Keyword research is a vital first step in any search engine marketing campaign. There are basically 2 types of keyword research software: keyword suggestion tools and keyword analytical tools. Many search engines have their own keyword suggestion tools which provide a list of related keywords but usually don’t indicate much more than the number of times that particular keyword was entered.
Keyword analytical tools, on the other hand, not only give you alternate suggestions to your keywords but also supply information on the number of times any particular keyword was typed into the search engines (based on their current data), how much competition you can expect for those keywords, and other important information. Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery is one such keyword analytical tool.
Keyword Discovery gets results from 170 different search engines. The database contains more than 20 billion searches conducted over the previous 12 months. These include major international, pay-per-click, meta, and regional search engines. It also provides information from Overture broken down by 16 different regions. The interface is simple (simple is good). You begin by entering a keyword or keyword phrase into the search box, then choose the type of search you want. The results show occurrences, KEI analysis, and predicted daily numbers.
General Search – allows you to input a keyword and get a variety of keyword phrase combinations containing the keyword you enter.
Related Search – finds other relevant keyword phrases based on the keyword you entered. Using advanced search syntax you can discover common misspellings, like or similar keywords, and of course related keywords. The crawl syntax compiles a list of common keywords found on the first 100 pages. You can also exclude specified keywords from your keyword phrases.
You can even divide your research into projects, which helps you keep track of the different keywords you’ve researched.
After you’ve discovered the keywords you want to use you can really start the analytical process by clicking the Analyze button. There is also a cross-reference tool that allows you to check your competitor’s website to see which keywords they are using. Another feature is a display of the top 1,000 keywords from the previous week. This also shows whether a keyword has moved up or down. An interesting report is the Multiple Keyword Statistics, which shows the percentage of single and multiple keyword searches by language.
A keyword density tool checks a web page and returns a list of keywords from that page along with the density data. The newest feature is the keyword directory tool that lists the actual keywords that drive traffic to sites based on their DMOZ site category classification.
Compared to other keyword analytical tools, KeywordDiscovery has a larger database with 12 months of data spanning 170 search engines. In addition you can reorder your results based upon different criteria. The keyword phrases are also separated by singular and plural versions, which is very useful when deciding which form to use (although you should usually use both).
As with any keyword research tool, it is difficult to know how accurate the data is; however, this is a nice tool to add to any search marketer’s toolbox. KeywordDiscovery provides a limited – features free trial that is a great way to discover its benefits. You can try it out at KeywordDiscovery.com.
David Temple, SEO Manager
