It’s common knowledge that if you’re wanting to run a successful website, then you need a keyword tool. The problem is that there are literally hundreds of different keyword tools to choose from, and they have a wide variety of benefits as well as price points. With all of these different options available, it can be hard to understand exactly what to look for in a keyword research tool.

What To Look For In A Keyword Research Tool

Knowing What You Need And Don’t Need From A Keyword Tool

Knowing What You Need And Don’t Need From A Keyword Tool

For the majority of website owners, having every bell and whistle out there is not necessary when it comes to selecting a powerful keyword research tool. This is especially true if you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing.

Knowing exactly what you need in order to get started is crucial when it comes to selecting the best keyword research tool to fit your business. For example, if you’re just getting started, you probably won’t need to have in-depth competition metrics. For those who have been running successful sites for several years, then the extra cost for those in-depth metrics is probably going to be a necessity.

For that reason, this article is going to focus on exactly what you should be looking for in a keyword research tool if you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing.

My Keyword Tool of Choice

Jaaxy Logo

Okay, so before we get started into what you should be looking for when choosing the best keyword tool for your needs, I wanted to quickly mention the tool that I use and why I use it.

The keyword tool that I personally use is called Jaaxy. It allows you to quickly find multiple keywords that your site can rank for, and it even gives you some great keyword possibilities that you may have not considered before.

Want to take it for a spin? Head over to my Jaaxy review, and enter in your own keyword to try out Jaaxy for free. Now, with that said, let’s take a look at exactly what you should be looking for if you’re considering a new keyword research tool.

The Ability To Find Keywords

It may sound silly, but one of the things that you are actually going to need from a quality keyword tool, is the ability to find keywords. Some tools will only give you the amount of searches that a keyword receives rather than providing you with an actual list of similar keywords that may be easier to rank for.

While every keyword tool is different, the first thing that you should look for when selecting one, is whether or not it will allow you to find similar keywords, or even better, give you the ability to start with a seed keyword and find many less competitive long-tail phrases that you may have not thought of before.

One example of this is the ability of the keyword tool that I use to crawl what is known as “Google’s Alphabet Soup.” By placing a seed keyword into the tool, it automatically searches google and finds keywords that are listed in the recommended search areas at the bottom of search pages.

These keywords are actual phrases that users have searched for in the past after searching for the initial keyword you enter into the tool. It’s quite handy for finding new topics to create content about that are still based around your original idea.

Here is a screenshot of the Alphabet Soup Technique in action with Jaaxy.

Jaaxy Alphabet Soup Technique

Competition Analytics

The second thing that is a must have from a keyword research tool, is some type of competition metric feature.

Yes, you may find that amazing keyword that gets 20,000 monthly searches. Without knowing that sites such as Wikipedia, CNN, Amazon or other massively powerful authority sites are already ranking for it. You may waste a lot of time trying to get your new project to rank for the wrong keywords.

If your keyword tool can tell you how competitive a term is, then you won’t waste your time going after keywords that you will struggle to rank for.

The Ability To Dig Deeper

When I am writing content, I already have an idea of what I want to write about before I ever open up a keyword tool. For that reason, being able to tie a concept to a rankable keyword is very important.

Nothing is more frustrating than knowing exactly what you’re wanting to write about, and finding that there are far too many competitors already ranking for your keyword than you feel comfortable tackling. For that reason, having the ability to find more keywords that are a little more focused is crucial for your website’s overall SEO performance. For example, if you’ve written an amazing piece of content on your favorite spaghetti recipe, you may find that “spaghetti recipe” is far too competitive for your small site to rank for. By being able to dig a bit further down, you may find that “best spaghetti recipe with mozzarella cheese and meatballs” still has a decent amount of search traffic, but it has far fewer competitors and your recipe already calls for those ingredients.

In short, having the ability to dig deeper will allow you to be able to potentially find hundreds of rankable keywords that you may have not thought of before but already have content created around.

The Ability To Save Keywords and Data

It goes without saying that finding that perfect keyword is pretty useless if you forget what it was. While you can take the time to write down your keywords, or enter them into a spreadsheet, a quality keyword tool is going to have the ability to save your keywords inside of the tool itself.

It’s even better if you can have multiple lists that are hosted on the cloud rather than on your computer. Just imagine how upset you would be if your computer crashed and you suddenly found yourself losing hundreds of hours of site planning and keyword research. Here’s what the Saved List feature looks like in Jaaxy.

Jaaxy Saved Keyword List

If the keyword tool you’re using is saving your keyword lists in the cloud, you never have to worry about losing the data that you’ve worked so hard to find.

The Ability To Check Your Rank

All of the keyword research in the world is going to be pretty useless if nobody is seeing your content. For that reason, it’s crucial that your keyword tool allows you to track the performance of your content over time. Knowing how your SEO efforts are affecting your overall site performance is extremely important to your success with an online business. If you’ve picked certain keyword metrics in order to try to rank for a keyword, you need to know if you are on the right path.

Jaaxy has a rank tracker feature that not only checks your initial keyword ranking, but also keeps track of how it is progressing over time. Have a look at what it looks like below.

Jaaxy Rank Tracker

My personal favorite feature within the rank tracker is the green arrow pointing up which is located beside the Position Change. Looks like I’m doing pretty good for that keyword! Sweet!

Make certain that you are choosing a keyword tool that will allow you to check the rank of your content for the keywords that you’re targeting.

Final Thoughts

As you can see above, knowing what to look for in a keyword research tool is very important to the success of your online marketing efforts. By taking the time to do a little bit of research before deciding on what tool to use, you can make certain that you get the most bang for your buck, and that your content creation strategy works well into the future.

Personally, as I mentioned above, I like to use a keyword tool called Jaaxy. It works a little bit differently than most of the other tools on the market, as it looks at not only Google, but also Bing, YouTube, and others in order to culminate it’s overall search totals.

Not only that, but it also allows you to save keyword lists for future use, and most importantly, allows you to find thousands of potential keywords around a base idea with the use of the “Alphabet Soup” feature.

If that sounds like a good deal to you, you can give Jaaxy a test drive, and read a little bit more about it over at my Jaaxy review here.

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5 Comments

  1. Thanks a lot Jay!

    I’m glad I read your article about the Jaaxy keyword tool. The Google keyword tool used to be okay but things have changed. I love Jaaxy, especially all the stats it gives you for each keyword, making it much easier to do my keyword research. I highly recommend Jaaxy as well!

    Thanks again!

    Jack

  2. Hi,
    I really like Jaaxy as I tried it before. It was a long time ago though.
    It was the 30 searches (as I can remember) for free, so being without experience, I spent it in one day, not knowing what am I doing!
    Thanks for clarifying some things for me, as I want to start as a paid member.

    All the best.

  3. Hello there,
    I myself use the Jaaxy tool as well and I find it very useful. I only have one problem with it. It’s not free. I mean, it does make sense to charge for a program as useful as Jaaxy, however, I am just not in a position that would allow me to pay the monthly fee at the moment. Do you have any other suggestions that are equally good but offer a free program?
    Looking forward to your answer.

  4. Thanks for this! I’m just getting started with my site and am finding the whole keyword thing a little confusing, although I get the basic concept. I’ve had a look at a few different tools, I like the look of the ‘rank tracker’ feature on Jaaxy – I’m going to give the free trial a go.
    I also have a quick question if you have time – as I’m just starting out with my site, I’ve been focusing on creating a fair amount of quality content to give the site a good grounding. Do you think it’s ok to not worry about keywords too much in the early days while I build things up, or is it important to be utilising them right from the word go?

  5. Thanks for this great information Jay. It really helps to decide what tools I need to get to search more keyword for my website.
    Anyway is this all ability to dig or to see your rank is in the free account or you need to upgrade? Is there any limit on a free account?
    Thanks and have a good day.

    With a warm smile,
    Joana Marie founder of Online Radio DJ