Got Ads?
5/31/2007
  Keyword Tools: Wordze vs. HitWise

If you are doing keyword research, there are a ton of tools out there that can help. One of the more expensive options is Hitwise. It costs about $25k/yr. When I first subscribed to Hitwise, it was one of the only ways to get access to keyword data from ISPs - what users type in as they browse the internet.

A much less expensive choice is Wordze, which is around $500/yr.

I subscribe to both services, and while HitWise has many features for general brand marketing that go far beyond what Wordze can do, for most PPC and SEO keyword research needs, Wordze is more helpful. I'm going to review them by stepping through some common tasks.

PPC Keyword Research Scenario:

Suppose we want to promote whirlpool dishwashers

We want to find a lot of related long tail keywords so we can create ads on Google and Yahoo related to dishwashers

First let's find the keywords that send traffic to whirlpool.com.

Hitwise

In Hitwise, we use "Search Intelligence -> Website Search Terms". We type in "www.whirlpool.com" and in about 10 seconds, we get a list of 173 search terms. These are the terms that send the most traffic to the whirlpool.com website. We export this to excel. Here's the top 10.

Rank SearchTerm Volume
1 whirlpool 28.16%
2 whirlpool appliances 6.94%
3 whirlpool.com 5.98%
4 whirlpool refrigerators 3.00%
5 www.whirlpool.com 2.23%
6 whirlpool washers 1.24%
7 whirlpool customer service 0.99%
8 whirlpool dishwashers 0.99%
9 whirlpool home 0.99%
10 whirlpool parts 0.99%

Looking at the Hitwise list, we find a few useful things like mis-spells: wirlpool, whirlpol, whirlppol; URL type-ins like: whirlpool.com, www.whirpool.com, etc. But we also have to manually filter some of the odd irrelevant phrases that show up: Is "albuquerque zoo symphony" really deserving of place 37 on this list? It's in there, along with "fiserv irving tx", "free trial of pantene hair products" and others... perhaps about 10 out of 173 terms seem irrelevant.

Wordze

With Wordze, there is no direct way to find all the keywords sending traffic to whirlpool.com, so we try the "Keyword search" on "whirlpool". It comes back quickly with 2763 keywords. The top 10 are:

 freezer fridge whirlpool
 whirlpool
 dishwasher whirlpool
 oven whirlpool
 fridge whirlpool
 freezer whirlpool
 whirlpool parts
 philips whirlpool
 whirlpool appliances
 whirlpool dryer repair

Wordze's list can be exported to Excel as well, and that takes a few minutes to complete. When we look at the whole list, we see that most phrases have the keyword "whirlpool" in them, but we need to filter them somehow for dishwashers.

We can either filter the list with an advanced query option or just try "whirlpool dishwasher". We find 91 keywords with Wordze when we search for "Whirlpool dishwasher".

Stuff like this:

whirlpool dishwasher du1145xtpb
whirlpool dishwasher
whirlpool dishwasher repair
whirlpool dishwasher repair troubleshooting
whirlpool dishwasher timer
whirlpool dishwasher du915pwpq2
whirlpool dishwasher troubleshooting
whirlpool dishwasher manuals
whirlpool dishwasher stainless steel

Hitwise Analysis

In hitwise, we can do a search term analysis on the term "whirlpool dishwasher" and it will tell us which sites receive traffic for this term, and give us a list of 43 related search terms. Fairly similar to wordze's list, but about half the size.

Wordze Misspells and Synonyms

Wordze has some very handy features for PPC campaign building - a thesaurus and misspell database. Looking up whirlpool in the misspell database gives this list:
whorlpool
whiropool
whirlppol
whirlpoll
wirlpool
whilpool
whirpool
whirlpoo
whrilpool
whilrpool
whhirlpool
whirllpool
whirlpooll

Similarly, there are 8 variations for "dishwasher" in the misspell database in Wordze.

The "thesaurus" in Wordze is really a "related keyword" tool. For the word "dishwasher", it returns:

dish washer
dishes
rack
empty
rinse
run
stack
domestic technology
menu

Perhaps 50% of those would be useful in building a keyword list.

Keyword Expansion - Dig

Another Wordze feature this is really useful is: "Dig", which is keyword expansion - i.e. drill down on a single keyword, and expand it by finding instances of it's use in Wordze's database of site content. Digging takes a while, but can produce very large lists of long tail keywords. There are some good videos on the Wordze site that explain how to use the "Dig" tool.

There's also a video on competititve keyword research.

Keyword API

The fact that Wordze has a XML API for getting 100's of related keyword is also very attractive for automating content creation. (If you are into that sort of thing).

Wordze also has data on some of the more lucrative parts of the keyword world that can be hard to find if you stick to the major search engines: I.e. poker, warez, porn, etc. By default, these terms are filtered out, but you can set advanced options in keyword search to enable them.

What HitWise is Good For

For most PPC marketers and SEOs, HitWise is not worth the expense, since tools like Wordze have deeper toolsets for building keyword lists. HitWise is especially good for brand managers tracking trends. You can build sophisticated watch lists composed of many sites - i.e. consumer electronics by combining: bestbuy.com, circuitcity.com, sony.com, etc. into a group.

Hitwise is also helpful for understanding where to buy ads on certain sites, since you can see where that site's traffic comes from and goes to.

Who Should Subscribe To Wordze

If you spend more than $500 / month on pay per click, or if you generate more than $500 / month with content sites, subscribing to Wordze will pay for itself in a month. It's especially good for building out long tail keyword lists for affiliate campaigns.

Labels: ,

 




<< Home

Subscribe to GotAds?



Links



Recent Posts

Keyword Tools: Wordze vs. HitWise


Archives

February 2005 /  March 2005 /  April 2005 /  May 2005 /  June 2005 /  July 2005 /  August 2005 /  September 2005 /  October 2005 /  November 2005 /  December 2005 /  January 2006 /  February 2006 /  March 2006 /  April 2006 /  May 2006 /  June 2006 /  July 2006 /  August 2006 /  September 2006 /  October 2006 /  November 2006 /  December 2006 /  January 2007 /  February 2007 /  March 2007 /  April 2007 /  May 2007 /  June 2007 /  July 2007 /  August 2007 /  September 2007 /  October 2007 /  November 2007 /  December 2007 /  January 2008 /  February 2008 /  March 2008 /  April 2008 /  May 2008 /  June 2008 /  July 2008 /  August 2008 /  September 2008 /  November 2008 /  December 2008 /  January 2009 /  March 2009 /