For any blogger, writing a post that gets targeted visitors is a constant challenge.

You want people to visit your blog/website. You want them to take action on your post – whether it’s giving comments or clicking on your offers and ultimately buying something from your site.

Writing a well-received content begins with keyword research. As a website owner, you want to provide relevant information or offer something that your audience are really looking for.

But the question is, “What are the audience looking for?”

How To Do Keyword Research For Content Marketing?

Before writing any content, we want to know what people are typing in the search engines, what they are interested in or what products/services they are looking to buy.

Keyword tools are designed as a guide in determining people’s various interests.

There are certainly a number of free keyword tools available for use such as keywordtool.io and Google Keyword Planner.

As I have talked about how to do keyword research for content marketing (using a free tool) previously, I will compare two paid keyword tools in this post.

‘Free’ tools as most of us are aware, come with limitations.

For instance, the keywords you find in these tools may be too generic or have too much competition such that it becomes difficult to rank high in the search engines. In particular, Google Keyword Planner is meant to be used for paid advertising with the Google AdWords platform.

The solution is getting a paid keyword tool that provides information on words people are looking for in the search engines.

The tool should ideally provide the number of competing websites targeting that same keyword, as an indication if the word is worth pursuing or otherwise.

A reliable keyword tool would also provide information on the level of difficulty in trying to rank a particular keyword, by taking into account variables such as number of searches, traffic volume and competiting sites.

Therefore, the goal of using a paid keyword tool is to find keywords with reasonable number of searches that have low competition. Without a reliable keyword tool, such a task can be time-consuming.

Long Tail Pro vs Jaaxy

I have been using Jaaxy Keyword Tool for sometime and it has worked for me, in terms of generating content ideas and ranking in the first few pages of Google, Bing, for some keywords.

Long Tail Pro Keyword Tool (LTP) is more widely used in comparison to Jaaxy, whose users comprise mainly of Wealthy Affiliate members.

Let’s dive straight into what these two tools offer and how different (or similar) their features are.

 

Long Tail Pro Keyword Research Tool

Price : 7-day trial available for $1, after which subscription is at $47 per month or $377 per year (which works out to $31 per month)

Features include :

• Desktop keyword research tool that runs on Adobe Air (available for Windows and Mac).
• Ability to search by geographical area, by choosing for e.g., google.au (Australia) or google.com (USA)
• Suggests other long tail keywords based on the root word typed into the tool
• Provide the number of competition of a particular keyword (Keyword Competitiveness or KC)
• Information on domain availability of a keyword
• Provide information on the ranking of your site keywords in Google, Bing, Yahoo

Pros

I use LTP with the trial and I like the fact that it offers searches by geographical area.

This is great for those who are into local marketing to keep their searches more targeted.

Cons

When searching for a keyword, LTP sometimes provides more than 500 results – which can be too many to analyse.

 

 

Jaaxy Keyword Tool

Price : Free 30 searches as trial. Paid memberships are avalable at $19 per month (for Pro) and $49 per month (for Enterprise).

Features include :

• Monthly Searches
• Expected Traffic
• QSR (Quoted Search Results, indicating competiting sites)
• KQI (Keyword Quality Index – three colors are used as indication if a keyword is worth pursuing. Green – go ahead, Yellow – not so great, Red – don’t waste time on it)
• SEO Power (This is a score derived, based on traffic, QSR – it ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores pointing to a higher chance of a keyword getting ranked in the search engines)
• Domain availability for keyword
• Site rank analysis – The Enterprise subscription provides site rank analysis at a faster speed, on top of data sorting.

More details on variables QSR, KQI and SEO Power are in this post on Jaaxy.

Pros

With variables like QSR and SEO Power, data provided is easy, fast to digest. So picking the keywords for your blog’s content doesn’t take much time.

Cons

Jaaxy doesn’t provide searches by geographical area and I think this is a shame because the number of searches for a particular keyword would certainly vary from one country to another.

So if you are into ‘local marketing’ (apart from the United States), Jaaxy might not be as useful as LTP.

Although I have never really needed to contact Jaaxy’s support, I understand that some users were left disappointed with the slow, sometimes non-existent response from Jaaxy’s support.

This is in contrast to LTP’s where, response to queries can be expected within a day.

Final Take

I am still using Jaaxy and I don’t think I’ll switch to LTP although I have had a hand at the 7-day trial.

To me, LTP provides too much data that I don’t quite need and may never use. At $47 per month, it’s certainly pricier than Jaaxy’s Pro subscription.

The list of keyword suggestions that I get in Jaaxy, although not as extensive as in LTP, is more than enough for me to plan my content.

Yes, Jaaxy doesn’t provide searches by geographical area but that doesn’t affect me because my websites are niche-specific rather than ‘area-concentrated’.

I believe Jaaxy works well for niche websites, if you optimize on the data provided.

I have experienced writing content for a brand new site and seeing the pages ranked in the first three pages of Google, in less than a month of publishing the content.

For textual content, that’s quite an achievement!

As for LTP, it is more popular and certainly more commonly used by marketers, but that doesn’t make it the ‘best’ tool for keyword research.

 

TIP in Using Jaaxy

Before working on a content, I try to look for ‘buyer’ keywords, for instance those related to a particular brand. An example is ‘Nike running shoes for women’.

Once I have the suggested keywords, I go for those with 100 searches or more and SEO Power of 90 or more. My ‘experiments’ reveal that going for keywords with SEO Power below 90 doesn’t yield as fast a result.

The Choice

In my opinion, no keyword research tool is perfect (nothing in life is…). But that doesn’t mean you can’t work around some of the missing elements in the tool.

I have tried another keyword tool called WordRecon and to some, it’s an excellent tool because it provides keywords that people search for in 12 platforms, including ebay, Amazon and Youtube.

It’s great if you are looking to target audience using those platforms in a particular geographical area.

However, you don’t get data on the number of searches per month or have a sense of your chosen keyword being ranked in the search engine.

I guess the ‘incompleteness’ in keyword research tools could be the reason why some marketers use more than one tool in their business.

Ultimately, I believe the decision in choice of a keyword tool lies in your needs as a marketer. If you can work around a long list of churned-out keywords, then LTP maybe an ideal tool for you.

However, if you are building micro niche sites, then I feel Jaaxy is sufficient, even if you go for the Pro level.