web.

So even though “LSI” isn’t a technically correct term to describe the system that is being used, it’s still a de facto name for describing structured relationships between keywords. So if we say LSI, this is what we are referring to.

Back to the Nuts and Bolts…

I wanted to share this with you, even though there’s no financial benefit to us, because we made a commitment to equip you with the best internet marketing tools available…

…And not all of those tools can fit inside Market Samurai.

Tomorrow, I’m going to be releasing one final video in this series – and show you the#1 thing that blew me away when I first came across the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool.

So make sure you’re subscribed, watching your inbox, and ready. You won’t want to miss this one.

Brent

Edit: Here’s the link to Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool – http://www.google.com/sktool

59 Comments »

It was our secret shame – the biggest failing of Market Samurai:

Long tail keywords.

You see, Market Samurai was never built to find the long tail.

Instead, it was built to find relevant groups of keywords – so that we could use it for Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), or Referential Integrity, or Keyword Siloing, or whatever you want to call grouping of relevant keywords.

And to find high-traffic keywords.

Not to mess around in the “shallow end” of the keyword pool – where all the long tail keywords sit.

But when Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool swung open, and offered up-to 800 of the top long tail keywords in ANY market, we jumped on it!

We made this part of Market Samurai almost immediately.

As a result, for the past few weeks, you’ve had a new way to generate keywords – this time, long tail keywords – and today I want to start showing you how to use it.

This is particularly useful when you want to tag a blog post, video or social bookmark with relevant, long-tail, low competition keywords.

OR

If you find a keyword with very high levels of traffic and competition – and you want to “dig deeper” into it to see if there’s a better, lower-competition, still high-traffic long tail version of the keyword.

Try it out!

Open Market Samurai now, and try this new keyword generation source out for yourself.

It will give you up-to 800 of the most popular search long-tail searches that contain your original keyword.

And watch the blog over the next 2 days – because I’m going to show you two more ways to use this one incredible tool.

Brent

65 Comments »

Have you ever been so close to something that you overlook something obvious, or take something for granted?

And then when someone points it out, you slap your head and yell:

“Of course! – How did I overlook that!”

I’ve been too excited in showing you the cool ways to use new features inside Market Samurai that I’ve been overlooking cool ways to use the features that are already inside Market Samurai – like this:

5 Tips For Using Market Samurai’s Generate Keywords Screen

Check it out – it has some really great tips.

(Thanks Isha for the great resource! )

Brent

2 Comments »