KeySearch Review: An Easy Keyword Research Tool For Beginners

I was visiting with a blogging friend recently and she was lamenting how hard it’s gotten to get traffic to her site. We began talking about keywords and she asked if there was a particular tool I was using (that I liked). That’s when I began to tell her about my experience using KeySearch and why I’m sticking with it.

When I first started blogging I had no idea what a keyword was. In fact, I look back on the posts I wrote back in 2016 for my other blog and I’m pretty appalled at all the mistakes I made.

Since then, however, I’ve learned and have remedied many of my mistakes. Others…well, let’s just say they are a great basis for comparison LOL.

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Why You Need To Use Keywords

The first question you may be asking yourself if you’re a beginner is, “What are keywords and why do I need to use them?”

Fair question.

In the broadest sense, keywords are anything that someone types into a search bar when they want to find specific information.

Let’s pretend I’m shopping at Amazon and have a specific list of items I need. I would type in the words that would best describe what I was looking for. For example, “clean cowboy romance”, “Christmas lights on white cord”, or “extra large heating pad with timer”.

Using these words tells Amazon what I’m looking for so that it can show me the products that I’m most likely to be interested in, and therefore to purchase. It would be stupid of Amazon to show me things that I wasn’t interested in, right?

The same process is at play when we type into a Google (or other search engine) search bar.

However, when you’re the one doing the writing, your keywords have two purposes:

1. They tell Google (and other search engines) what your article is about so that it can recommend it to people who are looking for your topic, and
2. Choosing the right keyword (or keyword phrase) can help get more traffic to your website because there aren’t as many other articles competing for those eyes.

In other words, you want to choose keywords that people are looking for (thus bringing traffic to your site) but that don’t have so much competition that there’s no way you can get your article noticed.

Good keywords also help to keep your writing tight and on topic. If you use them correctly they’ll help keep you from rambling.

What I’m Using

The keyword research tool I’m currently using is KeySearch. I’ve used several other paid keyword tools along with all of the free ones I could find. Everything else I used in the past had limitations that KeySearch solves.

Benefits of KeySearch

Here are the benefits and why I will continue using KeySearch.

KeySearch gives you easy to understand search volume and difficulty metrics. Set on a scale of 1 to 100 the higher the difficulty number the harder it’s going to be for you to rank for that keyword. I like their numbering system. It’s easy enough that even those of us who don’t speak geek can understand it.

KeySearch also has a color-code assigned to each keyword that makes it easy for you to hone in on keywords you can rank for. Green is for the easier-to-rank-for keywords so when you’re scrolling you can see at a glance what might work.

I love this color-coding system. It makes my job much easier since I can scroll the list more quickly looking at colors than having to read every set of numbers.

KeySearch also shows you the trend for searches for your chosen keyword over the past twelve months. This is great so you can see seasonal variations which can help you in determining your promotion schedule. It also gives you a clue as to how your traffic might fluctuate depending on the time of year.

One thing I love about using KeySearch as a research tool is that on the same screen it lets you see how other websites that are currently on page one of Google. This lets you check out what articles are currently ranking so you can check them out.

Obviously, you don’t check them out in order to copy anything, but you can get ideas for information that might not have been covered or how you might take a different approach to your article.

With other keyword tools I have used, I had to either go to other pages within the tool to find this information, or I had to use another tool entirely. Both were just more work than I wanted.

No other keyword research tool I’ve used had this much information in one screen. I always had to use a couple of tools in conjunction with each other which was a bit of a pain.

Free Vs. Paid Tools

I also like the price of KeySearch. Yes, it’s a paid tool and you can find free sites out there. I’ve used most of the free sites at one time or another and just about the time I’d get familiar with them they would change their terms of service and leave me annoyed. There is something to the statement that you get what you pay for.

Using KeySearch isn’t a horrible expense either. I pay yearly just like I do for my domain hosting but you can pay month to month if you prefer…which is never a bad idea if you want to give it a try for a short period of time.

Cons Of Using KeySearch

The only con I can think of is that it is a paid tool – and I’m a frugal girl. However, there is a point where you have to make a choice as to what is more important to you: saving money or saving time and frustration.

I’ve decided that my time is pretty important to me.

They do have a free plan but it’s pretty limited in how many searches you can do per day. If you’re like me and want to sit down once a month and do a lot of keyword searching then the free plan isn’t for you. However, if you don’t mind being limited to 5 searches a day then be sure to check it out.

It’s also a good way to get into the system, play around with it a bit, check out the features, and see if it’s the tool for you. Once you’re in the system you’ll see very quickly all of the features so that you can compare them to anything else you’ve been using.

Blogging Isn’t For The Faint-Hearted

If you’ve going to publish information to the internet, you might as well take every step you can to make sure your content gets seen. Otherwise you’re wasting your time. Using keywords – and an effective keyword tool – help you focus your efforts so that your writing gets in front of as many people as possible. And that’s good for your business and your bottom line.