Keyword Research

Keyword Keg Review

keyword keg review featured image

Welcome to my review of Keyword Keg – modified from my video review that you can watch below:

I’m reviewing this product is because I’ve been using it for a while now, and I know it’s becoming more popular in the digital marketing community, so I want to give my feedback and opinion on it and see if I can help you out.

I love testing out different keyword research software and seeing which one are the best, and seeing which ones are the easiest to use.

To start, I’m going to give you a bit of background on Keyword Keg. The key thing you’re probably going to want to know here about its history was that the product  is basically the pro/premium version of Keywords Everywhere.

You might have heard of Keywords Everywhere. If you haven’t, then check out my video review here on YouTube.

It’s a free browser extension that allows you to see keyword data, basically in-situ when searching on search engines like Google or YouTube.

If you have Keywords Everywhere installed and set up correctly, you can jump on Google and search for something like dog training books, or dog training videos and see the keyword research data sitting under the Google search box.

Here’s an example of Keywords Everywhere in action:

Keywords Everywhere, if you don’t have it is a good product. If you spend a lot of time in Google search or searching videos on YouTube etc, as you go along, you start to pick up these awesome keyword ideas just by using it.

So why bother with Keyword Keg then?

The reason you might look at something like Keyword Keg is because of a feature that was removed from Keywords Everywhere.

Keywords Everywhere used to have a bulk importation tool. You could load in hundreds, even thousands of keyword ideas and get search volume and CPC data

What you can see here is this message saying that the keyword import tool has now been shut down:

The reason it has been shut down was that it was used too heavily. The tool got overloaded (probably cost these guys a fortune and API calls, servers, infrastructure and all that kind of stuff).

So what they’ve done is they basically said “if you want to get bulk, keyword search functionality in terms of important keywords, as well as conventional tracking of a few seed keywords and get a whole load of ideas, you need to use our premium tool which is Keyword Keg”.

Now I was a huge user of the input keywords tool, in my early days of using keywords everywhere, I jump on something like Uber suggest, you know, explore a massive list of keywords, you know, rip those keywords and was a very important to get all the data, clean out any duplicates, you know, clean out any obvious things that I don’t want and boom, I’d have a really nice big list of longtail keywords that I can do further research on. But obviously I can’t do any more with keywords everywhere. But we can do it with keyword cake. So let’s go and have a little bit more of a look at what keyword King is all about. So if we load up cawood qik.com, which is the sales page is pretty standard stuff. Nothing too flashy, I think it looks pretty good at you know gives you reasonable confidence in the product. And basically, it’s a simple simple sales page, it tells you everything you need to know about what this product does. It’s five keyword tools in 111

different

search API’s.

You can get keyword data from YouTube and Google and all sorts of things.

It’s trusted by apparently over four and a half thousand SEO agencies, which is pretty darn impressive. It’s been featured on some big websites as well.

Keyword Keg Features

These are the actual features you’ve got. So the ability to do multiple see keywords, the ability to import keywords, export data, SEO metrics, use multiple suggest API’s,

you know, see Google ads and click data and in the search results, categorized by intent sort and filter, all those kinds of things,

Pricing

I won’t linger too much longer on the sales page; the only other thing I want to do briefly is talk about pricing. So overall, I think the pricing is pretty reasonable. Like most SAS applications, there’s like a multiple tiers of pricing. And then also you’ve got this this monthly and yearly sort of split. So you get a big discount if you pay yearly. Because you know, once the companies develop the product, they generally rather sell it to you yearly because I can lock in that cash flow, and you’re less likely to you know, see a $40 bill or an $80 bill every month and think you’re going to cancel there. But equally, you can pay monthly as well, three different plans consultant expert and agency, the difference between these really is just in the amount of data you’re able to access, you know, if you’re just a single person, you know, sitting at home, and maybe building a few affiliate websites, in the you know, spare time, you don’t need anything more than the SEO consultant plan. I mean, I use the SEO consultant plan, and I actually work with clients, you know, with my main consulting business, and it’s never been really a limitation for me. If you need a lot more data, perhaps you’re working ecommerce or websites that have a lot of different keyword options, SEO expert might be the one to go for. There’s also the agency platform or agency option here, which gives you way more data, I mean, you know, you’ve got 10 times the data access. The other two key things to bear in mind is that you get the ability to do white label PDF exports of any reports from keyword cake. So that could be really, really useful if you want to wow your customers with a flash looking PDF. Or if you want to do like a sort of, you know, pay on demand Keyword Research Service, for example, you might go on Fiverr and set up service that says Hey, $10, I’ll find you, you know, you know, at least 50 keywords, basically five search phrases or five safe keywords. And then instead of having to muck around with presenting it nicely use put your logo and then it spits it out. The other thing that can be done as well with the agency plan is you can have up to five people logged in at once or five device logins at once. So you know, you could have your

one account for cawood. Kagan, you might have two or three,

you know, freelancers who work under you, or virtual assistants or something like that, you can give them logins to it. And then they can log in as well, where’s the other plans, only one person can be logged in at once. So yeah, I use the consultant plan, I don’t need to use anything more than that. And I actually pay that monthly at the moment because I’m sort of reviewing my software choices. But if you like the software, you know, I’d suggest you to pick the plan you want and probably lock in a good price yearly if you do like it. One thing to note is that there is no free trial available. The reason there’s no free trial available, it’s pretty simple. In my opinion, this is the kind of software where if there was a free trial available, what would happen, someone would come along and say, Hey, I’m going to make a new affiliate blog about toaster ovens. And I’m just going to check in toaster oven is the safe keyword create, you know that free account. And once I’ve written, you know, hundreds of 200 or 300 keywords, and they don’t need the product anymore, so I’ll just cancel that free account. And then you know, these guys lose out on revenue. So I totally get where they’re coming from, you know, the basically, this product would be a huge risk of sort of freebie churning. So just the I can see why they do this,

you do have a 48

hour money back guarantee, though. So if you buy anything while this is crap, you don’t have to, you know, lose your money, you can get it back. So again, canceling subscription, if you need to it is pretty straightforward. As far as languages and countries, they only support English at the moment. And in the following countries Australia, Canada and India, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, and also global as well. So you that’s basically what you need to know that at a key level. also understand that this is a web based software, you don’t need to install anything on your computer. So it works fine on Mac, it works on PC, presume it work on Linux, pretty much anything we can get on the internet, it should work. So just bear that in mind. So let’s actually go into the toll and just have a little drive around. And then I’ll sort of give you my opinion on whether or not you should use keyword cake. So here we are logged in, I’ve logged into my account, this is the interface, you’ll see, it’s a bit of a basic interface, like it’s not the best looking software in the world, aesthetically, you know, you if you’re sort of a stickler for really flashing devices, you probably want love it. But it’s very functional. This default tab here, find keywords, this is the sort of basics keyword search, if you’ve ever used any keyword research software before, this should look

and function pretty familiar,

you know, pretty familiar fashion, sorry, twist my words there. So you put in your safe keywords here. So we gonna go you know

what let’s do.

Let’s say we want to make a website on coffee machine. So we’ll go that best coffee machine, coffee,

machine review.

You know, coffee machines, those are three safe keywords, you can tab safe, right, you know, or you’re heading to basically add the next one and, and as you can see, it’s actually started as a load that data as well. There’s a progress bar on the bottom. So you know, it’s loading the matrix, you know, loading the latest matrix, and boom, here you go. It’s found us 1400 and 66 unique keywords for best coffee machine. And what that’s done is it’s looking global data, it’s looking at the English language they only support English is looking only at the Google suggest API. And it’s selecting all keyword result types. So we might actually want to say, Hey, I only want to see keywords that are keyword cake is classified as being buyer intent. So you can select all of these options, then only take the buyer intent

one.

And you know, we could also say hey, we only want to get data for the United States. So what we do is we change to United States here, and we hit Search button and then it would update the results. But for now we’re going to leave it as it was here. So what we’re able to see is what you get with your searches. So it’s all pretty straightforward how the system works. So obviously the search result is the keyword the phrase returned by the suggest API. Volume is the search volume globally. CPC is the search volume globally. If we change the United States that would you know, be the search volume in the United States at the CBC in the United States. This is the AdWords or Google ads. Competition. A really new mistake, newbie mistake is to assume that competition refers to SEO competition, it doesn’t. That’s all about Google Ads competition. So generally, the higher the Google Ads competition, the more commercially valuable a keyword is. So if you find something with a high Google Ads competition, but a low SEO competition, not that you generally well, but you might, that could indicate a really good keyword to go after, if you want to do some SEO work, you can see the word value. So this is basically the cost per click, my understanding is that the cost per click times the search volume. So it’s really just like a sort of rudimentary calculation of potential value of a keyword. So you know, we would presume that best coffee machine because more people search, it is more valuable to rank number one for land based coffee machine at home. It’s a pretty fair assumption. You’ve got these on page difficulty of page difficulty, SEO difficulty, and CTR scope metrics. Now, I’m always a little bit wary of any of these automated tools that claim to be able to tell you how difficult it cawood is to rank for like it, you know, here the on page difficulty, the best coffee machine is 27 out of 100 would be the max score. So this is basically saying, you know, that really the competition for best coffee machine is that well

organized,

optimize on page and off page, it’s basically saying, you know, how strong of a competing domains, and the SEO difficulties is saying that this is, you know, 49 out of 100, this is an average difficulty. Now, I would beg to differ here, I imagined ranking number one for best coffee machine would probably be pretty tough, you’d be up against some big websites, you know, your wire cutters, and those massive affiliate sites you’d be up against, you know, the well established technology websites, you know, maybe the likes of seen it, you’d be up against all sorts of, you know, very sort of battle hardened affiliate marketers doing all sorts of things with black hat, SEO and private blog, network links, and all those kinds of things. So generally, as a role when you’re using keyword cake, my view is this piece here, the homepage of page in SEO difficulty scores, and CTR scope, I just basically don’t look at that, you know, I guess it’s handy to eyeball things. And maybe you might get a little bit of useful, you know, nudge in the right direction, or start your research in a, in a, you know, with some useful numbers to work off. But I think if you just went through and you know, say to write, I’m going to build a website about best coffee machines, and I’m, you know, because it’s telling me that it’s only 49 out of 100 to rank for this coffee machine, that should be pretty easy. I can guarantee you it won’t be unless you really know what you’re doing. And you have some really strong resources to put into it. The safety of scopes, just giving you an indication, based on I don’t know what they’re using to calculate it to be honest. But how many results are getting clicked on or the likelihood of results getting clicked on. And keyword power is basically a measure of created by keyword cake, of how potentially lucrative overall the keyword is a factoring in, you know, the potential monetization value and traffic value, but also the potential difficulty, How valuable is that keyword, and the higher the keyword power, the beta basically. So from here, to here, really from here to here, so value to keyword power. You know, it’s cold out here to have, you know, it can be useful if you know what you’re doing with it. But I would take anything there with a grain of salt, to be honest, the bit, we’re really using this product for us to find the keyword ideas, get the search volume, get some CPC information, and also look at trends as well, you know, so we want to see what the trend does over time. Or you can click on any keyword suggestion, and it will pop up with this modal showing you everything you know, and its own little view. And there’s all sorts of other stuff you can do. As you scroll down the list, obviously, it’s pretty straightforward. If we hover over this, we can get a feel for what sort of features are showing the search result. So if we click here, that will copy the keyword to our clipboard, that if we look next to it, we can say that this one has ad listings. So their Google ads running on this keyword, we can see it has image listings. So Google would be if we search based copy machine, Google should show images, there are fresh listing. So there are new sites coming into the search results for this keyword. And it’s showing you basically which of their APIs is being used here to to bring that keyword result through. So if we look at this, you know, the reason it’s saying keyword cake here is,

is the API is because

I inputted best coffee machine as my seat keyword. But this one here is telling us that it’s you know, the Google suggests API is being used, we’re looking at United states.org. That’s where it’s found it. And the result type is a question. It’s not I don’t really get what the question based coffee machine which I guess someone might answer the ask the question that way. But that’s besides the point I won’t get too involved into this is they’re all useful features. I mean, this is a really straightforward system for finding keywords, you can add them all to list, you can copy all the keywords, you can add negative keywords. So you know, this is from a search I’ve done in the past where I’ve eliminated certain types of keywords, I could remove all these negative keywords, they save now, which is kind of annoying, actually. Because you have to delete them. But we might add, or we might add, so like, we might add the word sprays, I was a negative keyword, because we’re only interested in finding keywords about, you know, filter coffee machines, or drip coffee machines. So it’s all straightforward stuff. You know, you’ve got multiple filtering options here as well. So this is quite powerful, you know, you might only want to look at keywords with search volume between 100 Britain 500 defined something that’s, you know, potentially we had competition long tail, you can filter on all those other metrics, you can specify that there has to be, you know, ads in the listings, or snippets or knowledge graph or product listing, you can save your filters. And you can even do reject work as well. You know, there is a lot of power here in the searching toll. And you can obviously export all of the data is CSV, Excel, or PDF as well. So that is the standard keyword cake finding keywords total, like I said, really easy to use, I think the results are very good. It’s just take this additional stuff that give you that used to pan out the product and make it look more impressive. take it with a grain of salt, there was a strict mode as well. So when you have strict mode is basically saying only show me the data that exactly matches the same keywords I put in. So yeah, this pace, really easy to work with good results at the most fundamental level, but just be wary of somebody, those additional things that are added on that might not be that useful in real life, and could actually lead you astray. Possibly the next nothing’s going to replace like really good manual ACL analysis, you know, looking at your competition, holistically, checking their backlink profiles, you know how well optimize their pages, all that kind of stuff. The next piece is the import keywords too.

So this

doesn’t find you new keyword ideas, what it allows you to do is take a list of keywords that already exists that you found in another totally, you’ve got stashed away and you computer somewhere, paste them in here, and it will basically find you the data. So if our keyword idea was dog training, and don’t training, dog training

tips,

and maybe dog training videos, and then we pretend we pasted that in rather than I’ve been lazy and typed it in, and we wait for the important to run. Usually it’s pretty fast. So it’s going to pop up in a second. You can see here that all it’s done is given us the data for that same view in terms of you know how how you see things as the other interface, it’s just only showing you the data for the keywords you imported. NET import CSV in Excel and paste keywords, that’s the thing that was missing or taken away from keywords everywhere that was so valuable, because I still love using tools like Skype box. And things like keyword shed or an Uber suggest to find huge list of longtail keywords, filter out the duplicates, then paste it in here and get lots of data. You’ve also got a couple of other options. So there’s a beta for people also search for keywords. So let’s say that we want to do dog training. Again, this is going to help us look for keywords that people also search for when they search for dog training. So we’re going to go global, and we’re just going to hit Search and we’ll see what comes up. I haven’t run the search in here before. So hopefully the results come you know and reasonable quality. If not, maybe they’re going to have another beta support feedback, email, and they’re ready inbox. So it’s loading up the data. Hopefully it loads up pretty soon. Yep, here you go. So what this is saying is that people who search for dog training, also often search for these keywords or may search for these other keywords. So you’re going to get a lot of random stuff in here. But it’s helpful for picking up a good sort of feel for what people in your niche or industry is searching for. Once again, all of this but you know that the results box, I call it, that’s all the same, all the filtering options are the same, everything is the same. It’s only the functionality in terms of the types of keywords that changes, you’ve also got the ability to find related keywords as well. So once again, that’s using you know, Google’s related keywords API. So we’ll do related keywords functionality, I should say I won’t use the word API incorrectly, someone might call me out on it. And what we’ll do once again, is we’ll run that search and see what sorts of things come up. So it’s it’s running the search. It’s loading the matrix, and we will see what happens. So give it a second. And he go, you know, related keywords. I know one of the things that don’t include a don’t specifically include dog training or aren’t true sort of search terms that spun off from that seed keyword, but that are related as well. So you know, if someone’s interested in dog training, you know, all of these related keywords actually look pretty good, don’t they, you know, they’re probably going to be interested in how to potty train a puppy. You know how to stop a puppy biting all those kinds of things. So yeah, once again, really useful tool for allowing you to expand your keyword research beyond those basic horizons of, you know, I’ve got five seed keywords, I get 100 results per seed keyword, and those are all the keywords I’m going to bother finding, there’s you know, a lot of different ways to skin, the cat, you know, having the related phrases that aren’t necessarily including your seed keyword, and then all the parts of your sake keyword that’s really powerful as well, because some of these keywords, if you could rank, you know, highly Google for them, our ranking YouTube video, you know, you could make some really good money out of this. Once again, you could find some really good keywords for your clients is a TOEFL merging words. So you’re able to merge words together. So we’ll load the sample data, and I’ll show you what it does. So we load the sample data, and wait for it to run rum.

And hopefully, it’s not going to pull us up, get loading the information. And once again, it’s just allowing you to, you know, take some different broad keywords, combine them together and see what happens. And you know, you can build out big keyword lists this way as well. As I said, as always, the the results box stays the same. And then Apart from that, we’ve got plans. So if I wanted to come in and change my plan, obviously I can do it. This is the one I’m on now. But I could change to yearly or upgrade, we’ll go back, we’ve got help. So there’s a simple, frequently asked questions and sort of support section, and also the ability to contact. And the I know that is my account as well. So I could cancel my subscription, I could see my export history, I could see my safe keywords, I can customize my columns, and I can see my profile. So all really basic stuff that I don’t really need to go in there and show you too much more. So if we just return, we’ll just go back to this default search window and leave it there. Basically, let’s wrap up this keyword cake review. Is this product actually worth using? Is it any good? You know, should you consider having it in your arsenal? Well, depends really on what you do. for a living, you know, if you’re building, if you’re doing anything that requires long tail keywords, so you know, you’re building affiliate websites, you know, you’re building, maybe you’re building rank and rent sites, you know, you’re working with clients who you need to help them create content and get keyword ideas for optimizing this site. Maybe you’re doing Google ads, that kind of stuff. cawood cake has a lot of value, you know, you can get into it for pretty reasonable prices, we can go back to the pricing, if you thought hey, these features are good. This is the type of type of tool I would like to use, you know, and use it on a daily basis. Well think about it this way, right? You can pay 288 US dollars a year. So 24 US dollars a month, and you get access to that basic plan, that’s a pretty cheap price to pay that less than $1 a day, US dollar a day for that basic plan paid yearly to get hold of a lot of valuable data. You know, especially as Google has more and more restricted your ability to you know, go in and use the old keywords planet toll and get tons of data. I mean, I remember when I first started doing affiliate marketing, you know, best part of 15 years ago, now you just jump on the old Keyword Planner. And you know, you didn’t have to spend anything, you get tons of data, you’d see all sorts of useful information. Now you don’t see anywhere near as much. So you really do have to fall back on these premium tools. And I do genuinely think that keyword cake is probably one of the beta ones I’ve used. I think the product is very fair for what it is. I think there’s some feature padding, what I call feature padding with those, you know, artificial competition matrix that has the potential to lead people astray. I think and you can new the user could be fooled into thinking right cawood cake has told me it’s going to be relatively easy to rank for this keyword because you know, it’s got an average score. So you go out and you spend a whole lot of time trying to rank for that keyword, you don’t get anywhere and you get hammered by a much more savvy competition. So if you’re able to see around that and just accept that they’ve tried to pair it out with tool to make it look a bit more meaty, then certainly, you know, you’re not going to be too disappointed with that aspect of it. You overall look, it works well. I think even the basic plan, the consultant plan offers good value for money. And fact, you know, for most people, especially the people who are probably going to be watching this video, that’s all you’re likely to need. I mean, like I said, I’ve got clients, and I also run a whole bunch of different affiliate sites, and I never needed anything more. You know, your mileage may vary, of course, but I found it very useful. They add new features, you know, the related keywords, and the people also search for keywords,

those are new features that haven’t been around for too long here. So, you know, there’s always development work going on, I’ve generally found it to be a very stable tool, it’s not particularly buggy works well. You know, it’s not like a sort of offline software, if you know, traffic, Travis, for example, that, you know, sort of does a similar thing, the pro tool, and you know, it’s got perhaps a slightly more powerful SEO competition analysis, or did last time I used it. But that software doesn’t work on Mac, you know, and it can be quite buggy on Windows. So I like the web based nature of it as well. I mean, really, yea to wrap this review up and not ramble on too long. I think keyword cake is worth it. It all comes down to how much you use it though, you know, if you buy the software at it, you know, say you worst case scenario, you pay $40 a month, you sign up monthly, you don’t want to pay the yearly subscription. And you know, you only have one affiliate site and you know you you just want to chip away at one article a month or something like that, it’s probably not going to deliver you that much value, you might use it for a month and they want to cancel it. But if you are regularly creating content, if you’re big into SEO for any purpose, whether it’s client, or affiliate marketing, or you know, creating YouTube videos or anything like that, you know, especially because you can do things like look at the YouTube suggest results, you know, you could go and say right I want to do I want to say what happens if I do dog training for you know, the YouTube suggests API, and we’ll run that search quickly while I talk a little bit more. You know, basically, if you’re in the business of trying to make money for yourself or for your clients out of longtail keywords, I think that’s a good tool. I really do. You know, and this is just showing us here, you know, the kinds of results that come from YouTube suggest, with obviously data that comes off Google database, just bear in mind that all the volume and CPC data is always the Google Ads data not from any other platform, at least that’s my understanding, be an overall keyword cake. It’s a good product. I like how it works, I think it offers reasonable value for money. I think the value for money varies from reasonable to actually good depending on how often you’re going to use it and whether you pay for the yearly option or not. If you enter longtail keywords for any digital marketing purpose, you know and you got the cash sitting there to pay for the yearly version, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. You know, it’s a great place to start on net sort of, you know, simple keyword research, you can jump on here with a few seed keyword ideas, come up with a good list of keywords get get the feel for how many people might be searching that word. Obviously the the volume is not always as accurate as we’d like it to be. And that’s more to do with where the tool gets the data from. That’s a problem with old keyword research tools, not just this one. But yeah, it’s far the functionality goes I think it really is quite good value for money.

If you found this article useful or need any help, please leave a comment below – I’ll do my best to help you out. And otherwise I will see you on my next review!

How To Get Blog Content Ideas With Answer The Public

One of the most ‘timeless’ and effective methods of affiliate marketing is ranking a website or blog for long tail keywords, and then promoting affiliate products via those posts.

Here’s an example of a website I own that has been growing nicely from this exact process:

This site has grown from nothing but finding keywords and creating blog posts and articles to fulfil the “knowledge demand” of those keywords.

However, we all know that actually coming up with blog content ideas can be quite a struggle. It’s far too easy to get ‘writer’s block’ and run out of useful things to say.

So what’s the solution?

One of the most effective strategies I have employed is finding the exact problems that people in my target audience are having, and then producing content that answers those problems.

But how do you find the problems (and – by extension – keywords) that people in your niche are searching?

There are tons of different keyword research tools, but one of my favourites remains Answer The Public. It offers a great free version that makes it easy to enter a seed keyword and find a range of long-tail keyword suggestions.

To help you get the most out of Answer The Public, I’ve put together a brief video that explains how you can use it to find great keywords for your affiliate marketing efforts:

I hope you find it useful!

Keyword Shitter – A Polished Turd?

As I promised in an earlier post on Reviews Boss, I will be bringing some attention to free platforms and mini tools that can be used to help you get ahead with your web marketing endeavours. These are tools that aren’t deserving of a full review (usually because there is no paid option available) but are worth mentioning because they can really help you take your marketing to the next level.

Today we are looking at the hilariously-named Keyword Shitter.

This is one of the most basic looking tools I have ever seen:

keywordshitter1

It’s almost beautiful in its simplicity. Note the awesome toilet graphic as well. Lovely jubbly stuff right there.

So how do you find keywords with Keyword Shitter? It’s just too easy! Simply throw in your seed keyword(s) and hit the aptly-named “Shit Keywords!” button. You can leave this tool for hours and it will find keep scraping around to find more keywords. However, the bulk of the keywords will come very quickly:

ks2

Here’s a list of almost 4000 keywords based off my seed keyword that came back to me in under 1 minute:

ks3

The only other feature available is the positive and negative filter.

With the positive filter your list will be filtered down to only contain phrases that feature the keyword(s) you add. E.g. if I add the word desk into the box, here’s what happens:

ks5

Pretty self-explanatory, right?

And as you might expect, the negative filter will remove any line that features the keyword you want to filter out. So if I want to get rid of any keywords that contain the word “review” I would add that to the negative filter:

 

Keyword Shitter truly is a polished turd – and I mean that in the best possible way. It is something that costs nothing to use, works fantastically well, and can provide you with masses of long tail keyword variations in next to no time. Start incorporating its results into your keyword research campaigns (or adding them directly into your content as relevant phrases) and watch yourself rank for more terms and pull in more organic traffic.

This thing is free and better than Long Tail Pro … why wouldn’t you want to use it? Especially when you combine it with another free tool, which I’ll show you in another post soon.

A Good Experience With Long Tail Pro

If you’ve ready my massive review of Long Tail Pro, then you’ll probably know that I’m not the biggest fan of the product. Although the software (and the team behind it) has done quite a lot of good in terms of raising awareness of long tail keywords among Internet marketers, it has always been a bit of an expensive and buggy solution in my opinion.

Recently, however, Long Tail Pro evolved into Long Tail Pro Cloud. Instead of being a software that you have installed on your desktop machine, this Cloud version is meant to bring more convenience and power by allowing you to search from an online application. Although there are some advantages to this type of cloud-based software, the cynic inside me is pretty sure the decision was made to go down this route as it more easily justifies a monthly subscription price (on the old desktop version the monthly rebill price was just for the Platinum keyword competition functionality)

I will be doing a bit of a recap of my short experience with Long Tail Pro Cloud in a later post, but suffice to say for now I decided to cancel my membership.

Unfortunately, I only remembered to cancel after another rebill had gone out for January 2019. I knew I wasn’t going to use the software, so I decided to ask for a refund and cancellation of my account.

I’m pleased to report that the process was completely effortless, and within 48hrs I had a refund of the monthly price that I paid as well as cancellation of my account. Good on the Long Tail Pro team for not beating me around the bush and coming up with a fistful of obfuscations in order to avoid having me cancel and refunds – which tends to be the case with many products in this industry.

While I may not like the product, I certainly can’t fault such prompt and effective customer service!

Keywords Everywhere Review 2019

Welcome back to Reviews Boss. Today’s review is a short one, as we are looking at a free Chrome extension called Keywords Everywhere. It is also available on Firefox, but I’m talking specifically about Chrome here as I much prefer that browser.

What Is Keywords Everywhere?

As mentioned above, it is an extension for the Chrome and Firefox browser. It’s free, and works on Mac OSX or Windows.

What Does It Do?

Keywords Everywhere main functionality is to allow you to see search volume and CPCs when you are typing in keywords into search engines like Google.

For example, if I type in “car insurance quote New Zealand”, then I see the following:

So that’s showing me search volume, CPC, and Adwords competition – neat.

I can even see these stats for Google search term suggestions:

Keywords Everywhere even works on other search engines like YouTube:

And even Amazon:

*NB – I believe this data is still Google’s data and not Amazon internal data.

How Much Does It Cost?

Keywords Everywhere is currently free. What a nice price tag!

How Do I Get It?

Go here to install Keywords Everywhere browser extension. You’ll need the Google Chrome browser installed, and then you will also need to follow a short process to get an API key that will allow you to actually get CPC and search volume data.

What Customization Options Are There?

You can set different geos and currencies, as well as pick which search engines you want to show stats for. Basically, it’s got enough power under the hood to keep you going with all your keyword research needs.

Is It Worth Using?

Totally – I use Keywords Everywhere almost every day, especially when I want to find the SV/CPC/Competition of a small number of keywords. In fact, I think it’s better than many paid keyword tools like Long Tail Pro.

Go give Keywords Everywhere a try today – you won’t be disappointed!

Hittail Review

hittail review

Video Version

Review Transcript

Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Sam Frost here from Reviewsboss.com and in this review I’m taking a quick look at a an SEO tool called HitTail. You can check it out at Hittail.com. Right off the bat I want to say that at the moment I’m just using the free version of HitTail. I’ve actually used it a few times in the past and sort of forgot about it, to be honest, until I saw it mentioned on a forum I go on. I triggered my memory to go back and check it out and basically see what HitTail is up to these days.

Basically, if you haven’t heard of HitTail, it’s a website or a platform that’s focused on long tail keywords so it’s sort of implied in the name. The original bit of HitTail and what I want to focus on in this review is a piece of technology they’ve developed that basically tries to identify what you would call underperforming long tail keywords for your website.

If you know anything about keyword research and ECO, you obviously know that long tail keywords are generally the most valuable and often contribute the vast majority of the traffic your site gets. There are all sorts of crazy stats out there, like 15% of searches, I think it is, every single day are ones that have never been made before on Google so there’s an almost endless number of long tail keywords out there. There are a lot of people who’ve done really, really well in affiliate SEO and client SEO and all sorts of other things like that just by building up content around long tail keywords ranking for it, doing the basic SEO in link building. Creating, I guess, life changing businesses through that which is really, really cool.

One thing I’ve always been interested in is trying to identify what long tail keywords actually hold really good potential for my website so basically what I’m looking at here is HitTail.

What it does is hooks into your Google search console. That used to be called Google Web Master Tools in case you aren’t down with the play and the changed name. What it allows you to do is basically identify potential keywords.

Once you’ve set up your account, which takes almost no time to do, there’s a free version available. You get a pretty heavy limitation on the data and I will be trying the premium version in the next day or so, I just want to do an initial review to start with. Once you install, you log into your HitTail account and you can say something like this.

There’s keyword ideas in HitTail which is, it’s just like a generic code of keyword research [inaudible 00:02:42], it’s nothing amazing. I loaded up some examples, it’s not really what I’m focused on either but it’s a useful little thing to have. It’s got a little bit of extra data you can see, because I’m on a free subscription you basically get very little information. Well, you don’t really get any at all in terms of the search volume. You can almost make it out there actually, that looks like 5,400 search volume in about 23 million indexed URLs or something like that for keyword research as a keyword. Once I’ve upgraded my account I’ll revisit this and talk about it but it’s just a toll for finding for finding long tails.

What I want to talk about specifically is this bit, my hot keywords. What this does, and this is the classic functionality of HitTails, is it taps into your … Basically, the keywords you’re ranking or and driving traffic from and then tries to help you identify keyword suggestions so I’ll explain the toll trip here. Keywords suggested by this toll already bring traffic to your website but you’re still not in Google’s top 10 with them. Getting into Google’s top 10 with these keywords were bringing up to 10 times more traffic so basically what HitTail was doing here is it’s finding keywords. While you’re not on the first page we are receiving traffic and they’re long tail keywords.

Then what it’s doing is suggesting those keywords to you so I found a few reviews about Crytocurrency exchanges so, for example, Bitcoin’s market. I found a bit of posting about Thecoinsmarkets.com Cryptocurrency Exchange where it looked like an exit scam, now there’s potentially a chance it’s coming back. Who knows? That’s not relevant to this video but obviously people are searching there and I must be on page two or three or something, probably page two I’m guessing, I haven’t actually checked. Basically, that was driving traffic to the site, reviewsboss.com, but I’m not on page one.

What HitTails is suggesting here, I should go out and create a piece of content about that. Now, I’m not going to create content about this particular keyword because Bitcoin Talk is another website, they were looking for information on another website but something like this. What is Cryptopia? Well, I’ve got a review of Cryptopia or Cryptocurrency Exchange, it’s not going to be hard for me to whip up a few hundred word article about what is Cryptopia specifically optimized around that keyword and then link back to my main review or even add a more detailed section with an H2 tag to my main review.

Let’s have a look at other things. Okay, here we go, Smart Sheet review, this is a good one. Smart Sheet is a product I use working with a client of mine, a local business that I work with on a regular basis and they use Smart Sheet for internal communications. I’ve done a review of it. What that’s saying is that people are actually clicking on my Smart Sheet review even though it’s not in the top 10 so if I could that into the top 10, people are already clicking it and viewing it now, I’m going to get a lot more traffic.

There’s a sense, I guess, that HitTail tells you the obvious but it is useful just to see these ideas, really always doing or showing you ideas. It’s prompting you how to think about potential topics you could write about. You can see … I mean, obviously the data is fairly limited and when I upgrade to the paid version and test it out for a month or two I will come back and redo this video and redo my review but it is useful to see.

For example, what’s another one, the Affilorama review. I have a review of Affilorama, I know it doesn’t rank on the first page yet, I’m working on that. That tells me, “Okay, I should really, really work on it.” The score, you could order by the score and what it’s saying there is the higher the score is the easier you can get into Google’s top 10, and potentially the more traffic you can get. You can do things like add as a to do just so you know … I guess a portfolio of keywords you want to try and rank for.

Basically yeah, you’re just looking for long tail keyword opportunities and you can see your to do list here and you can mark it as done once you’ve done a specific content piece or section of content with an existing article. You can even order outsourced articles direct which I haven’t tried, I don’t know if they’re any good or not. Yeah, HitTail, I’m only using the free version at the moment just to test it out, see what the functionality is like.

I like what I see so far so I am going to order the premium version just for a month and try it. Then I’ll come back and do a full review. If you’re already driving traffic through SEO I do recommend you try something like this just to get a feel for what other keywords are out there that you could add to your mix on your website and drive additional results.

Ubersuggest Review: Uncover Keywords with High Buyer Intent in Minutes

Keyword research — the fundamental component of online marketing that marketers love to skip.

Whether you’re planning a PPC campaign, preparing to build links for SEO, or just poking around for a feasible niche, keyword research will help you get profitable results.

Remember, targeting the right keywords means reaching the right audience with your content. Even if you have the most amazing product or service in the world, it’ll be extremely difficult to sell if you approach the wrong people.

The good news is, doing effective keyword research doesn’t have to involve hours staring at spreadsheets and pulling your hair out over hard-to-read data.

Using a keyword research tool like Ubersuggest, it’s easy to unearth profitable keyword opportunities. All you need is a seed keyword, dependable internet, and a couple of minutes to spare.

Without further ado, here’s a closer look at Ubersuggest’s features and how to use them:

1. Expanding Seed Keywords into Hundreds of Long-Tail Variations

You’ve probably heard of this tip before, but if you want to get fast and reliable results, then you need to avoid oversaturated keywords that everyone else uses.

Ubersuggest can help you with this by providing hundreds of long-tail keyword suggestions based on your seed keyword.

For example, if you want to find long-tail variations of “auto repair,” simply enter it on Ubersuggest to generate the following results:

Easy, right?

You can also choose your keyword sources under the “Keyword Suggestions” section, which could be the Google Keyword Planner, Google Suggest, or both.

With Ubersuggest, you should be able to find a couple of useful long-tail keywords from the first page alone.

Just remember that long-tail keywords contain at least 3 terms and pertain to a very specific topic. Since they are generally less competitive than broader terms, they’re much easier to rank for in SEO as well as utilize for unique content ideas.

2. Presenting Every Metric that Matters

You don’t need to be an expert to know that not all keywords are made equal.

Even if you’re comparing two long-tail keywords side by side, one of them is bound to be more effective for marketing or advertising.
Ubersuggest makes sure these differences are as clear-cut as possible by presenting three important metrics:

  • Search Volume
    The first metric you’ll see is the average search volume that keywords receive. While this is a direct measure of a keyword’s popularity, it’s definitely not the only thing you should consider.
  • CPC
    Short for cost per click, the CPC metric is the average fee that advertisers are willing to cover using a keyword. A high CPC value is a good indication that a keyword performs well in PPC.
  • Competition
    In Ubersuggest, a keyword’s competitiveness is scored from 0.0 to 1.0. The sweet spot is usually 0.4 for smaller brands and marketers with a relatively small budget.

To easily sort keywords according to the metric you prefer, click on the up or down “arrowhead” icons next to them.

For example, if you want to find keywords with the highest CPC, this is what you’ll get:

To learn about the click distribution between organic and paid listings for each keyword, point your mouse to the “graph” icon to the left of the CPC value. The keyword “local auto repair shops,” for example, get 38 organic clicks and 24 paid clicks for the number one result on search engines.

3. Weeding Out Irrelevant Terms

Despite knowing the metrics mentioned above, it can still be hard to handpick the right keyword ideas due to the hundreds of suggestions presented by Ubersuggest.

That’s why you need to further refine your keyword research using the filter options found on the left side of the interface.

The first thing you may want to do is to weed out keyword suggestions that contain irrelevant terms, such as the brand name of a competitor or products that are unrelated to your business.

In relation to the example above, let’s say you don’t have anything to do with Auto Repair Xpress and A&A. Simply enter the terms into the “Negative Keywords” field and click “Save.”

That’s it! All the keyword suggestions that contain any of the negative keywords you specify will be immediately pulled down from the results.

By adding negative keywords, you can have long lists of keyword suggestions without all the fluff. This is extremely useful if you want to export the keywords into a CSV file and share it with your team or clients.

But what if you don’t care for CSV documents and want to get straight to the good stuff?

I’m glad you asked. It’s time to find the winning keywords that demand your full attention.

4. Seasoning Your Keywords with Commercial or Transactional Terms

Ubersuggest has a very straightforward approach when it comes to keyword filters.

All you have to do is add the exact terms you want to see under the “Filter Results” field and it’s a done deal. You just need to figure out the right commercial or transactional keywords that your prospective leads are likely to use.

For example, suppose you’re a freelance web designer who needs more traffic to your “Hire Me” landing page. Your initial Ubersuggest results with the seed keyword “web designer” should look like:

You can then add the keyword “hire” to the “Filter Results” field to scrape keyword opportunities with transactional intent.

Of course, there are many ways to use filters to fine-tune your keyword research with Ubersuggest. You can throw in your product or platform of specialization, the area you serve, and so on.

As a final piece of advice, make sure you’re not targeting a keyword opportunity that’s falling off in terms of popularity. For this, simply hover your mouse pointer over the graph icon to the left of the Search Volume Metric to reveal its month by month performance.

Conclusion

Overall, Ubersuggest is the perfect representation of what keyword research tools should be.

It doesn’t put you through hours of number-crunching since it allows you to zero in on lucrative keyword opportunities that draw in searchers with commercial intent, in minutes.

Best of all, it’s 100% free. You don’t even need to register for an account or provide an email address to use it.
With virtually nothing to complain about, why not take it for a spin yourself? Seriously — do it and tell us about your experience in the comments below!

Traffic Travis Review 2019

Welcome back to another top-notch review here at Reviews Boss.  Today we’re taking a look at a product I have been using for years, called Traffic Travis.

What Is Traffic Travis?

It is free SEO software with a professional, paid upgrade option available. You can get the free version here (and then upgrade later) or you can just go straight to the professional edition here.

Above the SEO functionalities, there are also tools you can use to research available domain names and improve your PPC performance (as well as boost Adsense earnings)

It has been a mainstay of the SEO software game for a number of years now, and literally hundreds of thousands of people have used it.

In fact, if you Google “SEO software”, TT shows up as one of the top results:

traffic travis in SERPs

So I think it is fair to say that Reviews Boss has a duty to do an honest and detailed review of this product.

Disclosure

At one point (many moons ago) I was actively involved in the development and promotion of Traffic Travis. However, that does not affect my dedication to providing an honest and detailed review, and it has not changed my opinion as I’m no longer employed by the company which developed the product.

What Can It Do?

According to the vendor pitch, here’s what Traffic Travis can do:

  • Run automated SEO health checks on your site
  • See your site backlinks and analyze them in detail
  • Deep dive into SEO competition for keywords and competitor sites
  • Improve your on-page SEO
  • Track your rankings for multiple keywords Google, Yahoo, and Bing
  • Research new keywords to find terms to try and rank for
  • Analyze the competition of these keywords to see breakdowns of top 10/20 competition (as well as get at-a-glance keyword competitiveness metrics)
  • Get insights into your PPC/Adwords competition in order to improve campaign performance
  • Find domain names based on the keywords you uncover

How To Get It

There are two versions of TT; free and Pro.

The easiest way to get it is to go here and download the free edition. You’ll need to register with your email address in order to do so (I will come back to this in the “cons” section of the review).

I recommend that you only ever download Traffic Travis through the official website; don’t go through one of those download sites like Cnet or Softpedia as you will still need to register anyway, and also you might wind up downloading an outdated version.

You should get the free version before you look at upgrading to Pro.

Market Samurai Vs Traffic Travis

I will maybe do a full comparison of Market Samurai and TT at some stage in the future. I’m not certain on this as it seems like Market Samurai (I think it is now called Noble Samurai) has all but been abandoned. The site looks like something out of the dark ages now. That being said, the social media presence of Market Samurai is still being updated on a semi-regular basis. Certainly I do not hear people talking about it anywhere near as much as they used to.

In the meantime I suggest that you take time to look at this handy comparison on Traffic Salad.

Traffic Travis Vs Long Tail Pro

There is only one functionality that these two tools share; keyword research. Both work by tapping in to Google’s Keyword Planner and then returning results based off that. Long Tail Pro focuses specifically on keyword research, whereas Traffic Travis offers a broader sweep of tools.

So, which one does keyword research better?

Overall, I would say that Long Tail Pro is better at finding long tail keywords. That is, after all, the purpose of the software. However, Traffic Travis actually has quite decent SERP competition analysis; and unlike LTP it doesn’t cost you anything in terms of paying a monthly fee for some kind of premium access. You can even analyze quite a few keywords on the free version; although if you plan on analyzing more than 20 keywords in any one sitting, then you’ll want Pro.

You can read more about Long Tail Pro in my review of it here.

Traffic Travis Alternative

The main alternative to TT is probably Market Samurai. However, there are a bunch of different products out there (some free, some premium, some with different tiers) that can manage the functionality of Traffic Travis or at least provide an alternative to some of it:

  • Raven Tools
  • Web CEO
  • Advanced Web Ranking
  • Long Tail Pro
  • Market Samurai
  • The list goes on … I don’t really like meaningless comparisons like that.

If you’re interested in learning more about all the available SEO software options that might be able to replicate some of TT’s functionality, then I suggest you read this post.

How To Download Traffic Travis Professional

The easiest way to get Professional is to upgrade from within the software itself. However, if you are determine to buy Pro from the outset, then you can do so here.

Just scroll down the page and buy, and you will then get your Traffic Travis Pro download:

I definitely recommend that you try the free version first, however. Then you can upgrade from within the software here:

Pro Price

If you’re looking to upgrade, then you’ll want to know the price. Professional edition costs $97 USD per year. This means that you pay once per year.

There is no monthly option or lifetime access option available. I would like to see a lifetime access option … that would be nice.

Payments are processed through Clickbank, which is a leading digital product payment processor. You can check out my review of Clickbank here.

A Look Under The Hood

At this stage of the review, I reckon it’s probably time to take a look under the hood of Traffic Travis and see what the software can do.

This will be very image heavy, and each image will feature a caption underneath explaining what you are seeing and how it relates to the functionality of the software:

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When you power up Traffic Travis, this is what you will see for the first time – you might actually notice that the software is not up to date ven if you just happened to have downloaded it.

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Welcome to the home screen of TT. It’s from here where you will set up your projects, manage your sites and get at-a-glance statistics. You can see down the bottom the Upgrade To Pro option – this is where you need to click if you do want to upgrade.

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Adding a project into TT is really easy (you do it from the top menu bar). Once you’ve chosen to add a new project you will see a screen like the one above. It’s pretty simple what you need to here. You can always come back and add more keywords and search engines at a later date. The only confusing option is the Sitemap URL. If you don’t have a sitemap setup yet, then TT will try to scrape your web pages from robots.txt – although you really should try to get a Sitemap.

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Once you’ve added in the basic details of your project, you will probably also want to use the “Update Settings” option and set everything to its shortest possible time period that you get more regular updates. What you see above is the default option.  I don’t really do anything in Miscellaneous, Video Rankings, or Email Scheduler (although you are more than welcome to try these features out!)

If you run a YouTube channel and are trying to rank your videos, then the Video Rankings module will be music to your ears. It can help you track where your videos are ranking on YouTube for any given keyword. It also checks ranks for Google Videos as well.

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Miscellaneous settings.

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The video rankings pane for checking your YouTube rankings.

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The email scheduler is where you can set up automated report emails. This could be handy if you are using TT to track client rankings.

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Once you’ve added in your report you should see something like this. Note that there isn’t too much data available for Reviews Boss because it is a very new site. If your site was established, then  you would hopefully see a whole lot more under top 5 ranked keywords, backlinks, and so on. I’ve also only got 4 keywords added at the moment, so hardly much to work with!

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If you want to upgrade to Premium and download it, then you need to use that UPGRADE TO PRO button that will be at the bottom of your screen. Remember to get a feel for TT and whether or not you actually like using it before making the call to upgrade.

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This is the basic view of the keyword research tab. It really is quite self explanatory. You put in the keywords you want to search to expand from – your “seed” keywords – and then go from there by hitting fetch. BTW if you’re having trouble with keyword research, then you should check out my speed keywords gig on Source Market here, which will really help you hit the ground running.

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When working with the keyword research tool you can change your location and language setting, as well as SERP values match type.

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As with just about every keyword tool ever, you can filter your results. This is standard stuff.

Now let’s move on to the SEO competition analysis tool which is probably my favourite bit of Traffic Travis. The purpose of this particular module is to give you an at-a-glance difficulty metric for ranking for any particular keyword, as well as detailed analysis of the top 10/20 ranking sites for any particular term.

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From within the Research/SEO Competition module you just enter your keyword(s) and then press okay. The module will then go away and get to work to analyse the results.

NB: If you want to analyse a lot of keywords – in my experience anything over 20 at once – then you really need the Pro version PLUS working proxies. Otherwise you will get blocked from the Google API used to power this tool.

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This is what you will see after the SERP competition check has run. Now unfortunately that image is kind of hard to see due to it being compressed for web – I will try to upload a better version in due course.

But you should be able to make out the “extremely difficult” rating, which tells me without digging any further that I would probably struggle BIG TIME to rank for the keyword “SEO Software”.

Then you get the other data that is better for those who want to make a manual analysis of the keyword and their probability of ranking for it:

  • Pagerank average and median
  • Page backlinks (ie the links pointing to that page that is ranking)
  • Site-wide backlinks count
  • Number of SERP results
  • Intitle and Inanchor competition
  • KEI score
  • CPC

 

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The piece de resistance is the fact that you can get a detailed report like the one above that breaks down each keyword and its top 10 (or 20, if you choose it) ranked entries in order to see how they are performing in terms of backlinks, on-page SEO, authority etc.

Traffic Travis Pro Crack

People are always on the lookout for cracked versions of Traffic Travis Pro in order to save money. My advice is don’t waste your time with this. Either use the free version, or stump up the money for the paid version. Cracked software puts your machine at risk, and usually goes wrong anyway (especially when it’s something like TT that has frequent updates).

Don’t be stingy – either pay for premium access or make do with the free option.

I know at one stage a number of years ago, there was a working cracked version that was doing the rounds on places like Blackhatworld. That is long dead, so don’t even bother. Just pay for it 🙂

Traffic Travis Pro Download

Want to download Traffic Travis Pro? You can do so here. Please note you will need to pay the $97 USD purchase price before you can complete your download.

Traffic Travis For Mac

One of the most common questions about TT is how to run it on Mac OSX. Unfortunately, there is no native support for OSX. This means that you either need to look for alternative software (ideally something that is cloud based) or use a workaround that will allow you to run TT on your Mac.

On the Traffic Travis website there are some solutions available for using Mac. Basically they involve either installing Windows on a partition of your hard drive or secondary hard drive, or using a software like Parallels in order to run a Windows environment on your machine.

The problem with these options is that they cost money, because you either have to buy an expensive software or purchase a valid Windows licence key, unless you already happen to have one lying around.

Honestly, the easiest way to use Traffic Travis for Mac is to skip all the fiddle-farting and go out and buy a dirt cheap Windows laptop. I used to have an old laptop I kept lying around for this exact purpose. I could run TT whenever I needed it, as well as some other Windows only software that I used. Now I’ve gone back to Windows only it’s not an issue for me, but I still recommend this as an easy solution.

Pros

Here’s what I like about the product:

  • Reasonable Price. $97 per year is not a bad price at all or an SEO software that has so many different features, and which has a proven track record of being reliable. Furthermore, the free edition is actually very good if you are just managing a couple of sites.
  • Regular Updates. Traffic Travis has been going steady for years now, and is always regularly updated. You can feel safe and assured that your purchase isn’t going to be abandoned any time soon. I’m a big fan of regular updates.
  • Lots Of Features. You really can do a heck of a lot of stuff with Traffic Travis. I know a lot of more advanced SEOs don’t really like it because it is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, and it also prioritizes simplicity over power (compared to something like Scrapebox, for example).
  • Good Support. If you have any issues you need help with, then support is not hard to come by and is generally very good. There is a huge FAQ database available here, which covers most questions you could ever want to ask. If that doesn’t get you to where you need to be, then there is also a ticket-based support system available with quick replies.
  • Very Usable Free Tier. Some SEO software massively restricts the amount of value a free subscriber can get (I’m looking at you, Ahrefs). Traffic Travis can do just about everything you’d want it to do on the free tier, which is great when you are first starting out and can’t justify stumping up the cash for the Pro version.
    • Make sure you’ve checked out my guide above to what is different between the free and pro editions. I think you will find that the pro edition stacks up rather favourably.
  • Easy Refund If You Aren’t Happy. Because Traffic Travis is sold through Clickbank you are entitled to a no-questions-asked refund within 60 days of purchase. If you’re sitting on the fence, then this should give you some great peace of mind. Clickbank’s refund policy is absolutely watertight, so you have nothing to worry about.

Cons

Here’s what I dislike about TT:

  • No Cloud Access. People spend less time these days in front of their computers, and more time on phones, tablets etc while out and about. Because there is no cloud access you have to use Traffic Travis on a desktop or laptop machine. It would be great to have cloud access and the ability to check from a mobile device.
  • No Mac Native Support. This has been an ongoing issue for a number of years now. The lack of native Mac support is frustrating, and should be fixed. The only way you can run this software on a Mac is to go through the expense and hassle of running a virtual machine or secondary Windows install. It surely has to be time that an all-new Mac compatible version is created.
  • Annual Pricing. Access to the software costs $97 per year. So while this is a meagre $8 per month, it still sucks when you forget you’re paying an annual fee and your credit card or Paypal gets rebilled. I would like to see a lifetime access option for a big discount like $197.
  • Your Inbox Will Be Under Attack. Remember that Traffic Travis is produced by the same company as Affilorama (and Salehoo, which is another product I will review in the near future). Once you download the free version or buy the Pro edition, your email address is added to FINISH
  • Affilorama Premium Upsell. You need to consciously untick this, unless you want to get access to Affilorama Premium via a slightly surreptitious upsell. You get the first month for free or for a dollar or something low ball like that. But if you forget to cancel, then you are automatically rebilled the next month for $47. Not ideal – either remember to cancel or just uncheck the box anyway. I will be reviewing this product in the near future in greater detail so you can see if Affilorama Premium is actually worth buying; if the conclusion is good, then you can always go back and get it.
  • Not Superb At Any One Thing.  TT is a bit like a Swiss Army Knife. It has a lot of useful tools, but none of them are outstanding at doing their respective job. For example, its keyword research module is useful, but nowhere near as powerful as something more specialised like Long TailPro. This is why a lot of more experienced SEOs aren’t huge fans of TT, because it probably just isn’t powerful enough for their specific needs.

Conclusion

Should you buy Traffic Travis?

As far as free SEO software goes, the standard version is a handy tool to have in your arsenal. It tracks ranks quite accurately, gives you a useful overall picture of the health of your website, and can help with performing competitive SEO and PPC analysis.

Considering it is free, what’s not to love?

But what about the paid, professional version of the product? Is it worth a buy?

You know what, I actually think it is. However, it is only worth buying once you’ve built up some experience with SEO, and if you genuinely have a need for the extra functionalities (like the ability to add more projects, research more keywords and so on).

Start out by downloading the free version of TT here, and get to know how the software works and its functionality first.

Once you’ve spent some time with the free version and have got used to it, you can make a call as to whether upgrading to the Pro version is worth it for you or not.

I have TT Pro and enjoy using it on a regular basis to track rankings, get handy SEO competition analysis, and other research metrics. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure that anyone with a bit of skill and the inclination to do so could replicate most of the functions for free using other tools.

But as a unified dashboard from which I can look at basic SEO and PPC metrics, do research, and optimise my sites, it has use that justifies the purchase price. As a sort of jack-of-all-trades toolkit that can work alongside other more premium products, it really is quite handy.

Overall, I recommend it. Start with the free version – you can download it here – and then take your time to get used to the software and what it can do for you. From there you can make the call on whether it is worth upgrading to the professional version.

Keyword Shitter Pro – Not Just Your Same Old $hit

keyword shitter pro

A while back a did a review of a free online tool called Keyword Shitter (you can read the review here). Despite the bizarre name of the product, this review has become one of the most popular on my site … people just love free keyword research software as opposed to paying a fortune for tools like Long Tail Pro.

There’s now a newer, prettier turd on the block. It’s called Keyword Shitter Pro – and today I’m here to review it in order to determine whether the original is still the best, or whether this new contender is the king of keyword crap.

What Is It?

Keyword Shitter Pro is, as the name kind of suggests, a keyword research tool. Unless I’m much mistaken it’s basically a Google Suggest scraper like the original one.

All you do is load in a seed keyword or two, select some basic parameters, and then go to town with finding loads of keyword phrases.

Here’s an example result:

keyword-shitter-results

How Much Does It Cost?

It’s free. Nothing more to say here. No account even needed!

What I Like

  • Pretty, functional layout. If you have ever seen the original Keyword Shitter, then you’ll know that tool looks like the contents of a toilet. This “Pro Edition” is actually really attractive. It’s even mobile-friendly.
  • Seems pretty fast and reliable. I did a whole bunch of searches in a range of niches and gave it a good hammering … nothing broke at all!
  • Good results. Once you get the knack of putting in a good seed keyword, as well as using the prefix/suffix options you will get some great long tail results. You should be able to find some real keyword gold here.

What I Dislike

  • Cannot see more results on page, results are instead “paginated”. This is the one thing that irks me more  than anything else with Keyword Shitter Pro. On the original Keyword Shitter, you would just get this immense cascade of keywords going down the page for thousands of lines. Ugly, disgusting, but actually quite functional. On KSP you have to make do with about 10 results per page, and then sift through with paginated results. The only other option is to download a CSV, which you’ll wind up doing every time.
  • No help or tutorials. Okay, it is quite a self-explanatory tool to use. But maybe a 5 minute embedded YouTube video would be nice? Just explain the basics of what you need to do to get great results, and eliminate that guess work!
  • No CPC or search volume data. This is a minor gripe, as the original Keyword Shitter doesn’t offer this option either. However, seeing CPC and SV data for the found keywords without having to result to a 3rd party option would be great. Although you can see word and character counts, these are largely irrelevant compared to search volume and CPC data!
    • The easiest way around this limtation at the moment is simply to use a plugin like Keywords Everywhere, or to upload your keyword dump back into Google Keyword Planner.

Conclusion

Although OG Keyword Shitter is awesome, I must admit that Keyword Shitter Pro is better. Although the pagination thing drives me up the wall, it is much nicer to be able to get the same great functionality but with much nicer design and layout.

Go give Keyword Shitter Pro a try and let me know how you get on. I think it’s a real hoot to use, and I’ve already found a bunch of useful keywords. Combine the CSV export with something like Keywords Everywhere for volume and CPC data, and then do some manual analysis and you’ll be in keyword heaven!

 

Long Tail Pro Review 2019

This is a review of the newest, cloud-based version of Long Tail Pro. Further down the page you will see my opinion of the older desktop version.

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of building a successful website. It is important for blogs, ecommerce sites, personal sites, business sites and much more. If you want to rank in Google well, you need to research good keywords and apply them to your website.

In this Long Tail Pro review, we are going to be sharing the pros and cons of the software tool, and how to use it for keyword research. By the end of this review you should have all the information you need to decide whether Long Tail Pro is the right software tool for you.

Summary of Long Tail Pro

  • Long Tail Pro is a powerful keyword research tool that allows users to generate hundreds or thousands of unique “Long Tail” keywords in a matter of minutes based on one or multiple root keywords.
  • After generating long tail keyword ideas, you can conduct a website competitive analysis of the top sites that appear.
  • Long Tail Pro can calculate the viability of keyword ideas for your brand on a scale of 0 to 100.
  • Up to 200 manual keyword entries can be done at a time.
  • Monthly fees range from $37 a month, to $147 a month and annual fees range from $297 a year to $1177 a year.

Long Tail Pro’s Background

Long Tail Pro was created by Spencer Haws from NichePursuits.com. He created the software tool in 2011 as he was frustrated with the keyword tools on offer at the time. Haws continually developed the software for 5 years before selling it in 2016. The new owners have continued to develop Long Tail Pro, keeping it at the forefront of keyword research.

Spencer Haws is focused on what I call the “passive income scene”. The passive income scene tends to be focused on developing niche websites that are based around a special interest or product. Content for these niche websites is then created around long tail keywords, and then monetized through a variety of different methods such as Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates or even drop shipping methods.

The goal with passive income websites is to build up enough of them so that you have a steady income stream for minimal work input.

Long Tail Pro has changed over the years and has moved from a tool that you would install on your PC or MAC, to a cloud based tool. We reviewed the early version a number of years ago (which you can read here). However, as the tool has changed to an online based service we thought we would take another look at it.  

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

You may be wondering what long tail keywords actually are and why they are so important. Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very specific to what you are selling or advertising.

When a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they want to buy or research. Such specific searches are far more likely to convert to sales or clicks than generic searches.

For example: if your company sells mountain bikes, the chances are that your pages are never going to appear near the top of an organic search for “bike” because there is too much competition. But if you specialise in a certain brand or style of bike you can use that as a way to form more specific keywords. Something like “Giant Reign Mountain Bike for Sale” is going to be more specific and more likely to convert to a sale.

These more specific, long tail keywords will probably result in less traffic to your website, but the traffic you do draw will be better.

What Is Long Tail Pro?

Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool that helps you quickly and easily find low competition keywords for your website. The tool is built in particular for those who are using SEO (search engine optimization) as opposed to social media or paid ads (Google Adwords). You can use Long Tail Pro to find keywords for paid ads, but it was really designed around finding them for SEO users.

In short, Long Tail Pro helps you find good quality keywords quickly and in bulk based on one or multiple root keywords. Additionally, the tool also displays search volume, advertiser bid, rank value, number of words and keyword competitiveness.

Keyword competitiveness is useful because it helps you judge the competition and keyword difficulty.

LTP has been updated to a cloud based version that lets you use the software anywhere and at any time. Those that have purchased the desktop version of LTP may be eligible for a free version of LTP Cloud. Take a look here to find out more information.

What is New in the Cloud Version of Long Tail Pro?

For those with the desktop version of LTP, you will be pleased to know that they still support the software. However, the team behind LTP is now focused on the cloud based version of the tool. Let’s take a look at what is new in Long Tail Pro Cloud.

Use it anywhere – Now that Long Tail Pro is a web based up, you can use it anywhere and on pretty much any computer or device. The old desktop version limited you to 3 installations of LTP, which meant you could only install it on three computers at a time.

Its faster – Long Tail Pro cloud is significantly faster than the desktop version of the software (over fifty times apparently). Instead of waiting hours for bulk KC calculations, you will get results in 30-60 seconds.

You can see exact search volume results – One of the worst things about the previous version of Long Tail Pro was opening up the tool or Google Keyword Planner and seeing those dreaded “1K-10K” search volume results. This really limited the effectiveness of keyword research with LTP, which is why they decided to use external data providers for the cloud version rather than using Google Adwords.

No need to provide a Google Adwords account – LTP Cloud is not dependent on your Adwords account, so you no longer need to worry about having account restrictions of spending money on Adwords. Having to use a Google Adwords account was something we didn’t like about the desktop version of LTP

LTP cloud includes a Rank Tracker – Long Tail Pro Cloud users will get a beta version of the software’s new Rank Tracker for free. This Rank Tracker gives you the ability to track page rankings for various keywords.

Personal domain analysis – LTP now includes a tool that can analyse your domain and provide you with useful insights about what keyword competitiveness scores you should target for your specific website. This analysis is based on the authority that search engines give to your domain. In addition to suggested keywords, Long Tail Pro also provides you with your domain’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores, along with the number of backlinks.

You can assess the income potential of your keywords – A new metric called Rank Value was introduced with LTP Cloud, which lets you assess the money making potential of your keywords. Rank Value is the estimated monetary value of ranking number 1 for any given keyword.

What Has Been Left Out of Long Tail Pro Cloud?

While a number of things have been added to the cloud version of Long Tail Pro, some things didn’t make the cut.

Unlimited keyword results are gone – Unlike the desktop version, the cloud version of LTP comes with limited keyword usage. This is because Long Tail Pro no longer relies on user Adwords and Moz accounts, and the company behind LTP has to pay for every row of data they retrieve. Long Tail Pro offers a range of different plans to cover all budgets and users, so you can get the number of keyword searches you need.

You can no longer retrieve Global search volumes – Once again, this feature has been left out because Long Tail Pro has switched to relying on external data providers. Long Tail Pro claims that the global search volumes in these external sources were not reliable and consistent enough. This is a bummer for people who might have used this feature in the desktop version of Long Tail Pro.

Google/Bing Title Competition and Domain Availability has been cut – LTP has replaced this with new features such as Personal Domain Analysis and Rank Value.

Who Is Long Tail Pro for?

  • SEO marketers who use Google, Youtube and other similar platforms.
  • People who want to increase or improve their organic traffic.
  • Google and Youtube Adwords advertisers who want to get better conversions while reducing the CPC.
  • Affiliate marketers who are looking to find long tail keywords around which to base their websites, and create content.
  • Live streamers and video creators who want to expand their reach and get more views.

Key Features of Long Tail Pro

Long Tail Pro is more than just a keyword research tool and it is packed full of useful tools to get more quality traffic to your website. We have listed some of the great features of the tool below:

  • Generate keywords based on a root/seed keyword.
  • Create multiple different projects to help keep organised (you can have different campaigns set for different websites).
  • Find high-CPC long tail keywords that are great for increasing Adsense revenue.
  • Import keywords into Long Tail Pro
  • Use Long Tail Pro to find keyword-rich domain names. This is especially useful if you are creating a niche blog.
  • Keyword competition checker
  • See search volume and rank value of keywords.
  • A favourite system lets you save your best keywords.
  • Google Adwords suggestion.
  • Backlink Analysis.
  • Check the rank value of keywords and assess their monetary value.

How Much Does Long Tail Pro Cost?

Long Tail Pro is offered at a range of different costs for all budgets. You can pay in monthly or yearly instalments and there is a 7-day free trial on offer as well. There are three different options you can choose from, which we have outlined below.

Agency Pro Starter
Keyword lookups per 24 hours 6000 2500 800
KC calculations per 24 hours 6000 2500 800
SERP lookups per 24 hours 6000 2500 800
Tracked keywords 1000 200 30
Tracked domains Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Rank updates Daily Daily Daily
Simultaneous logins 5 2 1

The costs for each different option are as follows:

  • Agency – $147 a month or $1177 per year ($98/month)
  • Pro – $67 per month or $537 per year ($45/month)
  • Starter – $37 per month or $297 per year ($25/month)

Annual options can be paid monthly as well and annual members will also get access to Long Tail University.

What is Long Tail Pro University?

Long Tail Pro University is an in-depth guide that teaches you how to find powerful keywords and get more traffic to your website. The information contained in the guide is not only useful for niche websites, but also other businesses as well.

Who gets access to Long Tail University?

  • All annual subscribers will be given access within the app.
  • Any monthly subscribers or Lifetime owners who have purchased LTU previously will be given access within the app. 
  • All LTU owners without an LTP Cloud account will be given access to the LTU site.

The Pros of Long Tail Pro – What is Good About the Tool?

Long Tail Pro offers a number great features that can help you get better quality traffic to your website. Here’s a list of what we feel is good about Long Tail Pro and the benefits of using the tool.

  • You can get keyword suggestions in bulk – Long Tail Pro lets you input up to 5 root keywords at a time, and it will spit out as many as 400 related keywords per seed keyword. Additionally, if you have a large list of keywords already, you input them manually and get all the important stats for each keyword.
  • Multiple projects let you be more organised – The ability to create multiple projects for multiple websites or blogs is really useful. It is great that you can have different projects in Long Tail Pro to organise keywords per website or focus.
  • The keyword competitiveness (KC) score is good – This feature will tell you a score between 1 and 100 that represents how difficult it will be to rank on Google. The ability to quickly see how competitive a keyword is makes choosing the right one much easier. We feel that this feature is one of the main highlights of Long Tail Pro.
  • We like the Google Adwords Suggestion feature – While Long Tail Pro was developed with SEO in mind, the Google Adwords Suggestion feature is great for those looking for keywords that will work well with paid ads.
  • It is easy to use and fast – Even the most inexperienced person will be capable of getting their head around Long Tail Pro. The cloud based version of LTP is considerably faster and more stable than the desktop variant.
  • The rank tracker is simple to use – The ability to track page rankings for various different keywords is definitely useful and helps you decide on which parts of your website you should focus on.
  • Long Tail Pro is polished and professional – The LTP user interface is clean and professional with minimal clutter. You can tell that a whole heap of work has gone into making Long Tail Pro Cloud and it is certainly a step above the desktop version. Many other SEO software programs or tools give off the vibe that they have been slapped together in a couple of days, but it is clear that the Long Tail Pro team have spent a lot of time developing a premium product.

The Cons of Long Tail Pro – What is Bad About it?

  • It is overpriced – The main issue I have with Long Tail Pro Cloud (as with the desktop version we reviewed a while back) is the cost. $37 per month for what is essentially a glorified Google Keyword Planner is too costly. Even the annual membership at $25 per month feels like bad value and don’t get us started on the other, more expensive plans.
  • Keyword lookups, KC calculations and tracked keywords are limited – It’s a real shame that unlimited keyword results were removed when Long Tail Pro went cloud based. We understand that there are costs associated when keywords are looked up, but we wish the limits were higher. The limit of 800 keyword lookups a day feels pretty low when you are paying nearly $40 a month to use the service. While we probably would be fine with this, if you are doing lots of keyword research on a particular day you will find LTP frustrating to use.
  • You can only use 5 seed keywords at once – It would be nice to be able to use 10 or more seed keywords, as this would make keyword research faster and better.
  • It isn’t that much better than free alternatives – Like we wrote above, Long Tail Pro just feels overpriced. Yes, the KC calculator, rank tracker and backlink analysis tools are useful, but for those just looking to find keywords, there are free alternatives that can do the same job. If you want to get similar results in terms of just finding long tail keywords, then I suggest you check out Keyword Shitter or even ScrapeBox at $97. The main advantage LTP has over free alternatives is the keyword competitiveness calculator. It is a useful feature and is a good way of quickly measuring how difficult keywords are to rank for. The biggest problem is that you should really be learning how to analyse SEO competition for keywords yourself. Manual analysis of SERP results for prospective keywords is almost always going to be better than using the KC tool Long Tail Pro provides. We are also not too sure how accurate Long Tail Pro really is with its keyword competitiveness calculations.
  • Global search volumes are gone – It’s a shame that LTP ditched the option to retrieve global search volume. While we understand that changing to external sources meant they could not include the feature, it will come as a disappointment to some new and existing users.

How to Use Long Tail Pro

Now that we have talked about the pros and cons of LTP, let’s look at how you can use it to find long tail keywords. Once you have signed up, you can start using the service straight away. If you have signed up for a trial account, you will be limited to 100 keywords per 24 hours.

The first thing you need to do is to input some seed keywords. Think of some keywords that relate to the product you are selling or article you want to write. You can even use something like Keyword Shitter to get an idea of some keywords and then input them into Long Tail Pro. For this article we have given an example of dog toys as we run a website focused on dogs.

Along with the keywords you input, you also have the option to change the number of suggestions per keyword you receive, and some more advanced options.

When you are ready to go, click “Retrieve”, Long Tail Pro will generate all the long tail keywords for you, along with the Average KC score, Volume, Bid, Words, and Rank Value.

You can sort the results by clicking on the Avg. KC, Volume, etc. and then select the best long tail keywords that suite your needs. We input a few seeds keywords related to dog toys and you can see our results below.

Manual Keyword Search

If you have keywords already, you can try the manual search function to find out more information about them. Simply type in the manual keywords (limit 200) and then hit “Retrieve”. LTP will find all the information you need to know about the keywords, such as the Avg. KC, Volume, Rank Value, etc.

Rank Tracker

The rank tracker in LTP is a great feature and can definitely save you some time. Instead of manually searching keywords and checking their rank, you can streamline the process by inputting them straight into Long Tail Pro. Pop your keywords and website URL in the rank tracker and Long Tail Pro will automatically check their positions for ranking in Google.

With LTP’s rank tracker you can change the location to see how your keywords are performing in other countries outside of the United States. This is useful for marketers who want to target a specific location.

With the rank tracker, you can see where your website is currently sitting and any past performance as well. You can quickly see how your website was ranking yesterday, last week and last month, and whether it has gone up or down. Clicking on a keyword will let you see the history and performance of it.

We recommend you check your ranking results every couple of days to see where you are sitting in Google. If you lose rank, work out why and optimise your campaign or get more backlinks. Consider improving your article or page as well, to improve your chances of ranking higher.

Backlink Analysis

The last main feature of Long Tail Pro we are going to cover is the Backlink Analysis tool. Enter your competitor’s URL, and hit “Retrieve”. At the top of the analysis page, you will see four important metrics to help you work out the ranking power of your competitor.

  • Referring Domains – Is a direct measure of the number of websites that link to the target page. A high number means that the website is incredibly popular, or has conducted a link building campaign.
  • Total Backlinks – Measures the total number of backlinks the target page currently has. This also signals how popular a website is.
  • Trust Flow –  Is the trustworthiness and rank worthiness in the eyes of search engines. You can increase this score by acquiring links from websites that search engines like Google deem trustworthy.
  • Citation Flow – Is dependent on the quantity of backlinks a site receives. A high CF is a strong indication of an active link-building campaign.

When you get the results for your target page, prioritise backlinks from niche-relevant websites. We also recommend that you start your backlink analysis by looking at your biggest competitors.

More Info About the Average KC Score

The KC (keyword competitiveness) score is a number between 1 and 100 that displays how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword on Google. Here’s a quick rundown on what the different scores mean and how difficult they will be to rank with.

  • 0 to 10 – No competition
  • 10 to 20 – Extremely low competition
  • 20 to 30 – Low competition
  • 30 to 40 – Moderate competition
  • 40 to 50 – Somewhat high competition
  • 50 to 60 – Very high competition
  • 60 to 70 – Extremely high competition
  • 70 to 100 – Don’t even think about it!

If you have a new website or it has a low authority, you really shouldn’t be targeting keywords with an average KC score above 30. For new websites you want to focus on keywords with a KC score as low as possible.

We recommend that you avoid anything with a KC over 40, even for more popular websites. There are plenty of easy long tail keywords, so it is better to go for them rather than the more difficult ones.

The KC score looks at the first page of Google and the sites that are ranking for the search term. The calculation for the average KC takes into account the overall authority of the website, how well the page is targeting the specific keyword and the number of backlinks.

Conclusion – Should You Buy Long Tail Pro?

Here comes the main part of the review. Should you spend your hard earned dollars on Long Tail Pro?

The short answer is no; I do not recommend that your sign up to Long Tail Pro.

Why do I not recommend it? Well, while LTP has some great features like the KC calculator and rank tracker, it is simply too expensive for what you are getting. I stated this in my last review of the desktop version and now it is even more expensive as you can’t buy a one off membership and keep it forever.

At $37 a month (or even $25 on the annual membership) it really doesn’t feel like good value, especially when you can use free alternatives that do almost as good a job. The fact that the number of keywords you can search in a day is relatively is also a bit of a slap in the face, especially when you used to be able to do unlimited searches.  

However, I am not saying the product is bad or useless. In fact, it is incredibly well polished and it is great for getting a rough idea of what keywords you want to use. The ability to track your rankings in Google is helpful, as is the backlink analysis tool. Long Tail Pro really does everything it claims it can. The simply problem is that it costs too much and that makes me disinclined to recommend the product. Assessing keyword competitiveness isn’t that difficult with free (or less expensive) tools and that is what you are mainly paying for when you sign up for Long Tail Pro.

I’m sure there are loads of people out there who have had success with Long Tail Pro and have found some excellent keywords, but for me the software really isn’t worth it. I do recommend that you try out the 7-day free trial, but beyond that it really isn’t worth your time. The truth is that the software really doesn’t do much more than many of the free alternatives out there, it just has all the information you need to know in one place.

Would I Use It If It Were Cheaper?

Now, here’s the real question. Would I use Long Tail Pro if the price was reduced? The answer is yes, but it would have to be heavily reduced. I could possibly see myself paying $10 a month for the same features as the starter pack, or around $200 to $300 for a lifetime membership. This is a drastic reduction and I’m sure it won’t happen, but at least you can see what I think its worth.

Note: I had a problem with my credit card when I signed up for Long Tail Pro. Long Tail Pro charges a $0 transaction fee when you sign up for the software (You are properly billed after the 7-day free trial ends). This $0 set off a warning for my card company and they blocked me from using the card until they could confirm it was me who made the purchase. We wanted to warn you about this as it may also happen to you if you sign up for the trial.

Old Long Tail Pro Review

If you’d like to check out my review of the old, desktop software version of Long Tail Pro, you can do so here: 

Barely any online discussion around keyword research tools is free from mention of Long Tail Pro. It seems not long ago that I remember Long Tail Pro (LTP for short) as being just another obscure piece of 2nd tier SEO software – the sort of thing that wannabe Internet marketing gurus would peddle to their lists that they built up from scummy solo ads.

And now this software is raved about by many online in the Internet/affiliate marketing community as being the second coming of Christ … or at least the next best thing after sliced bread.

But what is the “real deal” with Long Tail Pro?

Is it actually a good piece of software – or is the hype all a load of bollocks? Let’s review Long Tail Pro together and try to find out.
Grab a cup of tea (or a 42oz soda if you’re American) and let’s find out.

Important Update 

Since I started writing this review, there have been some important changes to Long Tail Pro. I will be going through and making full updates, but for now here is what you need to know:

  1. Bulk check for keyword competitiveness has been added. Rather than having to click all lines individually, you can check KC scores en-masse. This is a handy time saving feature that is definitely good.
  2. You can no longer buy just the base software (Long Tail Pro sans Platinum for a one-off price). There is just one edition now – Long Tail Pro WITH Platinum – and you either pay $37 per month or a lower rate of $352 per year. There is no one-off, lifetime access option any more. Until this update occurred in early Feb 2019, it used to be the case that you could purchase LTP for around $80, and you would get Platinum for free for a month and then roll onto a $27 p/m charge until you canceled. You could then keep the base software for life if you decided to cancel the Platinum portion.

You can now only have Long Tail Pro for as long as you are willing to pay a monthly or annual fee. This, in my opinion, significantly changes the value proposition of the product for the worse. Unless you are making sufficiently frequent use of the software to justify the high monthly rebill cost, or you are doing a good enough job at turning the long tail keywords you find into sales, then it is just too taxing on the wallet.

NB: People like me who purchased a lifetime access to Long Tail Pro when such an option was available will not see any change. For example, I can continue to use my Platinum-free edition with no need to start paying a monthly fee again.

As you might expect, I will talk to this point more later on in the review when I discuss the pros and cons of the product.

What Is Long Tail Pro?

If you’re Googling for Long Tail Pro reviews, then you probably have a fairly good idea what the software is all about. However, just to give you the benefit of the doubt, I will outline what it is:

  • LTP is a keyword research software program. So you kinda like install it on your computer and shizz, and 9 months later keywords come out. Oh wait, that would be some kind of hybrid keyword-baby monster. In all seriousness, it’s really just a flashy version of Google’s venerable Keyword Planner.
  • It is designed to help you find keywords. Think terms you would type into a search engine to find information, like “how can I illegally enter the United States of America” or “is the Queen actually a shapeshifting lizard” or even useful stuff like “weight loss tips” and “grain free dog food”. The focus here is on finding longer, less competitive keywords.
  • It isn’t free, it’s paid. That’s why you need Reviews Boss to make sure you aren’t parting with your hard earned for some over-hyped pile of turd. A dollar doesn’t come for free, ya know?

Who Is It For?

When looking to review a product, one of my favourite things to do is have a think about the target audience – the people who are probably going to be buying it.

In this case, here’s who I think LTP is aimed at:

  • Affiliate marketers looking to find long tail keywords around which to base their sites, and create content. The classic angle most LTP users seem to take is finding keywords like “best electric shavers under $100” and then creating affiliate sites based around those terms (I’m sure you’ve wound up on sites like this before) and monetize with Amazon Associates.
  • Adsense aficionados are another target for Long Tail Pro, as the software can help to find keywords with low search competition and respectable CPCs.
  • Long Tail Pro can also be useful for PPC marketers, as it can help you to find keywords that would work well as phrase and exact matched terms, as well as get an indication of CPC and Adwords competition.

What Do I Need To Run It?

Long Tail Pro is not demanding at all in its system requirements. Pretty much any Windows computer or Mac that was built since Bill Clinton got caught totally not having sexual relations with that woman Miss Monica Lewinsky should be able to handle it.

Joking aside, here are the minimum requirements:

  • Adobe Air. This is a free piece of software that is available for Mac OSX and Windows, and provides the backbone of LTP.
  • Google Adwords account. Once again, this is free to set up. You don’t need to spend any money on Adwords to have an account.
  • A computer made within the past ~5 years. I couldn’t find any specific system requirements, but a dual core processor and 4 or more GB of RAM should be plenty. I’m running on an Intel i7 with 16gb of RAM and Windows 10, and it runs well with very few slowdowns – only when I deal with BIG keyword lists do I get any problems.

Who Makes It?

Long Tail Pro is, rather famously, the brainchild of a guy called Spencer Haws. That is not to be confused with Spencer Hawes, the Power Forward for the Charlotte Hornets (with a salary of over $4 million per year I don’t think that Hawes really needs to worry about making SEO software!!)

Spencer HAWS is a well-known figure in what I call the “passive income scene”. Other big names/blogs are Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, Matthew Allen from the amusingly-named Dumb Passive Income, Darren Rowse from Problogger and a whole host of other smaller players.

Compared with affiliate marketing based on strategies like combining paid traffic with CPA offers, the passive income scene tends to be focused more on building niche websites based around a type of product or special interest, creating content based on long tail keywords, and then monetizing through Amazon, Adsense, or Clickbank. Although the initial payoff is generally much lower, the goal of any passive income convert is to build up enough sites that they have a tidy monthly sum that will roll in, even if they don’t work much.

Alongside Long Tail Pro, Spencer has also released some other software and plugin-type products, although many of these seem to have been discontinued. He also released a course, called Long Tail University, which is intended to help you make the most of LTP and find out how to generate big organic traffic to your site through effective keyword research and use. Naturally, I will be reviewing Long Tail University at some stage in the future (especially as it is an expensive course).

He also works with a guy called Perrin, who is most famous for building a website about razors that went public as a case study on building “passive” Amazon sites and then got negative-SEOd. You can read all about that here. Perrin currently seems to be working on a website about dogs, called HerePup.

How Do I Buy LTP? What Does It Cost?

Easy tiger! You haven’t even seen the full content of my review yet. However, if you are interested in buying Long Tail Pro, then here’s how you do it.

Firstly, you need to shot on over to www.longtailpro.com:

longtailpro-homepage

Let’s See It In Action

Now is as good a time as any to open up the hood and have a play with Long Tail Pro, in order to see what we can achieve with it.

The first thing you need to do after you have downloaded the software is fire it up. Before you can go anywhere, you will need to set up the Adwords linking for the software to work properly. You don’t need to spend anything to make an Adwords account – it is totally free to do so here.

Here’s a handy video from the Long Tail Pro team on how to configure Adwords linking:

Interestingly enough, this is one of the first signs of the key weakness of Long Tail Pro. You need an Adwords/Google account login because what the software is doing is scraping Google’s own keyword tool – the free Keyword Planner that is available here – and returning the results in a more attractive format. It’s kind of the equivalent of buying a software program that searches eBay for whatever you are looking to buy, and then returns it in a “nicer” way.

I will also revisit this point in the pros/cons section of my review, as it has an important role to play in the software “bugging out” from time to time, as well as being a crucial weakness from the perspective of value for money.

So once you’re all set up, you should see a screen similar to this:

long tail pro - overview screen

Obviously you won’t have any data in there at first, but you get the general idea. It’s actually a reasonably intuitive and easy-to-use interface, especially compared to some other SEO software.

Options are fairly limited, as you can see below. You access the overall settings by hitting the cog symbol in the top right corner of the screen:

longtailpro-setting

Let’s take a look at what options you have;

  • Contact support – self-explanatory.
  • User accounts – this is where you can specify your Google Account credentials as mentioned before. You can also add in a Moz API key (this is free to configure, and good instructions are provided) which is necessary for providing competition metrics like Page Authority, Domain Authority, Moz Rank and more.
  • Data fetching speed – you can make the software access Google’s API faster, which may lead to you getting banned. I’ve never bothered to change these. The Bing API speed is for checking Bing SEO title competition, I think.
  • Debug panel – If you’re getting issues you might be able to fix them here, provided you’re technically minded. You can actually use this to see exactly what Long Tail Pro is doing to scrape data from Google as well (I showed this above in the video).

Now it’s time to actually create a project and run a search. I believe that the best reviews are ones that “review by doing”, and that’s what we are going to do here!

Creating A Project

The building block of using this tool for effective keyword research is to create a project. Thing of an LTP Project as being a folder in which you keep all your research about one particular subject. This helps to keep your interface nice and ordered. With projects, you can also do things like pick different languages and countries to target (so if you were an affiliate marketer based in France, you could pick Google France and the French language, for example)

longtailpro-newproject

Once you’ve created your first project, you’ll be able to add seed keywords and then start finding some ideas!

Searching For Keywords

When you hit the add keywords button, you’ll get hit with a little popup that provides you with a number of options:

longtailpro-addkeywords

Here’s what those options mean:

  • Add Seed Keywords – this is where you add your broad terms you want to build keyword lists from.
  • Add My Own Keywords – a feature of LTP Platinum (will discuss this in more detail later). It allows you to bulk add your own keywords, giving you competition metrics and expanding your list much faster.
  • Suggested Bids – useful if you’re looking at LTP from the perspective of building Adsense sites, or looking for Adwords keywords. You can filter so that results only above or below a certain suggested bid display.
  • Local Search Volume – this is ticked by default, and is the search volume for each keyword for whichever Google locale you selected when creating your project.  Once again you can pre-filter with min or max values here. Great if you want to avoid being shown hundreds of phrases with 0 or 10 or 20 volume.
  • Advertiser Competition – THIS IS NOT FOR SEO, MMKAY! It’s a metric used to look at Adwords competition, so if you’re finding keywords for SEO then basically ignore this. However, may be useful for us PPC fiends.
  • Num Words – A very useful feature in my opinion. You can set a min or max number of individual words in the keyword. This means you can focus on finding proper long tail phrases (e.g. “dog training toys for small puppies” as opposed to seeing lots of broader terms like “dog training”).
  • Global Search Volume – THIS IS UNTICKED BY DEFAULT. Y? Y? Y? But seriously, make sure you tick this before you get to work, provided you are in a niche or business that makes sense on a global scale. Unnecessary if you are targeting a specific country or geographic area, and global volume isn’t relevant to your interests.
  • Domain Availability – Checks to see if you can register your keyword as a domain name. Since EMDs aren’t cool any more, I’d advise it’s not worth the extra processing power. Branded domains are the future.
  • Google Title Competition – Runs an “allintitle:” check for the keywords in Google
  • Bing Title Competition – Same as above, but for Bing. Both of these are kind of useful if you are looking hard at SEO competition analysis.

As this is a review, and not a how-to guide, I won’t go into any more detail on how you can come up with seed keyword ideas etc. What we can conclude is that Long Tail Pro has some decent options for customising your search in order to get the sort of results you are after. By using geo-targeting and filtering for CPCs, keyword lengths etc, you should be able to find some good results in all but the most obscure of niches.

Once you have inputted your seed keywords, you can go ahead and hit to fetch keywords. As it is working away, you will see a message like this:

longtailpro-checking

When the tool has run its course, you should see results like this:

long tail pro review

Pros

  • Easy to use – as showed right through this entire review, LTP is a very simple bit of software to use. Simply download it, make a project, add some keywords (bearing in mind the filtering options that are available) and then get to work. There really isn’t too much more to say on its ease-of-use.
  • Regularly updated – when it comes to maintaining this software, Spencer and his team definitely aren’t fly-by-night merchants. It is regularly updated, with good communication about any significant updates provided through email and blog. You never get the impression with this software that it is something that will be abandoned out of the blue, and with no prior warning. You will become familiar with this:
    longtailpro-updates
  • Good support – from what I have experienced, there is good support available from the makers of LTP. When I wanted to cancel my Platinum membership, I received a rapid and cordial response. Spencer and his crew also seem to be responsive to queries or complaints made on the blog posts on longtailpro.com, which is always a good sign that support is unlikely to be abandoned any time soon.
  • Frequent specials available – Spencer & co tend to offer some decent specials on Long Tail Pro from time to time. This is annoying if you have just purchased the software for the full price; but if you are on the fence and thinking about buying, then it might be enough to sway your opinion. If you are set on purchasing, then I do suggest that you hang out for a deal. The easiest way to do this, it seems, is to register for a free trial and then keep an eye on your inbox for deals.
  • Polished and professional – The overall feel you get from LTP is one of professionalism and polish. From the www.longtailpro.com website, to the good support, through to the actual program itself, you can definitely tell that a whole heap of work has gone into making Long Tail Pro what it is today. Whereas some SEO software gives off the vibe of being whipped up in an afternoon in the corner of a shed by a sweaty nerd with delusions of development grandeur, it is clear that the team behind LTP have invested heavily in developing a premium product. Good on them for doing so.

Cons

  • Overpriced. I touched on this point earlier in the review, and will revisit it now. The fundamental issue I have with Long Tail Pro is that it is overpriced. $37 per month for a glorified version of the Google Keyword Planner is simply too much. Even the annual package doesn’t offer much of a discount when broken down on a monthly basis.
  • Guru-hyped. This is a common problem with many products in the Internet marketing sphere (particularly courses, which are notoriously over hyped by the so-called “gurus”). It isn’t really the fault of Spencer and his crew … in fact you could really just say that they have done a good job at branding. However, the fact of the matter remains that because so many gurus and MMO experts have made Long Tail Pro out to be the panacea to all keyword research and organic traffic issues, that means many people buy the software with grossly inflated expectations of what they are going to be able to achieve with it.
  • Not much better than free alternatives. This ties in to the whole being overpriced thing. Because all Long Tail Pro really does is piggy backs off of Google’s free keyword planner, and gives you a couple of extra bits of functionality pasted on, it simply isn’t that much better than what you can already get for zero to little cost. Considering you can bulk import your own keyword lists into Google Keyword Planner for analysis and expansion, that nullifies one selling point of the Platinum component of LTP. All that leaves to justify the price – as far as I can see – is the keyword competitiveness module. This is a useful feature, and when I had Platinum I did use it on a fairly frequent basis in order to get a quick gauge of how tough a keyword would be to rank. It is definitely helpful for a high-level glance at determining competitiveness, but the problem is that you should really be learning how to analyze SEO competition for keywords yourself. Thorough manual analysis of SERP results for prospective keywords is almost always going to beat out a KC score generated with some basic calculations, in terms of helping you rank effectively.
  • Sometimes unreliable. Because of the way in which Long Tail Pro works, it seems prone to occasional niggling bugs. The most common problem I have encountered is that the software seems to get stuck when searching for keywords – you’ll input your seed keywords, press to generate data, and then nothing happens. Even after restarting the software, you won’t get any progress. Checking the debug window shows that this is an issue with the software logging in to Adwords/Keyword Planner and searching on your behalf. However, with recent updates this problem has become a lot less frequent.
    • Other bugs I have encountered include global search volumes not being returned for keywords (even if I have selected the option), along with slow downs when swapping between projects. These slow down issues may be worse when running a less powerful computer.
  • No cloud access. Here’s one of the things that gripes me the most about LTP, especially if you are paying the big premium for monthly access to Platinum – there is no cloud access. What I mean by this is that you have to use the software as installed on your computer, taking up disk space and using resources. There is no option to access Long Tail Pro via a web interface. This means it won’t work on anything other than a Windows or Mac OSX powered machine (i.e. you can’t jump on your smart phone or tablet and do some quick searching while you’re out and about). It just gives the software a very “dated” feel in that regard, and doesn’t pair well with the fact that you have to pay a monthly fee for full access to the Platinum features.

Conclusion – Is It Worth A Buy?

Oh boy, oh goody … now comes the fun part.

I feel like a Roman emperor in the Coliseum, ready to give the thumbs up or down that will either spare some poor gladiatorial soul, or find him hacked limb from limb. THE POWER IS ALL-CONSUMING!!!!

I'm like a Roman Emperor, just less bloodthirsty.
I’m like a Roman Emperor, just less bloodthirsty.

But seriously, should you buy Long Tail Pro? Should you further enrich Spencer Haws and his merry men with your hard-earned dinero?

  • Short answer: No.
  • Medium length answer: Don’t bother buying it.
  • French answer: Non, n’en achetez pas
  • Actual meaningful answer: Although LTP does have some useful features, it simply is not worth the money being charged when there are alternative options available (especially now that you have no choice but to pay a monthly or annual recurring subscription).

See here’s the thing: I actually bought Long Tail Pro with my own money. In fact, I bought it with New Zealand Dollars, a currency which is as weak as an octogenarian’s bench press; in effect it cost me even more! During my time with LTP + Platinum, I parted with the best part of $300. That hurts, especially when you’re as much of a cheapskate as I am.

AND HERE’S THE REAL $HIT: I’m willing to bet that a huge portion of the reviewers out there who are heaping praise upon LTP (especially those annoying passive income bloggers who litter the Internet with thin, crappy affiliate sites with domain names like bestelectricbuttscratcherreviews2019.info) have never spent much time with the software. Instead, they let the potential for some very generous affiliate commissions get the better of them, and jump straight on their blogs or YouTube channels to give the product a 10/10 must-buy rating, and then hope for those fat stacks to roll in.

It actually used to be a stipulation of being a Long Tail Pro affiliate that you had to have purchased the software first. This meant you could not get an affiliate link without at least being able to honestly say you paid for the software, which probably meant you had used it a few times at least. However, now that Long Tail Pro is on Clickbank’s free-for-all marketplace, you don’t need seem to need any specific prior approval to grab your affiliate link and make some cash.

Caveat: As I mentioned above in the “pros” section of this review, I am not trying to say that this product is useless. In fact, it is far from useless. You can use it to find keywords, and you can even get a rough outline of how hard it might be to rank for those keywords … it really does do what it says on the box. My gripe – and the issue that makes me disinclined to recommend the product – is that it costs too much for what it does, when you can quite adequately search for long tail phrases using free tools. And, as previously discussed, it isn’t that hard to assess keyword competitiveness

And remember as well that the real power of long tail keywords is not in the keywords you find, but how you actually go about trying to target them with your SEO or PPC efforts. You could sit in front of LTP all day (or any bit of keyword research software, for that matter) and find lots of keywords with great potential. However, if you don’t get down to the dirty business of trying to rank or bid and optimize those keywords, then you’re never really going anywhere. So owning any keyword tool, whether it is LTP or anything else, isn’t going to make you money in and of itself. Instead, you need to make use of the keywords you find and deploy them effectively to increase your earnings.

So go on, click that link if you want to try LTP for free. If you do decide to purchase, then I won’t make a red cent. And maybe when you find that goldmine long-tail keyword with 100,000 searches per month, a CPC that would make Donald Trump do a double take, and competition so weak it’s like putting prime Mike Tyson up against a peewee boxer, then you’ll strike it rich and come and laugh at me for passing up an easy few dollars per month commission I could have got by referring you.

But chances are that won’t happen. The truth is that Long Tail Pro doesn’t really do anything special that can’t be done for free with only a miniscule trade-off in terms of inconvenience.

A Word Of Advice For Spencer & His Team

As I conclude this review, let me close with a word of advice for Spencer and his team behind Long Tail Pro:

Your software has some good features. It is definitely helpful for finding keywords. However, it simply costs too much for the “average” user like myself who doesn’t use it frequently enough to make back the monthly subscription price.

If you could implement some sort of credit-based system, then I think that would improve the value of Long Tail Pro greatly for anyone who is a more casual user. For example, if one seed keyword search cost 1 credit (and you could run keyword competitiveness metrics for all the long tails that came out of that seed keyword) and you could buy a pack of 10 credits for $5 – or something along those lines – then it would make LTP a great choice. It would be so much better for people who only need to find a batch of keywords for a new site, then push out content for those keywords and come back for more for their next site, for example.

If you decide to implement this and become filthy, stinking rich on the back of this brilliant idea, then remember me and maybe send a pack of gum my way … or even a check for a couple of million. Thanks in advance guys!