For those that don’t like to read entire posts here are the cliff notes for my semi Market Samurai review and why you shouldn’t use it for seo keyword research… I like Market Samurai I use it practically every day myself but you shouldn’t use it for seo purposes particularly keyword research. The inherent problem with Market Samurai is that it uses Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

The big flaw with the Google Adwords Tool is that it uses data both from organic searches and also from it’s search network. For a specific case study on the subject check out: Why The Google AdWords Keyword Tool Shouldn’t Be Used For SEO – A Case Study.

Personally I built a website targeting a two-word keyword phrase that according to Market Samurai was receiving about 90,000 searches and I started to drool when I did the competitive analysis and found virtually none of the websites ranking for this phrase had done any anchored text link building…

Anyhow it took a while but I got the website on the first page, did some more intensive link building and finally got it to the top three. Now when I got it to the top three I was kinda expecting some traffic and was literally wondering wtf was wrong when I didn’t see much, if any, traffic coming through.

More link building and posting…

Website makes it to the number 1 ranking and while I’m seeing some traffic I’m not seeing anywhere near as much traffic as what the Adwords Keyword Tool suggested at nearly 90,000 searches a month. When I finally cross-checked my initial keyword analysis with Google’s search-based keyword tool the number it spit back was 1,200. I almost cried. And then I checked with Wordtracker and it came back with just under 500 searches per day which was closer to what I was seeing but still a far cry from 90,000.

So while market Samurai does have an inherent flaw if you’re using it for organic keyword research, I did use the tool to do my initial competitive analysis for my keywords and I also use it track my rankings.

While the keyword search numbers may be a bit off Market Samurai does do a pretty good job of initially showing you what the competition will be like by giving you numbers like how many competing websites are using your exact keyword phrases in their titles.

I still use Market Samurai to do my initial keyword research, to do my initial competitive analysis and to track my rankings. Still a very solid tool for all that stuff and that’s key to building websites that make money but when it comes to keyword research I now also cross check Market Samurai’s numbers with a few other tools to give myself a better idea of real organic search numbers.

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