"A Next Generation Keyword Tool"?

When it comes to keyword research, it can be quite difficult to find good keywords if you don’t have the right tools.

Fortunately, there hasn’t really been a shortage of keyword research tools, even usable ones. My favourites have been for a long time Market Samurai and SEOQuake.

But even these two tools haven’t met the full potential of keyword research tools… And in the past months, there have been some notable changes when it comes to keyword research data, and some new competition to the “old kings of keyword research”…

The Death of Yahoo! And The War of The Backlink Data Sources

First of all, as Yahoo! has partnered with Bing, is Y! Site Explorer, which used to be the go-to source for backlink-data, becoming less and less accurate. This has made most keyword research tools like SEO Quake, which still rely on Yahoo! data, pretty useless.

Not that there are no alternatives to Yahoo! data… Many trustworthy SEOs at least used to advocate for tools like Link Assistant and Backlink Watch, which used several data sources, Y! Site Explorer being only one of them.

But things have changed… Now, instead of relying on external sources, players like Majestic SEO and SEOmoz crawl the web on their own. And the good thing about these guys is that they’re not search engines – they don’t really have any reason to hide any data, like Google and Yahoo! had, except that you have to pay for at least some of the data (of course?)

Tools like Market Samurai have started using either of these two sources for their backlink data. And that is a big step forward for keyword research!

Keyword Research Robots Vs. Human Evaluation

But there is a certain feature that is included in very few tools, including Keyword Blueprint 2.0 PRO, and that is automatic keyword competition research, which might leave tools like Market Samurai to “bite dust”.

What I mean by automatic keyword competition research is that the tool, which has this feature, goes out to search for keywords based on the seed keyword you provide, and returns with a list of keywords, and it also automatically assigns a competition-level based on its own algorithm for each keyword.

This basically means that you just give the tool a keyword like “dating”, and after a while the tool tells you that “this and this keyword have high demand and low competition, use them!”

On paper, this feature seems really powerful, but it isn’t without its problems:

• SEOs all have their own keyword research formulas, and they’ll never be fully able to trust their valuable research to an automatic robot.
• When it comes to keyword competition research, there are some things that only a real human may be able to notice, like what type of sites you are competing against… On the other hand, search engine bots, which basically determine the order of the search results are also only robots… So in theory a robot should be able to “think like another robot”, meaning that it should be safe to entrust your keyword research to a robot.
• Keyword research is very much context-sensitive – it DOES matter whether you’re looking for keywords for Ezinarticles.com article marketing or for a niche website.

It can be argued if it’s smart to include such a “robot mode” in a keyword research tool or not… Nevertheless, most keyword research tools don’t have such a mode probably because it’s not that easy to make…

Also, completely automatic keyword discovery requires a lot of power, which is why using a desktop-based tool like Keyword Blueprint 2.0 PRO can be very stressful for your computer…

But now there is a tool, that doesn’t suffer from many of these aforementioned problems…

From The Ashes Rises The New King of Keyword Research Tools?

And NOW we can finish this intro (lol) and introduce the REAL star of this blog post – SECockpit!

Aside from its RIDICULOUS name (or am I the only one who thinks that?!), it’s actually a really good keyword research tool. First of all, I’d like mention the creators of this software, Sam Hänni (the tech genius) and Shane Melaugh (the marketing guy and SEO expert), who are both very intellectual and ethical guys who know what they’re doing.

Sam and Shane call SECockpit the Next Generation Search Marketing Tool, and there just might be some truth to that statement…

Let’s first list the problems that we discussed in the intro, and apply them to the context of SECockpit (SEC from now on):

• Y! Site Explorer backlink data isn’t reliable anymore, Majestic SEO and SEOmoz are the best alternatives.
• If you include an automatic keyword competition research feature to a keyword research tool, it NEEDS to have a solid, tested and proven algorithm (something that not just works, but works wonders!)
• …and even then, most well-educated SEOs probably want to configure it to their tastes.
• Automatic keyword discovery requires a lot of power and resources.
• Keyword research is context-sensitive.

And how does SEC respond to this?

1) SEC gets its backlink data (and some other cool data too) from SEOmoz, which is a reliable source of SEO data, and a trustworthy company overall.

2) SEC does its keyword competition research completely automatically (as discussed before), and the research is based on SEOmoz’s algorithm (which is the best automatic algo I’ve seen so far).

3) SEC is cloud-based, meaning that SEC’s own servers provide the required resources, and take most of the stress created by this kind of data mining. In other words, your computer won’t die when you use SEC.

4) As for the context-sensitiveness… The creators of SEC do understand this. Even though all the keywords are evaluated based on the same algorithm, you are able to see, at a glance, if, for example, there are any Youtube videos in the top 10 (which could be useful when you’re looking for, for example, keywords for your Youtube videos) and so on. Also, you can take a closer look at the top results to see what KIND of competition you have!

But even SEC isn’t perfect…

First of all, you can’t customize the algorithm that does the automatic research AT ALL. You can take a look at WHY SEC gives certain keywords certain competition-levels, but even that feature is quite limited – SEOs like I want to really know the reasons WHY a robot thinks that a keyword is this competitive. Now, SEC only lets you see some numbers like “mozRank”, “Page Authority” and “Juice Link”, which are all calculated using certain algorithms… And SEC won’t let you know what these algorithms are, nor does it let you do any deeper digging…

Let me demonstrate this with couple of images…

Here is the competition research view of SEC:

(Click to make image larger.)

And here’s the corresponding view of Market Samurai:

(Click to make image larger.)

I know you can trust SEOmoz’s algorithms, but I think (because this is only my opinion) that it would be better if you were given more data to figure out why a certain page has been given a certain “Page Authority” and so on… Meaning that I would like to be able to see things like site age, domain backlink count and on-page factors on SEC.

Yeah, I can see all that data if I go to Market Samurai, but that just means that I have to use Market Samurai in addition to SEC… If these guys want to “kill their competition”, these kinds of situations should not happen. (Plus it’s a pain to use two tools at the same time from an individuals’ stand-point…)

Ok, let’s move from one thing to another…

Here are some other features that SEC has:

• The top 10 results are divided into 3 segments, meaning that you can see the demand and competition for positions 1-3, 4-7 and 8-10 (which can be really useful).
• SEC shows data like available domains and Adwords CPC and competition.
• You can choose to see if there are, for example, any “sniper sites”, Amazon pages, Squidoo lenses or Youtube videos in the top 10 with a glance.
• SEC does some time- and project management too.
• The UI (user interface) is kind of “Windows-like”, and it could be more intuitive.
• There are some training videos about SEC itself, and an upcoming “bootcamp” (only the first part has been released) more on the theory of SEO (and maybe PPC).
• The pricing is a monthly payment (may change over time so I won’t mention the prices now), and there are a total of three different user levels with variable features. The monthly pricing-scheme doesn’t make this a very cheap tool… have to say that.

Conclusion

I think it’s safe to say that SECockpit has changed the way you are able to do keyword research…

Many people have relied on the “traditional keyword formula” (“if you have less than X competitors, it’s a good keyword”) because it’s so easy… And also very unreliable. Nevertheless, it’s not necessary to do keyword research this way anymore if you have SECockpit… Because SEC is even easier.

No longer you need to slave for hours to find the rare gems among the rough… SECockpit does thorough data analysis with a click of a few buttons.

This is a one-of-a-kind keyword tool, and even though it’s still a work-in-progress, it’s damn good at what it does. You need to experience it to believe it.

Overall, I truly believe that everyone who is even a bit serious about SEO needs this tool… And since you are reading this right now, it’s very likely that you are one of those people!

“Ok, great, where can I buy it then?”

Click here to get SECockpit:

P.S. Want to see SECockpit in action..? Click here.

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Tagged as: Keyword Blueprint 2.0 Pro, keyword research, reviews, secockpit, secockpit review, seo, tools