Using appropriate keywords are immensely crucial to the ranking of the site you are working on. Imagine a site which has the coolest Flash applications, great and unique content, the best products and services. However, without appropriate keywords, it would hardly ever have a good rank in the Google SERPs! And what about domains and keywords listed in them? This is why Keyword selector tools help us in understanding and analyzing the market while also capitalizing on its benefits.

Mentioned below is a list of 10 best keyword selector tools for SEO in alphabetical order:

Ask: Run a search for say, 'Search Engine Optimization' in Ask.com. On the left side of the SERPs, you will find a segment titled 'Narrow Your Search,' that has links to all many search terms related to 'Search Engine Optimization'. Use these as keywords. Ask gives you refined SERPs through searching further with this feature. However, many may find this time-consuming. Also, it does not feature volume of traffic.

Compete: Compete offers three main features Keyword referral, Site referral and Compare sites. Keyword referral tells the most recommended domains for certain search terms and queries. In site referral, you tupe in a domain to find out the most referred phrases or search terms. And, in compare sites, you type in 2 domains to know the comparison for keyword referrals. With compete, you do gain a lot of insight on how your competition is faring but it doesn't give you ideas on how to take advantage of the data you get.

In case you don't have other alternative analysis tools and you do not mind paying up, its good enough. Else, don't.

Digital point's Keyword suggestion Tool: Digital point's Keyword suggestion Tool incorporates the results of both Overture and Wordtracker's free tool. When you type a phrase, say 'Search Engine Optimization,' and press enter, the site returns two tabular lists of both Overture & Wordtracker information. When you think about it, there couldn't have been a better tool as no keyword is better than the one that brings in most traffic as Overture's tool shows daily results while Wordtracker's free tool shows results of every 6 months.

Again, as it feature's Wordtracker's free tool, the results are limited.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool: The Google Adwords Keyword Tool benefits not just Google AdWords advertisers & AdSense publishers but laypeople like us SEO professionals too. As soon as you type a query, say "Search Engine optimization," it gives long tabular list of keyword variations. Okay, no great shakes! Its the next features, that bring home 1st prize- Search volume and average search volume. It shows how the potential keyword you will use is faring in comparison to 'Search Volume' and 'Avg. Search Volume.'

Google Suggest labs: When it first emerged, I thought it was a really nifty tool. Not only does it try to complete the term for you, it also shows the number of results for each keyword. Obviously, it goes without saying that these are helpful keyword alternatives.

As for its disadvantage, Google search toolbar offers almost the same features now.

Google Trends Labs: Type two terms, say "Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimisation" in the query box and it gives a graphical representation about those 2 terms. You can put in 5 search terms at one go. You can also find out about the relevance of the search terms as it displays the frequency in which the respective topics have appeared in Google News. Additionally, it also tells in which location, people have searched for them most. Beyond this, it serves no benefits.

The disadvantage is that, only popular terms are served here. Not good if you are looking for a long tail!

Keyword Discovery Tool: Keyword Discovery is one of the more popular keyword selector tools. It has many excellent features and if you are willing to cough up $49.95 per month, you can get over 1800 phrases!

Keyword Discover Tool lets you search specific results of keyword terms in different countries. For eg- A search for 'search engine optimization' in Australia had '9,164' results while in the UK its had just '16'. This tool is helpful if you want to export keyword data and then later import keyword data into other tools that will provide this kind of intelligence.

MS Adlabs Search Funnels: Use this in Internet Explorer and not in Firefox, as more features are available in the former. Type a query and choose from Funnel in or Funnel out. Funnel in will run a search where the results will show all things users searched for before say, typing "Search Engine Optimization". In the outgoing funnel, the results show is a search that starts with the keyword; for example, an outgoing funnel for "Search Engine Optimization" displays all the queries that customers searched after searching for "Search Engine Optimization". The main benefit of Search Funnel is that you can visualize and study behaviour of prospective clients' incoming and outgoing search terms.

Disadvantage is that, it can take long to learn and use.

NicheBot: Nichebot's results combines the intelligence of Overture, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker. That's not all, besides the aforementioned three, you can perform 3 more searches on Thesaurus, Lateralus and Google ranking. In simple words, for $9.95, you can have results of 6 searches and that is really a good deal.

However, Nichebot can get slow sometimes and it would only be good to use if it was little cheap!

Word Tracker's Free Tool: Granddaddy of all. Wordtracker is home to 340 million search queries. Use it to discover the most appropriate keywords for your website. This even features a misspelling search which helps you find misspelled keywords. This will ensure your website ranks high in SERPs.

The biggest disadvantage is that, its not for free.

Yahoo! Buzz: As the name suggests, Yahoo! Buzz provides readers and everyone with the latest stories, most searched items, top daily searches and the top percentage movers. SEO can take advantage of these features by analyzing the results. This way, you know which domains to register for.

As helpful as it is, remember that it will only benefit you if you are seeking the 'percentage of users searching for that subject' within the US alone.

What do we use at PageTraffic for keyword research? Our favorites are

Ask, Digital point's Keyword suggestion Tool, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, MS Adlabs Search Funnels and Word Tracker.

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