WordTracker review

This review is split into two parts. The first looks at the free trial version of Wordtracker, and the second part looks at the extras you get it you buy a subscription. It is highly recommended that you visit Wordtracker help page and download their manual. This review will not explain how to use Word tracker in detail, just the features.

Free Wordtracker trial

Type in a word or phrase that summarizes your web page or web site and click a button. How difficult is that? This is exactly what you have to do to start on a wonderful exploration of keywords, phrases, competition and demand that is Wordtracker.

After a few seconds, a list of related keywords appear in the left hand column. Clicking on any of these brings up a detailed list of words related to that keyword in the right hand column (this list is limited in the trial version to 15 phrases), with the number of times that term was searched for in the last 60 days. Click on any items in this list and they are added to your basket. If any particular keyword in this right hand list is very relevant to your site, there is a "dig" option beside each of these keywords where you can find even more keywords related to this phrase.

Once your basket of keyword phrases is complete (trial is limited to 30 keywords), you can check the number of competing sites at Altavista (in the trial version it is limited to this engine), and get the results e-mailed to you. In the e-mail you receive, Wordtracker provides all the information you need to make informed decisions on which keywords to use. A useful indicator is KEI. This value takes into account the number of searches and the number of competing websites, to decide which terms are potentially the most profitable.

I won't go into a detailed description of how to use Wordtracker, as they have plenty of help on their site and it would bloat this review. However, even the free trial with its limitations is a great resource for initial research. A little limited for serious work, but great for quickly checking things as you work on your pages. Check out the free trial of wordtracker (opens in a new window). There is a menu item at the top of their website called tour. It is well worth the time to look at this and familiarize yourself with the Mother of all keyword research tools.

Full paid version of Wordtracker

The paid version of Wordtracker can be subscribed to by the day, by the week, by the month, for three months, and by the year. As of 10th September 2003, the prices were as follows:

1 Day $6.66
1 Week $22.21
1 Month $44.41
3 Month $109.44
1 Year $222.05

The paid version has a lot of extra features that the free version does not have:

• When you type in your main keyword phrase, the paid version brings back 300 words in the left hand column - all related to your main phrase and each one can be clicked on to bring up a list of up to 500 related words in the right hand column. That is a lot of potential keywords!

• Keyword basket can hold 5000 keyword phrases compared to only 30 in the trial.

• Paid version can give you common misspellings of words. This is superb for PPC campaigns where you want cheap clicks.
  
• Paid version allows you to search for competition in all major search engines, the trial version only works on Altavista.
  
• Paid version allows you to set up multiple projects that you can work on at the same time. These are saved when you leave wordtracker and loaded again when you next login. Great for researching several websites at the same time, and also great to go back a month later and they are still there. If you rent Wordtracker for a day, these projects are saved for several months before they are removed. If then you rent wordtracker again a few months later, your projects are still there.

• Top 1000 Reports - This gives you reports of the top 1000 keywords over the last 36 hours and the last 8 weeks. Great for spotting trends.
  

Overall, there is no better tool for keyword research than Wordtracker. The values for number of searches are in my opinion much more accurate than a tool like Overtures search term suggestion tool.

Wordtracker can e-mail you your keyword data for later analysis. These e-mails can be a little hard to handle so I wrote some software called Keyword Results Analyzer.

See WordTracker in action for yourself.
Have a free trial or buy a subscription - you will not regret it.

Wordtracker

And finally... John Alexander, a Wordtracker Guru has brought out an inexpensive eBook that outlines how to mine that gold from Wordtracker. Read my review of Wordtracker Magic.

Wordtracker - Free Trial Version	Wordtracker - Full Version