This is going to be “battle of the fittest” series of which keyword search tool is the best.

There are about a handful of software programs out there which can compete with each other so let’s start with an obvious one. Google has it’s own keyword search tool which you can access here. This tool is used by a lot of marketeers when they first started out and before other, more robust, software programs were released.

When you first open the Google Keyword Tool, the first screen you will see is this the one below. It is fairly straightforward but I will guide you through it on what you should be aware of to get the right results.

The main screen where every marketer starts off with if they don’t use a keyword search tool like Long Tail Pro or others. This is considered being oldskool but still works

What you do have to keep in mind, you search for keywords to get niche websites ideas… building your website Empire 

You need to fill in the CAPTCHA in order to start your research but make sure you set the settings from “Match Type” on the right hand side to “Exact” and deselect “broad”.  You will get this screen where you can fill in your keywords, select your local search (the country where you want to focus on) and what language.

I.e. if you are after a .co.uk domain (United Kingdom) you need to set your parameters to United Kingdom to get the accurate results. I currently didn’t apply filters as I just wanted to see what happens.

>> The example keyword is “Power Boats”

As you can see from the search results, there is quite a bit of search for that keyword but 1900 is really scraping the bare minimal.  At this point we also don’t know what the CPC for this potential niche website can be.

So make sure you sign in to your Adwords Account (free) so you can use this feature. Once we do this we will run the search again to see what the CPC is.

The search results came back and shows that “Power Boats” only has a CPC of $0.71 cents. Now this again is really scraping the bare minimal. This type of niche is something where a lot of money circulates.

Boats will be bought and sold and this means that large online boat sellers will try to do anything to rank high in the search engines as 1 boat can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it is in their best interest to make sure they rank high for such keywords online.

Since I did get over 800 keywords to choose from, it was time to implement some filters to get more focused.

With the filters set:

• Minimal CPC = $1
• Minimal Local Searches = 2000

You see that even our start “Power Boats” keyword doesn’t satisfy the parameters and the search for a good niche website.  Niche websites usually focus on 2 or more keywords (long Tail Style) to get your traffic. The following keywords are ready for the next step:

• Cobalt boats
• Cigarette boats
• Formula boats
• Speed Boats
• Fishing Boats
• Luxury Yachts

• Cobalt boats
• Cigarette boats

As expected, this particular niche is only really active from May till October (really stretching it) so you will see a very rapid decline in traffic and quite a low traffic overall during the other months.

I haven’t even looked at the competition for “cigarette boats” on Google but I am sure this is pretty high as you want to rank within the top 3 search results. I’ve looked it up by doing a Google Search and use SEOquake to check their rankings.

As you can see, the top website is a PR4 and the second a PR5 website. The third result is a PR2 website which means that the competition is there and it should take some time for you to rank for those search results.

Is it impossible, of course not, but it just takes time and there are a lot of easier niches research. After all, up until this point you haven’t even researched if your domain name is actually available ! This is really where Long Tail Pro can show its muscles.

The Long Tail Pro Way

As you can see, the first page I can select a lot of the same items as I could with the Google Keyword Search Tool.

Only thing is with Long Tail Pro I can do a lot more and a whole lot faster

As you see from the first screen below I have selected my keyword “Power Boats” and set my search to “Exact”.
Haven’t done anything else yet but the next image will show you how much time Long Tail Pro can save you.

I can just do 1 search and run ALL the keywords through a registrar like GoDaddy.com and claim my domain. If that domain is not available Long Tail Pro will search for hyphenated domains that match your keyword.

Just like in the earlier example, I’ve selected the filters;

• 2000 local searches
• Minimum of 1 CPC
• And, because I can, I want to show domains that are available.

So at this point I’ve already saved a lot of time as I know what domains are available and which aren’t. The .com is the best domain to go for but secondary domains like .org .net and .info are also widely used in the online industry. As you can see from the the image below, the market is fairly used but there are still domains available if you are keen. And this is all done automatically using the Long Tail Pro.

So the next step is Competition Analysis like I did before. Only there I had to use a different tool and plugin to see how competitive the market is. A snapshot of how Long Tail Pro displays the results and you can see it gives a lot of information of what you should consider.

A few big ones are;

• PageRank
• Site Age (the older the site, the more power it gets)
• Backlinks (SEOmoz)
• EDU / Gov Links (powerful links)
• Number of directory listings (more listings = more powerful )

All of these and a few other things are well documented in the search results of Long Tail Pro Competitor Analysis and I didn’t even had to change software or screen.

I hope I was able to convince you that Long Tail Pro can save you a lot of time but is also a lot easier to use when it comes to finding the right niche for your future niche website.

Just to give you a conclusion why I like Long Tail Pro over Google Keyword Tool

• I can select the domains I potentially want for my Niche website (.com .info .net .org)
• I can select exact match domains
• I can select hyphened domains if the exact domains are not available.
• I can set my filters to get the great niche ideas
• The niche ideas are also shown with potential domains
• I can do an extensive competition analysis
• I can focus on a different country with the same keywords and different domains with a few clicks

This is pretty impressive right? Don’t waste your time (literally) on doing the work with the Google Keyword Tool that takes a lot less with Long Tail Pro, grab your version here.

Till the next review!

Ralph

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