When I started reviewing the new keyword research tool from Wordtracker, my first thought was each revision is dumbing down the tool more and more. I like being able to use negative keywords to reduce the number of results received and I liked being able to use wildcards in my research (this went away after the update previous to this one) the tool was simple and straight forward.
I admit I have not looked at the tool as closely as I should yet, but wanted to know what the benefits were of the new tool. I put it out on Twitter and immediately received Tweets from Wordtracker:
I sent them my email address and this is the response I received:
Hi Colleen,
Thank you for getting in touch with us. I do hope you find the following helpful – if you have any comments or questions, please feel free to let me know.
In introducing the new keywords tool, we’ve developed a more helpful and flexible system to find, target and manage keywords, as well as some other features to assist the working SEO in their day to day job.
The tool is in beta at the moment, as we have several new features and functions to add in during the coming months, but to address what we have now, and how it improves upon the older tool:
The Quick Research tool is the fastest way to get keywords from the database – in just a couple of clicks you can find the keywords you’re looking for in the Wordtracker database, and you can have a Wordtracker list and a Google list open simultaneously to compare keywords in the niche you’re working with. The actual searching that the tool does has been tested and is faster than the older tool – so you get your keywords more quicky.
We’ve made a change to the way that keywords with potential are identified. While KEI has been very useful for many people over the years, the increase in content and competition on the Internet means that it’s a less helpful metric than in the past – and working with KEI across multiple data sources has proved confusing for some users.
To address this, we’ve introduced filters for the lists – you’ll see these on the right hand side of the page. These make the lists very flexible – multiple filters can be quickly set up to show or hide keywords with certain levels of search volume or competition, and also to show which keywords contain or exclude certain text. The filters will also show the questions that people are using to search the Internet, for content.
We’ll also be introducing a more focused competition metric that can be applied to smaller groups of filtered keywords inside a list that will offer a clearer measure of competition and difficulty on your prospective targets.
We’ve also made it easy to flag target keywords, which are remembered when the lists are exported, so finding these and sharing them with colleagues or clients is quicker than it was before.
But that’s just the Quick tool. Let’s have a look at what setting up a Campaign can do.
In setting up a Campaign, you’re laying the groundwork for some properly organized research. If you enter your domain then we can give you some quick reporting on your site that will show how many pages of your website have already been indexed by the major search engines.
This feature will also be built upon in the coming weeks, and forms the basis of a more dedicated site audit tool that we’re planning to develop later this year.
Moving onwards through the process, you can set up individual keyword research projects inside a campaign. Each project can be work for either your whole site or a category section of your site. The Project name is designed to be the seed word for this part of your research – so if the category of your site that you’re working on is selling sneakers, for example, then naming the project ‘sneakers’ will automatically generate some keyword suggestions on the Keyword Map.
The Keyword map itself is a powerful part of the tool which will allow you to either mirror an existing site architecture, or set up the site structure for an existing site by dragging keyword niches to the appropriate part of the map. There’s more information about keyword mapping at http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/keyword-mapping
We’ve improved the Related Keywords tool which now presents more relevant keywords (you can currently get to the Related tool from the Keyword Map, but this will also be available in the Quick tool and in the keyword list view soon). There’s a bit more information about this at: [link missing]
Creating new niches – drilling down into the long tail of keywords couldn’t be easier when you have a list open inside a Project – you just need to click the ‘Add Niche’ icon for a keyword in a list, and the niche will be created and automatically populated with Wordtracker keywords in the background, so that when you come back to your map, it’s ready for you to assess immediately.
You’ll see a Help button on each page of the tool. Clicking this will show some detail about how to use each page, along with a video to provide some guidance.
We’re planning for the future with this tool. In the near future, additional features to expect will be:
- SERPS ranking tools
- More flexible interface for Google data
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Better site statistics reporting
and more, which we’ll release details of as we’re ready to get those features to production.
I’ll be starting a regular training webinar on 25th January to introduce new and old users to keyword research with our tools (we’ve been running these for the past year or so, and they’ve proved to be very popular) which you’re welcome to attend – you’ll see details in our newsletter.
As I say, I hope this is of some help – I’d be interested to hear your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to spend some time with The old tools are still available at https://oldkeywords.wordtracker.com.
>Kind regards,
Mal
So what’s your take on this? I am going to go into Wordtracker and try it out again and see if I can get used to it. But right now, I like the former tool better.
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3 Responses
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Jasemin Says:
Woot, I will certaliny put this to good use!
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Justin Says:
Hi
A quick update from Wordtracker.
Since we wrote to you we have added several new features.
SERPs ranking is now live. You can follow your site’s position in Google’s search results for up to 100 keywords. This saves you lots of time – you no longer have to check the results manually.
We’ve also added a Title and Description Wizard that helps you write better SEO copy (it’s great for ecommerce sites that want to improve conversion ratess).
We’ve improved our competition metric – you can now get live data showing how difficult it would be to rank for any keyword. This means you’re targeting the right keywords for your site.
We’ll continue to update the tool over the coming weeks, so please do let us know what you think. You can email
Kind regards
Justin
CEO, Wordtracker -
cwright Says:
Thank you for the heads up Justin!
