WordStream this week announced the release of a really interesting new product for organic search marketers.
WordStream Keyword Management for SEO is an advanced keyword research tool—think keyword research on steroids. It offers the same keyword suggestion capabilities as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and similar tools, but layers on keyword analytics, keyword grouping and organization, and integrated content authoring tools for roughly the same price (starting at $49/mo.) you’d expect to pay for traditional keyword research tools.
Rather than offering a static list of keyword suggestions along with a handful of related keyword suggestions, WordStream for SEO provides you with:
- Traditional Keyword Research: Not unlike existing keyword tools, WordStream offers keyword suggestions that the software pulls from a deep database of search queries.
- Personalized Keyword Suggestions: WordStream also goes a step further to mine your own site data to help surface relevant keyword ideas people are already using to find your site.
- Keyword Analytics: Instead of vague estimates based on popularity, WordStream provides accurate visit and goal data for keywords from your own site on an ongoing basis.
- Keyword Organization: WordStream has created very sophisticated grouping and organization capabilities. This means that you can effectively segment your keyword list to identify content suggestions, analyze your data in strategic clusters, and create an SEO-friendly information architecture.
- Content Authoring: The WordStream SEO for Firefox feature, which I’ll describe in more detail below, connects your keyword research with your content creation efforts to help you better focus your blog posts and product or sales pages.
The tool’s Discover Keywords tab is where you conduct traditional keyword research. This tab includes:
- A keyword suggestion tool (which leverages the same database as WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool)
- A competitive keyword research tool
- The option to paste in or import keywords from a CSV file
- And the ability to analyze your own site’s data by importing server log files, or by syncing your Google Analytics account or using WordStream’s own custom package to continually discover, analyze, and organize keyword and search query data.
This allows you to aggregate data from a range of different sources.
From there you can organize your data into a taxonomy of tightly related groups and sub-groups; this resulting keyword structure is incredibly useful for SEO strategizing, setting content creation priorities and even planning your site’s information architecture. The software suggests potential keyword groups which you can review and create with the click of a button.
Now let’s take a closer look at the SEO for Firefox feature, which attempts to close the gap between keyword research and content authoring. WordStream SEO for Firefox is a plugin that you can use alongside blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger and Drupal.
Here’s how it works: Open the tool while your content management system is open. To research a new topic, use the “Enter a Keyword” tab—just enter a keyword to get organized suggestions. Let’s say you want to write an article about reusable plastic drinking bottles but need a little help narrowing that broad topic down to something more targeted.
Select a topic to see all the keywords in that group, or niche. You can view the results as phrases, single words or in question form.
As you can see the tool is great for generating more specific ideas around a general topic. However, to optimize your content for a given keyword niche, you need to actually use the suggested terms in the copy. The SEO for Firefox plugin also keeps a running count of how many keyword phrases you use as you type. This is great for keeping writers on track after the initial research stage.
In the My Keyword Research tab, you can log in to your WordStream account to use the private keyword data from your analytics in addition to the on-the-fly keyword suggestions.
There’s a lot to explore in WordStream for SEO. You can check out the full toolset yourself by signing up for a free trial.
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