Keyword analysis tool come in two different forms, free and paid. The free tools are fine if you don't mind spending at least half of your time toggling back forth between different sites in order to get ALL the information you really need to assess whether a keyword is going to be profitable for you or not. A good keyword analysis tool will put all the necessary pieces of information at the tip of your fingers saving you valuable time that could be spent actually making money instead of doing research by hand.
What does a great keyword analysis tool give you? Let's take a look first at what it is you really need information wise to determine what a good keyword actually is:
1- Search volume and volume of pages competing for a slot for the same keyword you are searching for. Usually, if you can find a keyword that has less than 50,000 results and write a good article on that keyword, that is properly optimized and back linked to, you make it stick on the front page of the SERPS for enough time to get you some decent traffic and a few sales in the process.
2- One click search of potential affiliate programs that Google finds relevant to the keyword itself.
Did you get that? An affiliate program that GOOGLE thinks is RELEVANT to your keyword, with one click. Sure you can make that same search in Google by typing in ["your keyword" Affiliate Programs], but the time to toggle back and type that in compared to the search box, and wait for results is about double the time if not more than simply clicking a button inside the tool to bring the information to your screen. Anytime I can cut the time of a chore by half, I am all in. What does your free keyword analysis tool say about that? LOL3- Once click search for the amount of AdWords Ads that are triggered for that particular keyword. Yes, a good tool will be able to tell you, with one click, whether trying an AdWords campaign for that keyword is a good idea or not. No free keyword analysis tool will do that for you.
There is definitely more to the story on why you should have a good paid keyword analysis tool. The time and effort they save you is at least 50%-60% of what it takes to do the same amount of work. If you want to know more you can follow this series by subscribing to my RSS feed so that you will be alerted to new articles as they are published. If you do not have a good keyword analysis tool, you will want to know more, that is for sure.
Keyword Analysis Tool