CA, USA. It keeps getting better and better. That seems to be the tagline of keyword giant KeywordSpy. Just recently KeywordSpy launched its KeywordSpy Tracking version 2.0, and even that is an understatement.

In its early release, KeywordSpy’s Tracking ver.1 database allows you to store and monitor keywords of a particular domain across the major search engines of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The monitoring feeds you visibility reports of keyword rankings on Paid and Organic or Natural industries.

The initial version offered basic PPC and Organic data in terms of keyword, ads, competition, and website rankings. Keyword Research, the website’s initial offering, remained the tool’s bestselling product despite the newly added features.

Now, KeywordSpy Tracking is back with a vengeance and it’s loaded with a comprehensive set of information and elements under one convenient package.

A major difference in Tracking version 2.0 is that the competitive intelligence gathering does not monitor domains of keywords anymore. Rather, data collection is solely based on the sets of keywords that the Tracking user will specify on their campaigns, giving it a broader scope. From then, a user can narrow down his campaign to competitors or domains he intends to focus on.

Tracking version 2.0 tracks Paid and Organic keywords across international markets and promises up to date ranking, costs and clicks per day metrics on ads, ad count, landing page screenshots, and competitor data.

Monitoring has definitely improved with filter and comparison features. Tracking 2.0 allows more control over information by making it possible to see certain data at a time, select a date range for evaluation, and even compare competitor standings on selected keywords.

Additional features to complete the system are Domain and Keyword Watchlist and the Suggested Keywords Bars which offers overlooked keywords and measurable data for the campaign.

Despite the overwhelming new data and options, KeywordSpy has outdone itself in presentation with the clear and well organized manner of providing data that is easy to understand, manage and control.

Probably the best part of all this, KeywordSpy Tracking 2.0, with all the upgraded features, comes at the same reasonable price.

KeywordSpy has truly grown from a humble keyword research tool to a complete search marketing intelligence machine. With its current technology, there’s no telling what great things we can expect next.

Research and well-tested ad campaign techniques are keys to handling seasonal activities in the online market. So when seasonal advertising time is approaching, you should be equipped with the knowledge of knowing the profitable keywords from related websites around a month before the season.

For example, you are planning to sell gift items this coming Christmas such as jewelry, clothes, perfume and toys. You should do a research of shopping sites, such as buy.com, Amazon and ebay.com, and determine their high-paying keywords. Competitive intelligence tools such as KeywordSpy.com can be a big help in this marketing pursuit. It can gather keywords of marketers in all types of industries and allow you to get good ideas on keyword advertising. You can also check its Time Machine feature, this KeywordSpy thing lets you look at keywords other advertisers have used in the past.

So based on our first example, you may look for Christmas-oriented sites in KeywordSpy Time Machine and check their November and December 2007 keywords and ad copies, then see for yourself the keyword advertising strategies which will be helpful in your own site campaign on December 2008.

In short, if your business has various high points throughout the year, try to review the past promotional and marketing campaigns of your industry so you can improve your next target season. I really suggest that you give the Time Machine a shot. This is the only keyword tool feature that I have seen giving months’ worth of advertising information. Would you believe, I found out through KeywordSpy Time Machine that divorce sites such as Divorcesyourself.com boost their advertising during months of February and March? Perhaps this can be credited to the fact that the Valentines madness is in the air during these months, and divorce sites are targeting the emotional spots of “attached people”, by subtly suggesting that they should prioritize their need for divorce to be with their “true love.” So, how is that for an advertising gold mine if you are in the “divorce industry”? You can simply copy the keywords and improve the ad copies of well-performing divorce sites in certain periods and months.

Whoever said that “moving forward” is the best thing to do in this world” is simply not always right especially in this case. Cause in the world of seasonal advertising, it is good to “look backwards” and review the good and bad in the past season, for you to cherry-pick and carry the good ones in the next.

The theory is the same when choosing your keyword and ad copies for your targeted seasons, learn from the sites that did well in the past and enhance what they’ve got. With this, we might just believe in the saying: “It’s always good to learn from the experts.”

Happy selling and have a fruitful season!

The web-based (also known as the “hosted” server) usually resides externally on ASP networks (Application Service Provider), while installed software (a.k.a. “in-house”) is being downloaded on one’s computer network.

It is obvious in my title up there that I prefer to use web-based keyword tool, and let me clarify that I am writing in SEO perspective and not in a general IT concept.

Allow me to justify my point by enumerating some advantages that I’ve found in using web-based keyword tools such as KeywordSpy.com. Here are important factors I have considered:

No Additional Expenses

When you purchase a traditional keyword software, you then need to host and install the software on a server. The set-up may have certain system requirements to integrate with your application, and most of the time, these involve the latest system updates, causing you or your company to shell out more money.

Keyword Research Anytime, Anywhere

Web-based system can be accessed anytime, anywhere, with any browser as long as you have the Internet connection, your username and your password.

On the other hand, installed keyword software usually requires a local office network for you to access their data, and it’s very limited to a few computers. Unless you or your company invested in remote access application, which usually costs more, you cannot do your research to beat the deadly deadline set by your boss.

Data Back-up

Data loss is bad for any business. With installed keyword software in your PC, you have to think about backing up data because if some man-made or natural calamity ruins your office, where your computer is pretty sitting, there is no way for you to retrieve the advertising research you have previously done.

A web-based keyword research tool takes that burden off your back. Data is properly backed-up and they are very accessible. If you are an SEO and you have a client-presentation in a few minutes, all you’ll need is a computer to proceed with your keyword research and advertising solution presentation without the frustrating information-loss hassle.

Keeps a Productive Workforce

A completely web-based program offers a solution that is not available on installed software. Your staff, remote employees, and overseas business partners have access to your competition’s ad campaign information account 24/7.

Since there is nothing to install on your laptop or workstation, this means that authorized users can access the keyword tool system even when they are away from their working desks.
SEO staff and ad campaign managers can log-on to their keyword research accounts while sipping hot coffee in Starbucks, while chatting with clients in a hotel computer, or while pressing the keys of their internet-enabled mobile phones to view the latest progress in online advertising, check on next steps and discover your competitors’ marketing strategies.

When companies unveil a new advertising niche in another time zone or country, information is updated and reported while you sleep. When you are ready for work, information you need to know is waiting for you in the web-based keyword tool system.

To wrap it up, web-based keyword tools offer many advantages to companies and individuals in terms of increased productivity, round-the-clock access, and reduced installation and maintenance cost, as compared to installed keyword software.

While other factors will also come into play, I hope that the aforementioned advantages, through an SEO perspective, have increased your awareness in choosing the right keyword tool. It’s always an educated decision to go web-based.

There are lots of affiliate networks catering the universe of affiliate marketing. Say for example, the well-known ClickBank, which is a platform that lists all the digital products, e-books and online services of different merchant sites. With a free sign-up, you can immediately start promoting the products of your choice and expect commissions to flow in your account if you are good enough in generating sales and orders.

But making money via affiliate marketing could not be easier and safer without knowing the right products to sell and the super affiliates to follow with. There is no harm in replicating the success that super affiliates enjoy and learning the hot products in a certain industry.

If you sell products in your site or marketplace, you need to dig on the marketing style of super affiliates who know how to successfully get the job done and learn their keyword strategies in advertising products.

You will learn all these, simply by accessing the KeywordSpy Affiliate Module. This powerful feature of KeywordSpy lets you see the actual landscape in the major affiliate networks in the World Wide Web:

Aside from seeing the Top Products and Super Affiliates in the aforementioned networks, you will also get the entire list of keywords that an affiliate is using simply by entering a Product ID or Affiliate ID. And the tracking does not end in that one, because apart from the promotional affiliate terms and phrases, you can also get a clear view of the corresponding URLs and advertisement copies underlying affiliate keywords.

While US advertisers have the choice among numerous commercial SEO tools, their European or even Asian counterparts have little or no choice at all. The necessity for a keyword research tool that provides accurate keyword data for specific regions is very high and still assiduous.

If you are looking for what people are searching for in specific countries, KeywordSpy can be of assistance. Its country versions let you choose exclusive keywords for certain sites in specific regions, thus, catering local marketers and advertisers optimizing for both local and international visitors.

As of this writing, KeywordSpy offers the PPC advertising of several country databases that are targeted for specific niches and they are as follows:

United States/Global
United Kingdom
Australia
South Africa
Canada
Austria
Brazil
Switzerland
Germany
Spain
France
Greece
Ireland
India
Italy
Mexico
Singapore

These country indices were long overdue to meet the burgeoning keyword search market globally. I’m sure KeywordSpy is working on introducing additional country specific-databases overtime (aside from the 17 countries above) so marketers should watch out for them. It covers a wider demographic area than any other paid tools available making it a better choice for those in the European market and other continents.

What are the odds? Maybe tomorrow when you wake up, there is already a KeywordSpy Timbuktu domain.

Of course, design and interface are important, customer support and relations are equally important, but they’re all focused on what happens once a potential client gets to your site. And there enters the need for SEO.

And when you seek SEO to knock on your site, there comes with it, the inseparable “keyword research.”

Keep in mind that keyword marketing research would determine the success or failure of a site, no matter how user-friendly or well-designed the pages in it. While doing optimization, it is always recommended to do a competitive analysis to discover the top keywords used by online searchers to find services and products and what search terms are utilized by your competitors who are doing pretty well in marketing themselves.

To get straight to the point, keyword research is the giant step for any search engine “findability” effort whether it is off page or on page optimization. A well-optimized domain relies on good organic keyword density and using the right keyword tool for its PPC bidding strategy.

But the real fun begins in the use of KeywordSpy. I discovered this web-based tool a month ago, and it researches on competition as probably I’d never expect from any keyword software. When it comes to SEO, the keyword competition becomes a complex measure of your competitors’ strength that consists of their paid keywords, organic keywords an ad copy plus the corresponding analytics to measure keyword profitability. KeywordSpy quickly returns all this data in a well-designed interface, allowing you to even download the keywords and statistics to an excel or text file and sort those golden “money terms.”

Not only this tool provide data on keyword search volume and price, unlike other tools, the level of accuracy of KeywordSpy in data presentation is way high.

So next time you allow SEO specialists to enter on your site’s door, be sure that they tagged along the greatest competitor spy in town – KeywordSpy.

But then, I understand that KeywordSpy is still stranger to you at this point in time. Rest assured that I’ll expand on this tool on my proceeding posts. I’m still in the process of learning and playing with its features and since I found it very impressive, I won’t miss sharing this to you.