If you’ve been involved with search engine optimization for very long, you’ve no doubt heard of Wordtracker. They are the original keyword research tool that SEOs, copywriters and website owners have trusted since 1998 to deliver the most relevant and accurate research data on the ‘Net.
As part of their dedication to quality, they’ve been in the process of updating their Keyword Tool over the last several months. While it’s still in beta, you can use the new features as they become live. Here’s the breakdown of what super-cool new features Wordtracker currently offers.
1. New Interface – Unlike the old keyword tool that allowed you to research and sort into lists; the new version gives you the ability to sort projects into niches as well as by priority. This helps speed the evaluation process by letting you separate keywords into groups on the fly.
You can also “target” keywords and create new niches and subniches with the click of a button.
2. Improved Analytics – One of the things Wordtracker is best known for is their Keyword Evaluation Index (KEI). It’s been recalculated so it delivers more accurate data than ever before. The KEI is still based on the relationship between keywords and competition and – as before – the higher the number, the better the potential.
They’ve also added a separate Competition metric that shows how many web pages are optimized for a particular search term.
3.  Ranking Reports – In addition to keyword research, Wordtracker now offers several other tools like a ranking report option. Keep in mind that what you actually see in Google may vary from the report results depending on whether you’re signed into Google and your physical location.
4. Site Audits – Wonder if you’ve got links, images or other stuff going on behind the scenes that might mess up your rankings? Wordtracker’s site audit can help point out those errors so you can get them cleaned up fast.
One thing that has not changed is:
Annual Search Counts – Wordtracker will continue to offer a less-than-2%, representative sample of search counts. (Nobody offers real-time search counts.) These are annual numbers (some people mistakenly believe they are daily search counts… they are not.)
There’s a lot more going on in Wordtracker as the weeks progress. I’ll keep you updated about future additions.
Don’t forget you can try it at no cost. Just sign up for a free trial today and you can take it on a full-featured test run.
Semantic keyword research is something we should also be using. We can simply type in a keyword and go to the bottom of the results and see related searches and find the keyword that is related to what we promote on our site. For example take the keyword camera, type that in and look for related search which will be camera brands, camera reviews, or a digital camera. A person who is doing a search on Google may not always know what they are looking for so they may see it in the related searches. If we choose words from the related search we better our chances of getting that visitor to our site. I think this method need to be used in conjunction with keyword research.
Hi Pamela… actually what you’re describing *is* keyword research. (Researching and evaluating the available terms related to a seed keyphrase.) The phrases you listed aren’t semantic phrases because they all use the same word… “camera.” To be semantic, they’d need to use some other word for “camera.” For example, if someone were searching for a merchant account you might consider “online merchant account,” “cheap merchant account,” or “small business merchant account.” These are just different variations of the same seed keyword. Semantic terms would then include “accept credit cards,” “online payment gateway,” etc. They don’t use the same seed word, but they mean the same thing. Does that help to clear it up?