If you are looking for the best keyword research tool to
support you and your online business then I am going to make the assumption
that you understand the importance of keyword research, choosing the most
relevant keywords that have low competition and a high amount of searches. With
that being said, let’s move on to our Long Tail Pro review where we will be
investigating the efficiency and effectiveness of this tool in 2015. We will
also be comparing the features & functionality of Long Tail Pro alongside other
industry recognized tools. But first, who am I and how am I eligible to make
such bold statements & conclude what is and what is not the best keyword
research tool currently on the market? With the introduction out of the way,
let’s get in to the nitty-gritty of Long Tail Pro!
What is Long Tail Pro ?
Long Tail Pro is an Adobe Air desktop based application that
uses the Google Keyword Tool to pull through keyword data about a specific
sub-set of keywords that the user is interested in analyzing. Using seed
keywords (up to 10,000) you can quickly build out a highly relevant list of
related keywords that will be displayed alongside their monthly search volume,
the average Adwords CPC, advertiser competition & lastly the Long Tail Pro
keyword competition metric (only available to platinum users).
Long Tail Pro allows you to quickly, efficiently and
effectively create highly relevant keyword lists based on singular or multiple
seed keywords. With this data you can then analyse each keyword by its search
volume or more importantly Long Tail Pro’s keyword competition metric.
What is LTP’s Keyword Competition metric ?
Probably the best, definitely the most unique feature of
Long Tail Pro is it’s ability to create a ‘keyword competition’ metric which
determines the level of difficulty a keyword has.
How is the keyword competition metric calculated ?
Similarly to how Moz Keyword Analysis works, LTP analyses
the individual keywords top 10 search results displaying and using in its
calculation the following metrics :
- URL
- Title
- Page Authority
- Page Links
- Juicing Page
- Domain Authority
- Moz Rank
- Page Rank
- Site Age
Once calculated Long Tail Pro will produce a keyword
competitiveness result ranging from 0 – 100, with 1 being the easiest to rank
for and 100 being extremely difficult. However, in my experience the majority
of cases keyword competition scores range from 10 – 55.
What is a good Keyword Competition score ?
If you do decide to try Long Tail Pro, then I do recommend
looking for keywords with a keyword competition metric of less than 25 for new
websites, and up to 35 for established websites.
So far, we have introduced Long Tail Pro & discussed
it’s unique feature the ‘Keyword Competition’ metric, however Long Tail Pro is
not the only keyword research tool that has it’s own unique competition metric.
Moz have developed their own metric that is simply called “Keyword Difficulty”.
This is a percentage-based metric, the higher percentage the metric is the more
difficult it is to rank for.
If we were to simply compare the keyword competition metrics
of both Moz & Long Tail Pro, I’d say in my experience that LTP’s metric has
been more reliable. However, a keyword research tool cannot simply be reviewed
on this one metric, to give an objective review of Long Tail Pro we need to dig
deeper in to the usability of the tool.
Long Tail Pro can be broken down in to 3 core areas, these
are :
- Keyword Research
- Competitor Analysis
- Rank Checker
Long Tail Pro : Keyword Research Feature
As we previously mentioned, to create a list of keywords you
simply need to add one or more seed keywords and click generate keywords, it’s
that simple. There are a few different features you can also use, such as
importing a list of seed keywords from an external source as well as filtering
the results by number of words in the query, average CPC & number of
searches. Once you have clicked generate, Long Tail Pro usually takes between
1-3 minutes to product the keyword list, however this also depends on the type
of seed keywords you are adding and the scale of the results. After the results
have been delivered, the data available is basically a nicely laid out version
of Google keyword planner, the only difference is if you have the monthly
subscription then you can also calculate the individual keywords LTP
competition metric.
Long Tail Pro : Competitor Analysis Feature
This is definitely one of better features of Long Tail Pro,
allowing you to analyse the top 10 search engine results for an individual
keyword. By calculating the competitiveness of a keyword, you are given a
variety of results, as we discussed above these are:
- URL
- Title
- Page Authority
- Page Links
- Juicing Page
- Domain Authority
- Moz Rank
- Page Rank
- Site Age
These are all very useful data points to use when
determining the competitiveness of a keyword. This feature collects and
compiles all of the above data in a very easy to understand table structure.
Overall, similarly to the keyword analysis feature to really
be of any significant benefit the competitor analysis tool needs to have the
keyword competition metric. Without the KC metric, Long Tail Pro’s competitor
analysis feature definitely has a time saving element to it, but it’s simply
not useful enough.
Long Tail Pro : Rank Checker Feature
However, to conclude this part of Long Tail Pro; whilst
having data nicely laid out, the ability to add keywords to a favorite tab and
delete irrelevant keywords is no huge advantage over using the Google keyword
planner or simply exporting data in to an Excel sheet and using your own
filters/formulas to hand pick the most relevant, highly searched keywords.
How does it work ?
Very simple, you add the domain URL & keyword, as well
as the country in which you are trying to rank for. After this, simply click
check rank. Once the results have been compiled you will see the position
number appear for your website and the target keyword within Google, Yahoo
& Bing. And that’s that, it’s a very simple feature but that doesn’t stop
it from being a very useful feature and definitely a nice added touch to the
long tail pro offering.
Who should purchase Long Tail Pro?
Firstly, if you have an established website and you are
looking for new content ideas, ways of driving more organic traffic then try
Long Tail Pro.
Secondly, if you are looking to build a brand new website,
whether you have a topic idea or not, try adding a couple of seed keywords in
to Long Tail Pro and see what results you get. Not sure what to start with,
then look around the room you are in, think about the topics that interest you
most, consider the things you are most passionate about, niches you have come
across, products you have come across, news you have read about and then put
some seed keywords together and click go!
Thirdly, if you are an online advertiser then Long Tail Pro
can come in handy when trying to pull together a data set of keywords to bid
on.
