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KeySearch Ultimate Tutorial & Honest Review – Quick & Easy Keyword Research

Sterling King

Keyword research is one of the most important factors that influence the success of your website’s rankings. Websites that rank at the top positions in the SERPs always have a solid keyword research strategy – and so should you. Today, I will share with you a brand new SEO tool that makes keyword research extremely easy and intuitive – KeySearch.

KeySearch is created by the same guys who created FCS Networker and is looking to help search engine marketers with their keyword research the way it helped people create and manage their own Web 2.0 private blog networks. This will be a detailed in-depth look at KeySearch and all of its functionality plus our honest review of the tool and an exclusive 20% recurring discount.

What You’ll Learn

KeySearch Features Preview

KeySearch Ultimate Tutorial

Now that you have an idea of what this SEO tool is capable of, let me get you behind the scenes to show it to you in action. Every single component of KeySearch will be explained along with a real life example. It will be over quickly as this is one of the simplest tools I have used.

KeySearch is split into a “Keyword Research” component and a “Rank Tracker” component. Of course, most of your work will be performed in the first one as the second one requires a more setup once and forget about it approach, so let’s start with the “Keyword Research” component.

The KeySearch Keyword Research Component

Basically, this is where you will perform all of your keyword research to find those priceless keyword gems that everyone is looking for. Let’s begin.

The Difficulty Page

The first thing you see after you login to KeySearch is the “Difficulty” page. Basically, this allows you to check the difficulty (from 1 to 100) of any keyword you like on any location (Google US, Google UK, etc):

As you can see, it will be quite hard to rank your content for the keyword “keyword research” – as expected. Now, divert your attention to the right hand side of the screen. At the top you see the keyword that you have selected from the left hand side and its difficulty:

Now, below the keyword difficulty you see a Google Trends graph, which shows you the keyword’s search volume from 2004 up until today and the TLDs that include the keyword and are available (or not) for registration.

Now below that is the interesting part and that is the competition analysis panel. You see the top 10 URLs that rank for the keyword “keyword research” and important stats about them:

Again, each cell is colored and the colors mean the same thing as with the keyword difficulty but unify the light and dark colors into one – so basically green is good, yellow is okay, and red is bad (for you).

For instance, from the above table you can see that the URL ranking on second position for “keyword research” does not have that exact keyword included in neither its title, description or URL.

While this may have been a bigger factor in the past (pre-Hummingbird), nowadays it is not so big a deal, however, including this exact keyword will give you a little bit of extra edge over your competition.

Right below the competition analysis table you will find a big blue button – “Deep Analysis”. It allows you to perform, well, a deep analysis on that keyword and will show you something like this:

As you can see, now the competition analysis includes Majestic and Alexa stats plus age of the domain and social signals to that URL. Also, right below the competition analysis table, you will find LSI keyword suggestions:

As you probably know, stuffing the same keyword over and over again doesn’t work anymore. Synonyms and LSI keywords is the new keyword stuffing – check out this article for more info on the subject. That’s because Google has shifted its focus from keywords to topics.

The way KeySearch generates these LSI keywords is, and I quote Dan Pfeffer, the creator of this tool:

It generates LSI keywords by scraping the content of the top 10 pages and analyzing them to see which keywords and phrases are most used by the top 10 results.

Having a lot of different keywords from a particular topic in your content will help it rank both higher and faster on Google. Now, KeySearch also allows you to download this deep analysis as both a PDF or a CSV file. As we already mentioned, the PDF file is a white-label report so you can easily brand it.

Now, we saw almost everything that the you can do on the “Difficulty” page of KeySearch, but we left out a few things – the buttons at the top:

Now, we saw just how easy KeySearch analyzes the difficulty of a keyword you enter, but how will it manage in bulk situations? Let’s see. I will add 50 keywords at once to test KeySearch’s bulk difficulty checking capabilities:

It took KeySearch about 5 seconds to get the data for all of the 50 keywords I inserted which is pretty decent. As you can see, there aren’t many low competition keywords in the “keyword research” niche. I have selected one that has a fairly moderate level of difficulty, but its search volume is still quite low, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a “keyword gem”.

I’m sure you’ve noticed all the “N/A” stats and so did I as I was testing the tool. I asked Dan about it and this is what he said:

The difficulty tab uses http://grepwords.com/ to find quick search volume and CPC estimates. Not all keywords are in the grepwords database. Really depends on popularity. Scraping Keyword Planner for every keyword entered on the difficulty page would take a really long time. So its more of an estimate on the difficulty page for search volume, CPC and PPC. The keyword research tab’s main search [the “Research” page which we will take a look at in a second] uses AdWords which will give up to date accurate search volume, CPC and PPC.

Anyway, clicking on any of the different rows from the table on the left hand side will show all the data about that keyword on the right hand side – easy as that.

And that’s basically all there is to the “Difficulty” page of KeySearch. As a final step, I will save all the keywords I researched to a list called “Keyword Research”.

Now let me show you the “Research” page of KeySearch which makes keyword research ridiculously easy to perform.

The Research Page

The “Research” page of KeySearch is pretty similar to the “Difficulty” page. However, in addition to all the data shown on the “Difficulty” page, the “Research” page of KeySearch also generates up to 1,000 relevant keywords to your seed keyword. The relevant keywords are taken from AdWords and all come with accurate search volume, CPC, and PPC data:

The difficulty score will, by default, only be shown for keywords that you have already checked on the “Difficulty” page. Of course, you can easily check the difficulty score of other keywords by simply clicking the “Check” button.

Now, the “Research” page has an extra button on top compared to the “Difficulty” page and that’s the “Bulk Check” button. It allows you to bulk check the difficulty for all the keywords you select from the table on the left hand side.

So, I selected a random set of 100 keywords and I bulk checked their difficulty. Since we have so many keywords, I will also use the “Filter” of KeySearch to filter out these keywords and maybe find a few gems. For this example, I want to find keywords that have a search volume of at least 1,000 and a difficulty score of less than 40:

And there you have it. Several keywords with a decent monthly search volume and a level of competition that can easily be dominated with the right strategy. Pretty simple right?

I just entered a seed keyword, bulk checked the difficulty of a selection of the relevant keywords that KeySearch generated for me and then filtered out the results to find a few profitable keywords.

Repeating this same process for each article (piece of content) your write for your website will most certainly put you at an advantage in comparison to your competition.

Finally, I will again save the keywords that I found from this keyword research to the “Keyword Research” list, so I can later use the data to come up with an idea for content. That’s the basic goal of keyword research – to point you towards content that people are looking for from which both you and the people looking for that info can benefit. Quid pro quo.

If you think about it, it’s really a bit more complex scenario of the more common “ask and you shall receive” situation. You are basically looking for something that people are asking and then writing the answer to their questions using those vital keywords that you found from KeySearch. Moving on.

The My Lists Page

The last page of the “Keyword Research” functionality of KeySearch (remember there’s rank tracking as well) is “My Lists”. There isn’t much to say about it except for the fact that it basically stores all your keywords into separate user-defined lists.

I strongly recommend you creating your own lists for each project instead of using the “default” list provided by KeySearch. And that’s basically all there is to the “Keyword Research” component of KeySearch. Now let’s take a look at its “Rank Tracker” component.

The KeySearch Rank Tracker Component

The “Rank Tracker” component of KeySearch is where you can track the rankings of your website (or your competitors) for all of the keywords of your choice. This component consists of four pages:

Each of them is self-explanatory and will respectively allow you to track the rankings of your website, group your URLs and keywords, get notified when certain events occur, and generate in-depth reports for your rankings.

I just want to note that I personally don’t use the “Rank Tracker” component of KeySearch as I use Pro Rank Tracker (our tutorial and honest review) to track the rankings of my website. Now, let’s look at each of the four pages.

The Tracking Page

On the “Tracking” page, you will add your URL and keywords which KeySearch will then go out and check for rankings. Currently, only Google SERPs are supported, but more search engines will follow soon enough. Here’s what the “Tracking” page looks like:

As you can see, it’s extremely simple and intuitive. Basically, you just click the “Add URL” button, then you fill in the URL which’s rankings you want to track and you click “Submit”. Keep in mind that you do not need to add exact URLs, but just your domain name and KeySearch will track any URL on your domain that ranks for any of the keywords you include to the URL.

At this point you will have added your URL, but you need to add keywords to it for which KeySearch will check its rankings. You simply expand the URL and you click the “Add Keywords” button after which you choose the search engine on which you want to track the rankings and then you paste in your target keywords. And that’s it.

Now, KeySearch will take some time to automatically update the rankings for new URLs and keywords, however, you are allowed to force the update immediately. The end result?

I just added a few target keywords of my website to show you how KeySearch’s “Rank Tracker” component works and that it is accurate. Now, clicking on each of the keywords themselves will bring out a window where you will be able to see the SERPs for that keyword (on the search engine you chose) up to the point where your URL is currently ranked.

Via the “Actions” column of the keywords table, you can respectively check the keyword’s rankings over time in a graph style, delete the keyword, add a secondary URL for tracking (your competitor for example), deactivate the keyword, and force an update on the rankings. The latter you can do once per day per keyword.

The Groups Page

The “Groups” page of the “Rank Tracker” component of KeySearch basically allows you to group your URLs for an easier management. For instance, if you will be using KeySearch to track the rankings of your clients, you can easily separate the different tracking projects with groups. This will also help you later on when you set up the reporting for those rankings, which we will cover in a minute.

The Notifications Page

The “Notifications” page allows you to create events for your groups for which’s occurrence you will be notified. There are five different events that you can make use of and they are:

These notifications are extremely useful, especially if you are running projects for you or for your clients that have specific goals to be reached – as it is usually in the world of SEO.

The Reports Page

The last page of the “Rank Tracker” component of KeySearch allows you to set up shared reports so that you or your clients can easily check their rankings at anytime. You can select between live and static reports and define a period time of up to 90 days for which this report will be valid.

For instance, if you are tracking the rankings of a client of yours for a period of 30 days, you can set up a live report for them for their URL group for 30 days so that they will be able to check their rankings at anytime in those 30 days.

And that’s basically all there is to KeySearch currently. Keep in mind that the product is still being updated constantly and new features are added on a daily basis. Just recently a new functionality was added that allows KeySearch users to order articles (for the profitable keywords that they found) right from the tool’s user interface.

Honest KeySearch Review

Being one of the first users of KeySearch and knowing what Dan has achieved with FCS Networker, I am confident to say that KeySearch will be a “key” player in the keyword research software industry. The tool is simple and intuitive and works just like a charm.

The best part is that it is brand new, it is extremely cost-effective, and it’s only going to be getting better and better as time goes by and the development team adds in new functionality. I do enjoy not making things more complicated than they need to be and KeySearch certainly covers that part.

Exclusive 20% KeySearch Discount Coupon

Since KeySearch is still in its launch period, they are offering hefty discounts for those interested in the tool. I have managed to get my hands on a 20% lifetime discount coupon for anyone who wants to try this keyword research software.

The prices are already extremely cost-effective and with those 20% it becomes too good to be true. The discount coupon is “inetsolutions” for any of you guys interested in trying KeySearch. It is a recurring discount, so you will have 20% off the price of KeySearch for life.

Summary

So there you have it. We have taken an in-depth look at KeySearch and everything it can currently do and it’s looking solid. I did find a few small bugs while testing the tool, but Dan and his team fixed them as soon as I reported. There are a few things I would change design-wise, but that’s probably because I enjoy perfection divergence more than anyone else.

Bottom line is KeySearch is just an amazing tool for anyone who performs keyword research on a regular basis. I said it at the beginning and I will say it at the end – websites that rank at the top positions in the SERPs always have a solid keyword strategy or just an incredible amount of luck.