Stupid name that Traffic Travis. I’ve dabbled with TT since joining Affilorama back in 2006. I’ve always found it reasonably useful, but for some reason I kept going with “advanced” tools like SEO Elite and Keyword Elite for all my SEO and keyword enjoyment. I think it was due to the Vic episodes last spring. And since then I have hardly used Keyword Elite. Barely used SEO Elite. And am frankly very happy I spent very little for them since I got a tasty PLRPro discount for my troubles.
I soon became a shill for Nichebot. A happening little keyword resource if there ever was one. Google Keyword Cruncher really digs into the Google Keyword tool to find all sorts of keywords. And it doesn’t cost that much of your credits. I take those keyword phrases and splash them into Keyword Analysis X and find out if I can compete for that phrase.
Keyword analysis is a grind (but not as much as getting backlinks). There are a lot of tools out there to help you figure out which keyword to target. The most obvious, and the one I use, via Nichebot, is Google. But just because you find a keyword people are searching for does not mean you can compete for it without a ton of backlinks. Nichebot, and now Traffic Travis are the tools I use to quickly determine if I can compete for the keyword. Firefox has an add-on that you can use, but I find it a drag. I’m sick of getting backlinks so finding keywords that I can compete with is the only way I can justify spending time doing this shit.
Anyway a new version of Traffic Travis Professional has come out. I just updated to 3.1. But you don’t need to pay for Traffic Travis. It’s free. The pro version gives you the opportunity to save reports and make larger keyword lists among a few other things. But the free version is perfectly fine. Especially if you want the SEO Analysis feature. It gives you sweet information on the keyword phrase you are targeting like Page Rank, backlinks, H1 tag information, among other things.
The reason I bring this up because for those that are a member of Court’s Keyword Crash Course then you know what a pain, I believe, his method of keyword phrase competition analysis is. Nichebot and/or Traffic Travis makes this grind much more palatable.
Traffic Travis free versus the professional version. I realize the question might come up. Dunno what to tell you. I got the Pro version through PLRPro for nada. I don’t see why you would buy the Pro version without checking out the free version. If you like it, go to the comparison page and see what you might be missing. Take it (the pro version) for a free test drive. I don’t know anyone that is more fair in Internet Marketing than Mark Ling. If you don’t like it, don’t extend the 7-day trial.
Is this a magic keyword, SEO tool? Nope. I just bring it up because the tool keeps getting more and more useful and for a free tool it is crazy not to give it a spin. If nothing else I am really enjoying the SEO Analysis tool. I’m getting some good competition info from it for keywords I want to target.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Splork,
Am I detecting a more focused and profitable Niche Marketing Specialist?
You sound like you’ve finally hit a cool stride.
I think our little IM class is finding success with the sound marketing methodologies thanks to Griz, Court, Mark, Potpiegirl, Yourself and a few others genuine folks out here.
I find the less these guys and gals update their blogs, the more time I seek profitable plans of action to execute. And you know what, less time spent reading and more doing is the key to all of this madness.
Anywho, all the best to ya.
Thanks Splork, I’ll let the guys know on the forums. Do you have access to the forums yourself?
Hey thanks so much for the recommendation. It looks like a useful program. Just wondering if you have figured out a way to plug in the formula used by Court in Excel with this program to narrow down the keyword list. Or are you just using it to get the search volume from the various search engines? Thanks!
Traffic Travis looks worth looking into. Especially since Traffic Travis is free.
My keyword research tool went down recently and I have been using Googles keyword research tool. Many of the new keyword tools out today are way over my budget and or require monthly payments (I try to avoid this). Traffic Travis sounds pretty sweet.
Thanks for the info!
Hey Sunshine. I’m still rather lazy so it forced me to be more focused instead of bouncing around so much. My deal is the keyword grind, write something, add it to a website and find/get backlinks. I have to keep it simple though being “successful” is damn hard.
Hey Brawnydt. I apologize but I assume you mean at Affilorama? If so, yes I do.
Hey Denise. Yea give it a whirl. You may find it a bit useful.
Hey Justin. TT doesn’t give you CPC, at least that I can find.
I’m really just using TT to analyze keyword competition. The new module on SEO analysis is pretty useful.
Dear Splork and followers of Lost Balls,
This blog has been invaluable in helping see the importance of niche research and until recently, I had to use multiple software tools, and lots of research time to find a marketable niche… until now.
I found a software tool called Market Samurai that combines all of the best of keyword research, SEO competition, finding content, and promotion. It will also tell you the Commerciality of the keyword, expected Adwords Traffic, Adwords Click Through Rate, and with the color coded grid, you can see if you have a chance at making into PR 1 position or not.
This software tool will also show you the competing websites and what they are doing to get to PR 1 with Google… very cool.
There are way too many features to mention here.. but the best part is you can try it free.
Check it out here: http://www.marketsamurai.com
Wishing you the best and your online success,
Mark in Nashville
Thanks Splork – I’m definitely going to need to give this one a try.
Thanks Mark. I tried out Market Samurai and can definitely see its advantages and why people like it. But for me simply using Google’s database for keywords and doing some rudimentary competition analysis is about all I cared to deal with.
Hope it works for you Steward.
I think the biggest challenge is finding a niche that people are actually spending money on. Once that niche is identified, then pursue the keyword research to tap into that market.
Mark in Nashville
Huh. I downloaded TT, looked at it and never used it. I guess I should dust it off now.
Hey buddy, hope all is well with you. This economic downturn has been tough!
After using both traffic travis and market samari, I do like market samari better. What I like better about market samari is that it counts the number of searches on each keyword, then crawls each search engine and counts the number of times that keyword phrase appears in TITLE tags. It then divides the two to come up with a ratio. So what you are looking for is a high searches per month number, with a low TITLE tags number which suggests that a keyword is being overlooked. I found it most useful for long tail keyword research and trying to quickly find a keyword phrase that I can rank higher in Google’s index for because of lower competition for that keyword phrase.
That’s just my opinion.
On the downside, market samari costs a pretty penny.
Traffic Travis is free and that really goes a long way because free is the right price for everyone.
Market Samurai doesn’t do the local options, like if I want to rank in google uk or something. It also didn’t show 20 results like Traffic Travis does, which is pretty important if you want to get a better idea of the competition. Also often Market Samurai says a site is listed in yahoo or dmoz when it isn’t, it isn’t as accurate.
Just my thoughts on it,
Mark, I just wanted to say thank you for providing this for free, I cant afford these types of software yet but I can see how having this kind of tool available to me is going to be invaluable.
Yes, big props to both TT and MS.
My little ‘give’ for the day. You can use TT to find and piggyback off Squidoo/EZA/GoArticles/Zimbio properties that rank in the top 10 for good keywords. (Hint: go to Search Engine Tools then load and edit a project. Change Project Domain to squidoo.com and click ‘Start Update’. Repeat for each web 2.0 or article directory you find in ‘Top sites for keywords’ tab.) In the Pro version you can export these out to Excel and match them up with search volumes.
I like to use MS for the Top 10 SEO competition (I’m a sucker for colors. Numbers don’t really do it for me. Red – Bad, Green – Good). But I’m getting really sick of those tabs across the top.
Paul, I think MS does local options. You can set the country in the Project Settings.
Great tools though, both of them.