Hey guys, so as many of you have pointed out to me, niche refinery has been retired. Not only that, but if you have been using the keyword tool dominator tool it is also down… Quite annoying but truthfully the reason I did not really notice these updates until pointed it out to me is because for the past 4 months I have only been using the free Google keyword tool. Prior to that, if you go back around my March or April income reports you can see that both of those months I was doing extensive keyword research so for those 2 months it was worth using SEMrush/niche refinery(TKA) and Secockpit.
UPDATE: If you are interested, secockpit currently seems to have a 5 day trial for $1.
I did not officially mention Secockpit before because I felt it was too expensive at $77/month for what you were getting over niche refinery as far as a newbie is concerned (which was the majority of the visitors at the time I think). However it’s definitely a VERY well done tool that not only gives you MUCH more accurate competition measures (way beyond only using PR) thanks to the SeoMoz metrics it uses but it can also show you if the exact match is available (good luck finding any decent EMD’s in english these days though…). Maybe some of you use market samurai, ya it’s a decent tool but for keyword research/seo competition it takes way too much time for finding niches/testing a lot of keywords.
Anyway, as mentioned I only have used it the 2 months that I was really drilling down to find new niches and I mostly used a combination of SEMrush with Secockpit. Since then I just use the google keyword tool, most of the time it’s fine for my needs. I made a video on keyword research using the free google keyword tool that will be in a new video series guide me and Becker are making in the future. Under that, I also recorded a video on secockpit for those interested in knowing more about it. If you feel you are ready to commit a lot of time in a month for keyword research I would recommend the investment, though as I show in the first video the free google keyword tool is fine for my needs.
Btw, I also mention how I now use the contextual KE tool to correctly evaluate the CPC for adsense ads on the display network (your websites). I was going to save this for my KW research ebook but with the retirement of niche refinery a big part of my methods at the time are now over :(.
Finally, if you are interested in doing some extensive keyword research I would recommend using Secockpit which will save some analysis time but honestly, unless you are dealing with a large # of KW I do not bother with other tools. For niche ideas though I would still definitely recommend SEMrush and spy on the big website’s keywords, I found some great jewels when I did that early this year.
UPDATE: If you are interested, secockpit currently seems to have a 5 day trial for $1.
Here’s a link for secockpit and if you don’t want me to make any money here’s a non affiliate link which does not include a trial.
Thanks for reading, I would really appreciate your questions and comments on this topic, I’m not sure how clear I was with the KW research video, maybe I will make an ad don to it for the new guide depending on what you guys think.
hey Alex great information…
btw what is your average bounce rate on your sites? i heard that bounce rate can be really important according to google…just interest on how much percentage we are talking about here that we want to achieve?
cheers
my main ones are all around 60-80%.
Thanks for putting keyword research into a bit more perspective. I didn’t think to group the related kw’s to create each post like that. I was just making a post for each kw.
Too bad about ktd, I was using that for my new sites. Now what? I don’t have $77 for secockpit for even the month. Bummer.
And thanks for showing us the contextual tool. You are right, i ran some keywords in there and instead of 48 cents cpc, the average was well over a dollar.
Secockpit is just useful to speed up the competition research, instead of having to manually click on the search query, check prs and backlinks. It’s also nice that it shows EMD but definitely not a “requirement” if you don’t want to pay for the time it saves. I don’t think I will mention it in the new guide and only have the first video.
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I remember from my TKA days, that what they suggested to do was find a load of keywords during the research period – and this would harvest a number that could keep you going for a life-time.
I think though, to keep focused, it would be better for me to do the kw research for a niche, build the site, then start the loop again with kw research for the next niche etc. Of course not forgetting the link building stage.
Looking forward to the new guide.
the kw research –> niche –> build a site –> repeat approach was what I had done when I started, but because of the cost of using semrush and secockpit I decided to just focus 1-2 months entirely on finding a lot of new opportunities. Since I had not started new websites for many months prior to that my current sites were kinda “complete” too.
Hi Alex….thanks for this brilliant post. Just reminded me how ‘not’ complicated kw research is!!
I have one question – i have a few very old sites that I bought as a package and uploaded with articles etc but never rewrote those articles or backlinked them. But a couple of them have got a few cents worth clicks on adsense. How can i find what keyword brought the visitor on my site so i can work on that keyword?
Thanks
I use google analytics for that, you can find what keywords from search engines people used to reach your site.
Thanks Alex.
I use Google Analytics too but the adsense info and analytics are always different. I used to think that it is not reliable but maybe I havent set up properly.
Will have a look!
Thanks
Alex what font type and size you use for you sites? from some reason i can’t fine some cool font type and size to blend nice with the adsense adds …
i mean look at Pat Flin site securityguardtraininghq dot com the adsense there just blend really awesome with the site…
any suggestions?
for the actual themes that varies site to site, I just make it nice to me to start with and do slight modifications later on if I feel it might help with ads… No specific font or size, I just make it readable obviously.
Thanks to Toki from the forums I found out secockpit has a 5 day trial, updated the link with that instead!