2009 November, 10th

Mihaela Lica

WordStream looked like a promising startup back in May when I first reviewed it, and it grew to surpass everyone’s expectations. It began as a cloud-based keywords management software, which allowed SEO professionals to handle huge keyword lists, use the keyword organizer tools to segment these lists into groups, and analyze the best and worst performing accordingly. This was one of the most important features of the software, enough to help even less savvy SEOs understand which are the best performing keywords, what are their customers searching for, and what keywords are actually converting. The tool was ideal to employ in smart PPC campaigns, and even to improve website copy, focusing on customer interest rather than focusing on meaningless keyword popularity statistics.

Back in May, WordStream did not have a keyword discovery in place, all keyword lists needed to be imported by the user from various sources; including web server log files, text files, or via a WordStream Tracker JavaScript. But today, the company announced major updates to its software, features that literally make WordStream the best keyword discovery and management tool on the Web.

There’s nothing like it. KeywordMax, KeyCleanse, PPC BidMax and so on, don’t even come close in terms of quality, value and utility. Actually, comparing any of the already existing keyword management software to WordStream is like comparing a paper airplane with a supersonic fighter bomber. WordStream is intelligent, dynamic, fast and versatile. With the new multi-source keyword analytics the software allows marketers to analyze data from both organic and paid search.

The integrated keyword discovery tool searches over a billion of the world’s most popular keywords, aggregating over a trillion unique searches, and returning the most relevant keyword phrases for a given query – in a matter of seconds. Then working with these keywords is a breeze: WordStream’s keyword segmenter gives first a list of suggestions for how to break down the keyword list into sections. Selecting several keywords at the same time gives the possibility to create multiple groups simultaneously – and all these groups are semantically related.

A better term to describe this is “clustering” – in the attached image you see how WordStream groups all terms related to “garden” into folders that contain semantically related terms. For example, in the folder titled “garden care” you will have all semantically related phrases, such as: lawn and garden care, garden care center, rose garden care, winter garden care, home and garden care, etc – organized from most popular to least popular, to help you understand which keyword phrases could bring the highest conversions. The same principles apply for keywords imported from Google Analytics (which is now integrated with WordStream user panel) and for keywords imported from any other sources.

“Our solution is about making sense of keyword data of all sorts, and then turning that information into business-driving activity on your website.” notes WordStream founder and VP of Product Development Larry Kim. “There’s a disconnect in keyword research tools today – on one hand, you have basic keyword tools which offer keyword suggestions and traffic estimates, and on the other hand, your own Web analytics data which reveals how people are actually finding and converting on your site. New features enable our customers to aggregate real, paid and natural search data alongside keyword tool estimates and other brainstormed keyword ideas into one integrated dashboard. This means more efficient and more comprehensive keyword research, which will lead to more effective search marketing efforts.”

WordStream v 1.6 also includes a competitor “spy” feature that enables you to identify the most successful keyword terms used by a competitor by parsing all occurrences related to a domain (including all pages indexed for that domain), and a few new metrics: product usage, negative keyword stats, managed adgroup stats, and AdWords api usage stats alongside, with the added support for augmenting existing keyword groups with newly discovered variations on queries (e.g., query “keywords” gets auto-added to group “keyword”).

Such an organization of the keywords and keyword phrases is important not only for PPC campaigns, but also for writing better web content of any type (web pages, articles, press releases, etc). For PR professionals WordStream could turn into an essential research tool: understanding what web users are searching for is imperative for the success of a press release campaign for example. You want to rank in the search engines not for “ego boosting” key-phrases and brand names, but for highly relevant, competitive terms, that attract buyers instead of casual visitors. For small companies and for the DIYs, the free keyword discovery tool developed by WordStream is a suitable compromise. Unlike other free tools that return 10-20 results, WordStream Free Keyword Tool returns 100, but more importantly, the tool has a feature that will enable you to select the most relevant, semantically related, terms, to generate a refined list.

Such rave reviews are rare these days, as tools become more competitive, and the window of opportunity for excelling become less prevalent. For WordStream however, this latest release goes far beyond what would be a normal incremental improvement. With this new depth (and one can only assume some of the uses I have alluded to) WordStream has effectively eclipsed the value their competitors can muster. More and more we will see SEO applied not so much as a magic wand, but as a patterned discipline for applying standards onto Web developments. Tools like WordStream will then be more of a necessity.

• 2010/01/13 -- WordStream Offers Free Webinar for Search Marketing Resolutions
• 2010/01/17 -- Toyota Deal Proves Out Adobe Confidence in Omniture
• 2009/10/01 -- PR Tips: The SEO Value of a Press Release
• 2009/05/30 -- 5 Free Reputation Monitoring Tools

About the Author

Mihaela Lica is senior partner at Pamil Visions PR and editor at Everything PR. She is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters and others), with an experience of over 7 years in online PR and SEO. Mihaela writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. She also maintains a personal blog called eWritings. Follow Mig on Twitter or send her an email at mig [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.

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