This is part 3 of a Wordtracker review (part 1 – introduction,  part 2 – related keyword search)

In this section we will look at how Wordtracker helps to identify vertical keywords, but first a couple of words about Wordtracker service. Three days into my seven day trial I identified a problem with UK vertical search, and published my complaint on GetSatisfaction. Within less than an hour I got several responses from Graham and Steven, saying the problem has been fixed, and indeed, it was. Absolutely fantastic service. They also extended my free trial by another week. Again, great!

I will continue with my paragliding example. To discover all the vertical key phrases that include your keyword, use Wordtracker’s “Include” facility :

Be sure to open “more search options”. This allows you to specify matchtype, misspellings and plurals. It is sometimes a good idea to browse through misspelt keywords, as they might be surprisingly popular. Google reduced the need to consider optimisation for misspelled words, but it may be worth experimenting. Just don’t overdo misspellings, you may risk your website’s reputation.

Wordtracker does not always identify the misspelled words  -  a broad match with misspelling on “paragliding” did not return results for “para gliding”, yet “para gliding” is one of the top 30 paragliding related searches. A search for “para gliding” did pick up “paragliding”.

It is at this stage where I start having major concerns with Wordtracker’s dataset for the UK. In the “paragliding example”, Wordtracker found 692 search terms, of which only 20 had a search volume of more than 10 – this with a data set spanning four years worth of data.

Here are some random comparisons between Google’s results and Wordtracker’s results :

So Wordtracker would suggest that I prioritise “northern paragliding” way ahead of the other two terms, Google suggests they are in the same ballpark. I don’t know whether Google’s results are skewed, but I am pretty convinced they are less skewed than Wordtracker’s. Besides, Wordtracker is aggregating 4 years of the data for the UK. How do I know whether the highly popular search terms are popular now, or were they popular a couple of years ago?

Wordtracker tracks less than 0.5% of searches, possibly using a skewed sample population (how well does Dogpile and Metacrawler users represent  the rest of society?) . I would certainly not hedge my bets on Wordtracker for my long tail strategy, because I might just be barking up the wrong numbers ….

In conclusion – is Wordtracker worth considering?

The functionality is great, the user interface is just fine, the data presentation is useful, but I have a great concern with the UK data. I would probably still use the tool, but not in isolation, and most definitely not for long tail keywords where Wordtracker reports less than 3 or 4 searches.

I wish Wordtracker all the success it deserves, but please please increase the size of your dataset (and if you can give us some cyclical trends that would be even better …)

This is part 1 of a Wordtracker review (part 2 – related keyword search, part 3- vertical keyword search)

Having recently needed a keyword research tool for two personal projects, I decided to give Wordtracker a try after hearing good things about it from  an ai digital podcast. Tools like Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery help you find the keywords and search terms people use to search for the service, content or products you are offering. Most online businesses rely heavily on search engines to generate traffic to their websites, making keyword research and search engine optimisation a vital part of any online marketing strategy. Wordtracker’s price should put it within the budget of almost all online businesses (at the time of writing £28.00 per month, minimum 1 month, £161.00 per year).

Wordtracker uses data from meta crawlers (metacrawler.com and dogpile.com) and not straight from the search engines, thus eliminating non-human search queries. On the one hand this greatly improves the accuracy of the results, on the other its small dataset introduces statistical uncertainty. Wordtracker presents this as one of the unique selling points of its toolset. I will discuss this in greater depth in part 3 of this review, specifically in the context of UK keyword research.

The basic approach to keyword research in Wordtracker is simple. Wordtracker, like others, suggest you build a 3-tier information architecture – home page, category pages and content pages, with a defined set of keywords for each of these, as explained in this video .

Defining a list of categories relies on domain expertise, guided by initial keyword research. For instance, if I want to create a paragliding website, a quick scan of the paragliding search terms will highlight a few potential categories very quickly : paragliding training, paragliding clubs, paragliding manufacturers and equipment, and paragliding tours and destinations. Perhaps, like me, you would have been somewhat surprised at the search popularity of powered paragliding. Keyword research is in effect a quick and affordable way of doing high level market research, and I would recommend that you start doing keyword research in the very early stages of your business strategy.

Wordtracker has two tools that assist with keyword research – a lateral search tool to help you discover your keyword universe and build out your seedlist (keywords found in websites like yours), and a tool to discover the and evaluate all the search terms that include your keywords.

In part 2 of this review, I will assess the related keywords option in more detail, and in part 3 the included keywords. As I am primarily concerned with the UK market, I will focus on UK datasets.