F. A. Q.

Q: How is Keyword Competitor different from other keyword tools?

A: Unlike other seo tools, Keyword Competitor simplifies the keyword acquisition process by removing the guess work of trying to find the top keywords. If you know who your competitors are, you can just type in their domain address and get a list of their ads as well as paid and organic keywords that are running right now. If you don't know your competitors you can search for keywords or keyword phrases that will help you find websites that compete for these keywords. Once you identified the relevant web sites you can search them individually through Keyword Competitor to learn what specific online advertisements they are running right now in Google and Yahoo.
Fast Mover advantage - forget the pioneers who struggled to make initial headway, now that the market's been proven cash in other efforts. - KWC

Q: What does the Research Competitor tab do?

A: 1) "Research Competitors" tab allows you to take a real-time snapshot of your competitor's online campaign. Just type in their domain name (e.g. number1competitor.com) to get their organic keywords, paid keywords, their other unique competitors, and their ads that are running right now.

The Paid Keywords tab gives you the essential metrics such as:

• Search - Keyword Competitor give you the choice of search in:
  
  • Google (over 64% of US market share in 2009)
  
  
  • Yahoo (over 20% US market share in 2009)


• Keyword - list of keywords that the competitor is using in their paid advertising campaigns
  
  • e.g. search optimization


• Position - Keyword Competitor takes the average sponsored link position and displays where the ad might appear
  
  • e.g. Page 2, position 2


• Competitors - Shows the number of competitors and their domain
  
  • e.g. 2 competitors, google.com and amazon.com


• Ad Variations - number of different adsense variations your competitor is using and what they are


• Pages of Content - the number of results that a keyword gets, note that this limit is theoretical - Google for example does not display results beyond 700 - 800 searches, beyond 100 results the pages become irrelevant to the search query and usually Page 1 gets all the attention.
  
  • e.g. 22,000,000


• Ad Competition - a generated statistic that shows competitive intensity for a certain keyword as compared to the bidding of all keywords in the search engine.


• Search Volume (last year average) - the number of searches in the last 12 months for a certain keyword in a specific geography.
  
  • e.g. 55,600,000


• Search Volume (monthly average) - the number of searches over the past month so if you're doing a search on July 4th, The data will be shown for the full month of June.
  
  • e.g. 45,600,000


• Estimated Average Bid - the average cost per click that the competitor incurs for the ad every time a user clicks on it.

The Organic Keywords tab is similar to paid searches only it excludes such metrics as estimated average keyword bid, ad variations and competition because these are not relevant .

In "Unique Competitors" you can learn more about your competition, specifically which other domains compete keyword wise with the domain you typed in. For example if you are Amazon and you are interested in who your number one competitor is you probably would guess Barnes and Noble but this is where you will be wrong! Keyword Competitor shows that Target takes the top spot for keyword overlap (42%) followed by Yahoo Shopping (36%) and only then by Barnes and Noble (31%). Higher keyword overlap indicates a close, possibly direct competitor whereas lower overlap shows less direct competitors.

If you think the competitor deserves further attention - run a report the domain by selecting "Search Competitor". You can also add the domain to your monitoring list so that Keyword Competitor will give you detailed up to the minute and historic (starting the day you add the competitor) competitive intelligence such as keyword copy, online ads, changes and more.

The Ad Variations tab allows one to view all the different online ads that are run by the competitor right now. - KWC

Q: How does Monitor Competitors work?

A: Monitoring competitors allows you to go a step beyond keyword research. If researching keywords was like taking a up to the minute snapshot of your competitor then monitoring means you are tracking your competitors changes in real-time, 24/7. Because pay-per-click and organic advertising is a highly competitive business, it pays to monitor your competition daily to respond to emerging changes.

Specifically here is what you can do:

• Is your online ad showing up ahead of your competitors?
  
  • You can filter down to analyze organic and paid keywords for all of the competitors or for one.


• Has my performance improved over time?
  
  • You can benchmark your results by comparing you and your competitor’s efforts from one period to another, i.e. the time when you did not optimize and after you optimized your online ppc campaign.


• Learn exactly how well or how badly you are performing against your competitors
  
  • For Organic and Paid Keywords - has your page shifted up or down?


• Get the detailed list of changes to your competitors online ads
  
  • Landing Page changes
  
  
  • Headline changes
  
  
  • Link changes
  
  
  • Description changes

- KWC

Q: How can I edit the types of keywords that get monitored?

A: You can edit/add/delete domains that get monitored under the monitor tab by clicking the Edit Keyword List button where you can add new keywords or remove existing keywords. - KWC

Q: How can I changed/add/delete the number of web sites that are monitored?

A: You can edit/add/delete domains that get monitored under the monitor tab by clicking the Edit Domain List button where you can type in new websites to track and monitor or remove them altogether. - KWC

Q: How precise can I get with keyword research?

A: Keyword Competitor allows you to specify the search engines to use when doing keyword research (either Google, Yahoo or both) and the location. Location helps you get a better understanding of your competitor's geographic campaigns. You can also narrow down the research to specific regions of a country (or states) and cities. - KWC

Q: Which is more important organic keywords or paid keywords?

A: The shorter is both are important to improving one's online marketing efforts. While at first glance it may seem that organic keywords are a quick way to develop an efficient and free online campaign the truth of the matter is it takes time to come up with quality content pertaining to your business. Usually such content takes a few weeks to propagate through a search engine and sine the search engines are always vigilant against the latest SEO techniques a top 10 ranking is not guaranteed. Using Paid keywords, on the other hand, you can get started generating traffic to your website right away. - KWC

Q: What if I don't know my competitors or don't think I have any?

A: Keyword Competitor evaluates a market based on domains, if you don't know where to start but have some idea of what keywords might be relevant to find your product or your business start there. For example if you are interested in providing in an innovative way of exchanging books online you might want to research keywords such as:

• books


• used books


• bookstore


• buy online

Or alternatively search competitors such as:

• Amazon.com


• BarnesandNoble.com

You don't have to generate a long list of keywords or try to guess what your competitor’s keywords are - just one keyword or one domain is enough to get you started. - KWC

Q: How long does a report take to generate by Keyword Competitor?

A: Reports can take from a few minutes to a few days depending on your settings. Usually reports on websites take longer to complete then specific keywords. But you don't have to wait for the report to complete - you can start examining the data immediately as soon as it becomes available after a minute and you will get an e-mail alert as soon as your report is ready. - KWC

Q: Keyword Competitor does not seem to find any paid advertising keywords or ads for a web site?

A: There are a few reasons why Keyword Competitor might not be able to find your competitor's paid advertising results. Your search might be too narrow. To broaden the search, in Research settings, expand your search engines to include both Google and Yahoo. You can also increase the geographic scope by choosing a country, such as United States and leaving out the state and city.
If after implementing these changes Keyword Competitor does not display any pay-per-click advertisements, most likely the competitor either stopped or does not ppc advertising. - KWC

Q: Is Keyword Competitor limited in the number of organic/paid keywords and google ads?

A: Keyword Competitor does not place a limit on the number of keywords that could be found for a specific domain or keyword allowing you not to miss out on any top or niche keywords that your competitor might be using. Sites with established web presences that have been around in business for a long time (e.g. Amazon.com), have been known to generate over 10,000 paid keywords and organic keywords as well as over 4500 ad variations and over 16,000 competitors. - KWC

Q: How can I manage my reports?

A: You can save your recent searches as well as delete your reports. You can also stop any pending reports. - KWC

Q: How do I change my account settings?

A: You can change your account settings in the "Account Information" tab, where you can edit your login, password, name as well as your site address. You can also change your monitoring settings by changing which search engines you want to include in your monitoring, the frequency of alerts and whether you want to display tips. - KWC

Q: What keyword searching functionality is available in Keyword Competitor?

A: Researching keywords in Keyword Competitor is very easy and can be done in two ways - either by researching keywords or researching domains. - KWC

Q: Can I get my data (keywords, graphs, etc.) out of Keyword Competitor?

A: Absolutely, you can export your data to a spreadsheet, such as Excel or save any page on Keyword Competitor to a PDF file. You can also share your reports with colleagues by e-mailing the report either in HTML or PDF. - KWC

Q: What operating systems does Keyword Competitor work on?

A: Keyword Competitor is a web based tool and is currently supported on Windows, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Firefox 3. No installation is required, sign up for free and start test driving the tool right away. You can also use Keyword Competitor on different computers. - KWC

Q: How fresh is your Competitive Intelligence?

A: Keyword Competitor collects fresh data for every report request and monitors keywords and web sites on an hourly basis. - KWC

Q: How do I discover effective keywords for my online ppc campaign?

A: Keyword Competitor allows you to sort your reports. One way to discover your competitor's online ads is by sorting the report results by position in descending order (e.g. the first result would say Page 1, position 1) and the results by position in descending order so that your first results. - KWC

Q: How many countries does keyword competitor cover?

A: Keyword Competitor can find your competitor's advertisements and keywords in over 200 countries. Want to see if your competitor advertises keywords in Zimbabwe or perhaps somewhere as remote as the Samoa? Keyword Competitor helps you learn your competitor’s seo secrets globally. - KWC