Doing proper keyword research to optimize your content is one of the biggest pieces of the SEO puzzle. Sadly, most keyword research tools are cost prohibitive, until Keysearch came along, which I think is the ultimate affordable keyword research tool.
Check out our in-depth Keysearch review and see why we consider it the best affordable SEO analysis tool out there! What we really love about using Keysearch is just how easy and intuitive it is for beginners which makes those SEO efforts less scary!
From competitive analysis to in-depth keyword research – when you use Keysearch you will find ways to improve your content to rank better.
Keysearch Feature Summary
Below is a summary of the features and a brief description in case you do not want to read the whole post!
I only recently heard about Keysearch and decided to sign up for a test drive. Now, I should note that I have a subscription to Ahrefs and SEMRush which would be really hard to beat – but lets see how Keysearch can compare to the big guys!
This Keysearch Review will help you see everything you need to about the tool before making a commitment, so you can decide if it is the right keyword search tool for you.
About KeySearch
Founded in 2015, KeySearch is a relative newcomer in the keyword research industry – but over the years has turned into a complete SEO tool that is definitely worth considering if you are in the market.
Their true appeal is the fact that it is an affordable seo tool and geared towards bloggers and small business owners who may not have the funds for more expensive tools.
What Keysearch Offers
While keyword research is the most common use for Keysearch from those that we spoke to – there are a few other features they offer that are definitely worth checking out as well.
Below is the full list of features KeySearch offers.
- Keyword research
- Explorer
- Competitor analysis
- YouTube research
- Rank tracking
- More tools
Keysearch Tools Overview Video
The video below will give you a full walk through of the KeySearch tool so you can see the features that are available to help you grow your organic traffic!
Below we will do a bit of a deeper dive into each of the tools so you can get a better understanding of how they can help you.
Keyword Research
The keyword research tool is by far the best part of the tool. Doing a keyword search that helps you find keyword difficulty, search volume and related keywords will help you optimize your pages with perfection.
Keysearch offers a clean interface that will help you easily see great opportunities to optimize your content based on what the top search results are doing.
For this example I put in the keyword “seo tool” – which is pretty broad but I wanted to show you what happens when you put in a broad term.
The image below shows what you will see when you put in your keyword to the keyword research tool.
I have added numbers to describe each section so you can see below the image what each area offers.
- Shows you an overview of how competitive the term you entered in based on Google Adwords. For “seo tools” we have a score of 59 which shows the keyword difficulty is rather high.
- The trends graph shows you the search trends for the term over the last 12 months. You can see that there is a lot of fluctuation in search volume since September 2019 for this term.
- The competitor results for the term which shows a quick SERP analysis of the first page results for the term. You can also click the Rankings/Traffic link and Social link which will give you additional information about the estimate traffic and social shares the page has as well as other keywords the page ranks for.
- Keyword ideas that come from suggested search engine terms – if relevant, you should try to use these in your content.
- Your keyword ideas! This is the area where you can find additional keywords to use to optimize your content or find a better keyword to use as your target.
As an example I may realize that “seo tools” is just way too hard for me to optimize for given my site is no where near the authority that those in the SERP analysis are.
So i would continue working with the keyword analysis tool to be able to find low competition keywords. The keyword difficulty scores being color coded makes the whole process so easy.
I see a keyword “SEO ranking tool” – click check and the SERP analysis changes to show what pages rank for that term. Now I see 2 or 3 websites in the top 10 that I may actually be able to outrank given my own authority. I decide to make that my MAIN KW for my post.
Deep Analysis
In the section I labeled as #1 you will see an orange button called Deep Analysis – this is another great feature that will give you a list of LSI Keywords which will help you better optimize your post.
You can see the competition level at the top of the page then the search trends and a table with the top competitors ranking for the term.
Below that is the LSI keywords which are related terms that are suggested so that the search engines can better understand your content by association.
Quick Difficulty
Enter several keywords you are considering and do a bulk check of the difficulty level of those terms.
My Lists
Allows you to keep track of your keywords in groups for easy management.
Brainstorm
Another great feature is the brainstorm area! Enter a keyword and you will get a variety of ideas for keywords from the following:
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Amazon
- YouTube
- Ebay
At the bottom of the page there are Twitter Trends, Amazon Movers and Google Trends to help you see what is trending at the moment to see if you can take advantage of that as well.
Difficulty Checker Add On
A cool little browser extension for the keyword research tool you can use if you are a subscriber that allows you see a lot of the keyword data so you can see how difficult a term is right from the browser . Available for Chrome and Firefox.
Explorer
Explorer allows you to get an overview of a specific page or domain so you can see some general data and determine if you can compete.
The following are what you will find in this area:
- Domain strength
- Organic keywords they rank for
- Top competitors the site has
- Number of backlinks and referring domains and whether they are dofollow/nofollow
- Ranking distribution shows where most of the keyword positions are for the site
- Anchor text for incoming links
This is another way you can do keyword research! By seeing what your competitors are ranking for that you are not – you can improve your existing content for some quick wins or be better prepared for new content.
Competitive Analysis
Now that I have my term “SEO ranking tool” that I want to optimize for, I want to see what I need to do to beat some of my competitors. I will want to do a competitor analysis which will give me some insight into how I can do this.
I start with the page I can probably beat the quickest which is:
https://dynomapper.com/blog/21-sitemaps-and-seo/424-best-keyword-ranking-tool-for-seo – they rank in position 5 (at the time of the writing of this post) for the term “SEO ranking tool”.
The competitor analysis actually has a few sections in it which I will describe below.
Backlink checker
This will check your competitors backlinks and the strength of those domains for the page you want to compare against so you can check for backlink opportunities.
I am going to show below a screenshot of the top authority backlinks that Keysearch returns and then a screenshot from Ahrefs.
In both tools I sorted by domain authority so you can see that highest authority website linking to my website.
While Keysearch is good for some basic research, we highly recommend investing when the time is right to get a more in depth look at competitor backlinks.
Note: I did not find this to be that accurate and would not recommend using it for in-depth backlink auditing or analysis.
Organic keywords
Keysearch will return a list of keywords your competitor is ranking for which is another great opportunity to do some keyword research.
Competitor gap
See what a competitor ranks for that you might not rank for. This is one of our other favorite tools in the Keysearch keyword research tool suite!
If you have a page that is already ranking but you have a competitor outranking you – you can enter your page and theirs and search for keywords they are using that you are not.
Adding those keywords may give you the search results boost you need for your main keyword!
Finding keyword suggestions from your competing pages is a great way to re-optimize your content to include other terms you may not have considered.
URL metrics
Shows you the competing pages metrics like Facebook shares, Pinterest pins, estimated site traffic, DA and more.
Page analyzer
Provides a lot of technical and on-page SEO information including their title tag and meta description, h1-h6 tags, page speed and more. This is a great way to see where you can do better.
Backlink Checker
Honestly, probably the least impressive part of the tool. I tested a few websites and it rarely found even a good portion of the links a site had.
I would not recommend using the backlink checker for serious backlink analysis.
YouTube Research
If you focus on YouTube as a traffic source, then this tool is for you! Put in the keyword you want to rank high on YouTube and you will see the results just like you would for any other search.
- YouTube Research to find keywords to optimize for
- YouTube Difficulty to find how hard some terms are to rank for
- YouTube List to keep track of the keywords you are researching
Rank Tracking
The keyword rank tracking tool will help you see where you are at a glance for the keywords you care most about!
I just added a few keywords to test but found the results to be very accurate in terms of actual rank.
I like that you can group keywords so you can keep track of them as you need to. I like to keep my affiliate keywords separate from my educational keywords as an example.
You can also see a graph of your progress over time as well as see the top competitors who rank as well by clicking the small icons to the right of the keywords.
More Tools
Content Assistant
The content assistant will take your content and help you better optimize it based on the competitors that are ranking on the first page – this is one of the best parts of Keysearch in my opinion.
So as a test I copied and pasted the text from one of my posts into the editor and it gave me a list of must use keywords (also known as LSI keywords).
If I am not using the keyword it will show as orange – once I add it to the content then it turns blue letting me know I used it.
Other cool features include:
- Word count analysis that will help you see if you are in line with the top competitors
- Related keywords that are pulled from Google as suggested topics
- Top URL keywords that show you the top keywords drawing traffic to the top ranked pages
- Content snippets so you can get inspiration while you edit your content
- Question suggestions that you can use in your content to help readers get more information about the topic
- SERP analysis so you can see the top pages, how many words are on their pages and a button to visit the website
This is hands down worth every penny on its own.
Opportunity Finder
This is one of their new features but is definitely a great addition to the package! You can enter a keyword and the tool will give you possibilities for guest posting, find related forums and blogs for you to interact.
I tested the Guest Posts and Forums with the term “WordPress” and found some great results. Sadly, the blog search did not work – but it is still a great tool for outreach ideas to gain new backlinks or to engage with potential new readers.
KeySearch Pricing
I have to admit I was kind of surprised at the pricing for KeySearch – pleasantly surprised that is.
They have 3 pricing options:
- $0 for a 1 month trial, but you are limited to 5 searches a day
- $17 per month (or $160 a year) which offers 200 daily searches and the ability to monitor 80 keywords in the keyword tracker
- $34 per month (or $279 a year) which offers 500 daily searches and the ability to monitor 200 keywords in the rank tracker
To be able to spend just a few dollars per month for such a comprehensive analysis tool seems not possible – but it is!
Keyword research tools are one of the most needed items to grow your website – but also one of the most costly, but thanks to Keysearch – it is more affordable to find great keywords to help content gain rank position in the search results.
KEYSEARCH
Want to see why we love it?
KeySearch Review Summary
While KeySearch is not a full replacement for Ahrefs or SEMrush it is a fantastic and more affordable option for small businesses and bloggers to grow and improve their websites.
Coming from a background with Ahrefs and SEMRush – I can say without a doubt this tool is worth every penny – and more! While this is by no means a full tutorial – you can see how effective this keyword research tool is to find keyword suggestions as well as the keyword difficulty to make sure you are finding the right keywords to make the search engines love you!
The dashboard is easy to use and gives so much information to help you with your SEO efforts so that your search engine results will improve.
This is a must have tool for every blogger and small business looking to up their game without breaking the bank.
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