REVIEW - Wordtracker

Description:

One of the most important parts of making it as an adult webmaster is to make websites based around what people are looking for. You might have a GREAT idea for a website, like "black lesbian blonde midgets" - but unless this is a a niche that has at least SOME people out there interested in it, you're not going to be able to make money from it. Further more, if you're working with the search engines, targeting surfers with something that they really want to see becomes even more important.

One way to find out what's worth making sites for is to use a keyword suggestion tool. Overture offer a free one that I'm sure everyone's seen - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ - just tap in a keyword or two - and you can research up on which words the surfers are looking for. You get a number which is a good guide to the total people that are searching for a particular phrase right now. Word Tracker - http://www.wordtracker.com is a similar service on a paid basis.

I was keen to find out if the extras Word Tracker provided were actually worth splashing out the cash for...

The first thing that I'd say is that the 'free trial' that Word Tracker have on their site is not a good example, or trial of their product. I used it for around 30 minutes and found it very frustrating. I'd used the trial before then to test out the product too, but with the same results. In truth, this free trial does not resemble the 'real product' in any way. Word Tracker are not doing themselves any favours by having something like this as a test run for people interested in their services. The GOOD news was that what you get for your money is a lot better...

I took the chance and invested in a month's subscription. The prices are as follows:

1 Day £4.20 / $5.98
1 Week £14.00 / $19.94
1 Month £28.00 / $39.88
3 Month £69.00 / $98.27
1 Year £140.00 / $199.40

That's fair enough. I like the idea of trying it for a day - and for an investment of $5.98, any webmaster can get to see exactly what WT is like for themselves. The sign-up procedure took about 5 minutes and was very easy and straight forward. The access is instant - much like one of the porn sites we promote! You get a username and password, and can then log-in to the 'member's' area, and start using the services there. On thing I really liked was the way you can create a bookmark DIRECTLY to this page - you don't have to go through a series of login pages each session.

So what do you GET for your money?

WordTracker currently boasts 5 main services, which are all accessible from the simple webpage that forms the menu in the member's area. They are as follows:

1. Keyword Universe

This is a more complex version og Goto's suggestion tool. I like this part a lot. This is what was available in the free trial part of the WT homepage, but the difference is IT WORKS here. You put in a keyword or phrase, and the 'intelligent' system helps you to come up with keywords and phrases (that are popular) which you might not have thought of otherwise. One of the problems of building adult site after adult site is that it's EASY to get into a rut with your keywords and phrases. I found this part to be a very worthwhile tool in digging out new leads for sites and keyphrases.

Another feature here is that you can select the database which you use here. So this means you might pick Overture, and mine there for keywords. If Overture was to be down, which it can be from time to time, you can use this service to still be able to find the words you're looking for. There are around 6 possible databases you can use here, so this tool will give you the best of all worlds, and allow you to check for consistency between them.

2.View all your results

Wordtracker also endeavours to help you manage your keywords and phrases. I found this feature very handy. After you've been mining for some keywords and phrases, you can add them to your 'projects'. From there, they can be exported (very handy for future site building), printed, or worked with further, including an option to run a competition search, which will search the major SE's to see who is listed well under these phrases. A webmaster could pay the money for a day, and export enough key phrases to keep them busy for a year or MORE here...

3. Keyword Projects

More management tools. This area seemed a little complicated, and in all honesty, I'm not too sure that a busy adult webmaster would venture into this section too often. But some folks, who really are serious about keeping track of every keyphrase might find the advanced features of WT appealing.

4. Full Search

This area states:

"Keywords which are similar to 'chosen keyphrase / word' will appear below in just a few moments. By 'similar', we mean keywords which are in the same conceptual ballpark as 'chosen keyphrase / word'.

This is an ambitious area which aims to let you do some serious digging for obscure keywords and phrases (that again, are actually being searched for). I found this process to be rather hit and miss, although it was quite interesting to see some of the phrases that came up. I'd certainly like to spend more time on this part - the results were interesting. I typed "foot fetish" in one instance, and the tool gave me back "barefeet" as one of the phrases I could think about. I've NEVER optimized for that phrase without the space - but who knows? Might be an idea? So this part of WT is good for getting your brain thinking in new directions...

5. Multiple Search

The multiple search has some areas which are as follows:

• Simple Search

If you've used Goto / Overture - you'll be instantly familiar with this part. It's a quick search where you can put in MULTIPLE lines of keywords and phrases, and do some serious digging around. The results returned give you the estimated daily searched (24 hour period) in the big search engines. Handy, fast results in this one - I think a lot of people will use this area frequently.

• Exact/Precise Search

You can dig for case sensitive searches here. This is for really testing out potential phrases, and could be handy in some cases. It's perhaps not something you'd use that often, but could be handy to check out specific words and phrases. You can paste a whole list of keywords into here at one time, as with the simple search.

• Compressed Search

Not too sure on this one. You can add say "lesbian", and the script will bring back plural variations - obviously "lesbians" - with the relevant searches on those phrases. In all honesty, this didn't hold much appeal for me. There's nothing that I can get here, that the Simple Search didn't give me.

• Comprehensive Search

A slight variation - both singular AND plural versions. This part seemed pretty pointless and a little overkill if I'm being honest. The Simple Search and other mining tools provided are more than adequate for most purposes. Still, some webmasters might find this helpful.

• Misspelling Search

This feature sounded very interesting, and I couldn't wait to test it out. A search for "lesbian", for example, takes me to another page, were I'm presented with the following choices:

les*ian
le*ian
le*an
l*an
l*n
lesbia*
lesbi*

This was VERY cool. Although the search didn't return too many mis-spellings, there were some very unusual (but still pretty popular) phrases returned here. I'd wager that some of them have little or no competition out there in the search engines. Searching for lesbia* returned a page with some of the following in there:

lesbianas
lesbianna
lesbianpost
lesbianfantasies

And a whole lot more. There's a bunch of options that can help you dig out the most obscure misspellings and unusual keyphrases here.

THE VERDICT!

It's hard to fault WordTracker in any real way. There was nothing that I found especially difficult and there was very little to learn here. It's accessible to the new user, but advanced and feature-laden enough to keep even the most pedantic keyword digger happy. Does it give you an advantage? Are there any features here that Goto / Overture don't let you have for free? That's an interesting question. I'd say that you can get a little more with WT that Overture - certainly on the more obscure phrases. Whether it's worth the extra investment, I'll leave that to you. But the fact is that WT will let you dig out things that you won't get with Overture.

As for me, I'm going to see how it goes over the first month. So far, I've been using WordTracker on a daily basis, and will certainly continue to do so. When the month runs out, I'll buy the year if I'm still using it at this rate. I'd say TRY WordTracker out, but not with the free trial - that doesn't do it justice. Test out WT with the day trial, or even the week trial - so you can put it into practice. It might just be a good investment.

TOM ^"^

Enter TOM'S NEWBIE BOOSTER

">

---