A ShoeMoney Tools Test Run: Keyword Research

They say the best things in life are free. Having used Google Wonder Wheel and WordTracker's keyword suggestion tool to get keywords, I've researched a lot of keywords for my projects with free online resources. However, when it comes to instant editability, depth of reach, time saved, and volume of keywords for a single page, I've found that ShoeMoney Tools has been a superior help.

It's tough to quantify a web tool's success, especially a keyword finder's, with just a few adjectives or glowing sentences. So this test run will actually show you the unadulterated list of all results -- yes, every single keyword -- taken from a single use of ShoeMoney Tools' Keyword Generator tool.

To get keywords, I take the one term I want to use -- in this case "web design" and run it through Google Wonder Wheel to get the top related words. In this case I got "web design tutorials". Though there were subcategories like "html tutorials" and so on, I decided to keep the top keywords from excluding the main ideal of my site, which teaches people to look for and use the best tutorials on the web for web design.

So after running "web design" through Keyword Manager, I got a whopping one-screen list of 1220 keywords.

As you'll see, they're not all quality results. Why? Because even the best results are often found between a lot of junk, and may be results one person can use while another can't.  But out of this list I found over 65 relevant keyword phrases for the site I run.

When you see the list of keywords, you'll see them grouped into 5 categories, ranked in descending order of frequency.

Localized keywords: These are the most worthless keywords to most people, except residents of the same place: "calcutta web design", "new york web design", so on. They do prove a point though: you can use reverse-ordered keywords for an added SEO weight. For example, you can use both "cheap web design" and "web design cheap" on your site.

The next category is out-of-niche keywords. They may be effective, but not for your website's exact category or niche. For example: "web design ruby on rails".or "web design COBOL" would hardly be helpful for an site covering entry-level WordPress and template setup and installation.

The next category is your niche keywords. These are phrases that cover what you already write about, and so are the most valuable. Don't be discouraged by the small number of niche keywords vs. junk keywords. For the term "web design" I got a good solid list, and bunched them into themes for future PPC ads. Some show up in multiple lists:

Informational Keywords

web design tutorial
web design guide
web design tip/s
web design trends
web design rules
ecommerce web design
layout guide
web design information
web design reading
web design resources
effective web design
web design article
web design ebook
web design solutions
web design concept

Beginner-Oriented Keywords

easy web design
web design beginner / beginner web design
learn web design online
learn web design
learning web design
web design help
introduction to web design
web design tutorial
web design help
web design ebook
make money web design
books on web design
web design ideas
how to do web design
web design guide
web design text
web design color
how users enter text
web design adjust text size

Tool & Product-Related Keywords

web design products
recommended web design tools
best web tools
web design software
web design downloads
web tool reviews
web design tool reviews
web design tools
web design applications
recommended web tools

Free/Inexpensive-Oriented Keywords

fast web design
web design ideas
web design applications
recommended ...
web design tips
bad web design
web design software review
web design freeware
free web design templates
graphic web design
navigation in web design
best web design software
web design examples
web design rules
guide for web design
cheap web design
layout
good web design
small business web design
make money web design
web design tutorial
web design reading
learning web design
learn web design
visual web design
web design elements
web design directory
web design gallery
web design video
web design information
web design guide

Next are your idea keywords. Depending on how much creative leeway and time and effort you have, you can round out your blog or website with extra categories people want to know about. The keywords below gave me ideas for starting a web design company, and for offering additional presence for my tutorial site through Skype and forums:

Idea Keywords

artistic web design
lawyer web design
hvac contractor web design
web design forum
affordable web design
do you understand the seo web design relationship
affordable small business web design
web design chat
web design consulting

And the last category is keyword misspellings. ShoeMoney doesn't bring up many misspellings, but the two I got were really good. Why pick misspelled keywords? They're cheaper to bid on and can still get you a little bump in traffic.

Misspelled Keywords:

buisness web design
web design sofware

So there you have it... a filtered keyword list from ShoeMoney Tools.

One important thing to remember is that some keywords are best used at the top of your keyword structure. in metatags (on WordPress, in the All-in-One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert), and other tags can be added to your posts and pages.

Any review should be balanced by negatives. In the case of ShoeMoney Tools, the only real downsides I've found are a few missing features. First, it would be great to have a quick-review option that would let users knock out useless keywords off their lists with the click of a button (though that would require a toggle between term transfer and term editing). Perhaps a second window on the right could hold keywords chosen in this way. From there, there could be options to delete or save these newly formed sub-lists. Another good option would be a sub-option to save the current list and start another keyword search for a chosen result. Some web people may be in a real hurry and may pooh-pooh the idea of waiting a minute or so for the Tools to grab all the eligible keywords, but the extra time spent accumulating all these keywords from the web is well offset by its one-screen ease of use.

Overall I've been able to get a lot of use out of the ShoeMoney Tools Keyword Generator. It reaches deeply and far across the web, almost always comes up with a couple of related words I never thought of before, and offers a good amount of convenience, all on the same screen. You may be able to duplicate the same results with enough patience on Google and WordTracker in several back-and-forth screens, but I have to say I like the convenience of presentation quite a bit.

Lionel Houde scours the web for bits o' goodness and wrings it all out at webmasterdiy.info.  This is an affiliate-compensation review, where he is compensated for any sales directly produced herein.