My In-Depth Market Samurai Review – Does it Live up to the Hype?

Market Samurai: Killer Keyword & Competition Research

Before I go any further in this post, I want to state that I bought Market Samurai at its full price – I wasn’t given a “review” copy. I’m glad I made that decision back in 2008 because I recognized significant time savings, deeper competitive insights, and some pretty sweet rankings.  Simply put, I believe Market Samurai is the best integrated competitive keyword and niche research tool on the market today. My staff and I use it daily to do everything from figuring out the competitiveness of any given keyword, to finding content generation ideas. For those of you reading this review,  Market Samurai is a must add tool to your belt of internet marketing tools.

So What does Market Samurai “Do”?

There are currently 8 distinct modules offered in Market Samurai with 2 new modules being added in the next little while. Market Samurai’s primary use is to find out:

• What markets are worth targeting;
• What markets are worth avoiding;
• Which keywords you should focus on for fast results;
• Which keywords should be avoided;
• Which markets have weak competition;
• Which markets show impossible levels of competition;
• What are the chances of achieving front-page rankings for a keyword;
• What topics you should write articles on for your website;
• Where to find quality backlinks;
• How many backlinks you need;
• What quality backlinks you need;
• How to determine the quality of a page for a backlink;

Let me be clear: The above steps are part and parcel of any decent internet marketing campaign and can be figured out manually (albeit painstakingly). If you feel your time is best spent manually evaluating Google SERP results for multiple keywords, then analyzing backlinks in Yahoo Site Explorer, and finally figuring out that you could have targeted an easier keyword, be my guest. For those that want to focus on quick wins and quick rankings, Market Samurai is here to help. With that said, let’s jump into some visual examples of what the different modules are and what they do:

Market Samurai’s Keyword Research Module

Market Samurai Rank Tracker

The Rank Tracker is a neat feature to have as you can track a couple of important things:

• Keywords for your own domain
• Rankings for the web 2.0, article marketing, or other web hubs where you build content and links
• Rankings for your competition

You’ll be able to see the deep linked page that’s ranking as well as standard metrics like the number of inbound links to that page and the page level PR. One really neat feature of Market Samurai’s rank tracker is its ability to graph your backlinks over time. This is a great way to keep up on your competitor’s link graph as well.

Market Samurai Domains Module

As of last week the folks at Noble Samurai (the creators of Market Samurai) launched Domain Samurai which can help you find aged and relevant domains contextually relevant to your keyword groupings. You can now locate high quality, keyword-optimised domain names available to register or unearth available established domains you can use to boost your rankings.

The best part of having the domain module right inside Market Samurai is the ability to streamline the entire internet marketing process. Right from brainstorming the right domain names to finding the right keywords and then marketing them – it’s all in one neat suite of software.

Market Samurai Monetization Module

Market Samurai’s monetization module allows you to find affiliate marketing offers relevant to your keywords on ClickBank, Paydotcom, Amazon, and CommissionJunction. You can go ahead and sync your accounts with Market Samurai and then proceed to sign up to new campaigns. One of the neatest features is the ability to do Dynamic Ad Generation , which is similar to Dynamic Keyword Insertion on Google Adwords.  Neat side features include an ROI calculator to calculate traffic and break even points.

Market Samurai Find Content and Promotion Modules

Every site needs content in order to rank on the search engines and to convert traffic to sales. Generating good content ideas is often difficult so Market Samurai’s Find Content module is very handy to find content from article directories such as Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Wikipedia, and Constant Content. In fact it can even extract content that is ready to publish for sites such as Ezine Articles.  You can also find picture and video content from Youtube and Flickr as well as document content from Scribd, Google News, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Answers. Information displayed for each related article found includes the number of published copies on the web, PR, backlinks, keyword density, and the date of publishing.

There’s also a handy publishing tool for Wordpress integration and publishing. For those of you that have WPDirect accounts, you can also manage your blog network from within Market Samurai. I like to handle my publishing natively via Wordpress so I don’t end up using this module very much.

Why I Bought Market Samurai (And Why You Should At least Try it Too)

I’ve used many keyword tools and niche research tools over the years include SEO Elite, Wordtracker, Wordze and Trellian but nothing compares to Market Samurai. As an advanced search marketer my Market Samurai offers a couple of research modules that are all integrated very well. The one’s my staff and I use the most include the  Keyword Research, SEO Competition, Find Content, and Promotion modules.

There’s a couple of very good (real world, no hype) reasons you should at least try Market Samurai:

• The Trial is utterly and completely FREE. No credit card required and no auto-billing to deal with.
• If you don’t save at least 3-5 hours per project by using Market Samurai then you’re not using it right.
• Following up on my last point, Market Samurai has a Dojo where they have full-length video tutorials for each of their modules including how to use them to find easy niches and low competition keywords.
• Even if you choose to buy, any half decent internet marketer should be able to make their money back by having their first affiliate/client site ranked and attracting relevant traffic.

With each review I try to find a few short comings but I’m afraid I’m a pretty happy camper with what Market Samurai offers.  With the launch of the Adwords (PPC Spy like) module around the corner and another secret module tentatively being launched in the very near future, I was happy I locked in the lower price when I could.

Get Your Free Trial Copy of Market Samurai Now

With that being said, I’ll conclude the most comprehensive Market Samurai Review you’ll find on the internet to date, and leave this post open to comments and questions.