Long Tail Pro Review

One of the single most popular questions in Internet Marketing is, “What is the best tool for keyword research?”  Well, I can tell you right now that the best tool for keyword research is the thing that sits just above your shoulders…your brain.  The question should really be, “What is the best tool to assist with keyword research?”  All too often people think that great tools can some how replace great thoughts.  And that’s just not the case, but the question still remains…

What is the best tool to assist with keyword research?

I can’t honestly answer that, primarily because I haven’t used every single keyword research tool.  But most importantly because that answer changes from person to person based on how the software meshes with their mind.  That being said, I would like to share a bit about the keyword research tool I use: Long Tail Pro.

What is Long Tail Pro?

Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool created by Spencer Haws of Niche Pursuits.  A lot of you probably know who Spencer is, but if you don’t I highly recommend you check out his site, tons of quality information about building niche sites.

Long Tail Pro is one of the newest (if not the newest) keyword research tool on the market.  I grabbed it months ago when it was still in beta, but it was recently officially released on October 5, 2011.

How does Long Tail Pro work?

Here are the basics…

Add Seed Keywords

Input up to 5 seed keywords.

Fetch Additional Data

Apply your domain availability criteria (optional) if you want to see available exact match domains.

Apply Filters

Create additional filters (optional) for things like search volume, CPC, title competition, etc.

Generate keywords.

This step took me about 3 minutes per keyword.  So, 15 minutes if you want to use 5 seed keywords.

Analyze the Competition

Check out the Top 10 for main criteria like keyword in title, description, site age, back links to page, and more.

How do I use Long Tail Pro?

I probably don’t use keyword research tools the same as everyone else.  When I first started out I used a specific set of criteria to find keywords to build sites around.  Problem was most of these ended up being thin sites, or sites on weird topics that I don’t enjoy writing about.  In fact it pains me to even outsource content for those sites, so I stopped heading in that direction.

Now I go after keywords that I want to go after.  Long Tail Pro aids me in 3 distinct ways:

• Helping me narrow  down my target market by providing tons of keywords to tackle
• Supplying me with tons of keywords and data about those keywords for my chosen niche, which I then use for specific posts, etc.
• Quickly analyzes competition to help me determine which keywords to tackle first

How does Long Tail Pro stack up?

Before I give a quick comparison, let me say there are a lot of keyword research tools out there.  Here’s a quick list of ones I’ve used besides Long Tail Pro:

• Market Samurai
• SECockpit
• SEMRush

(Another tool I plan on checking out is Keyword Strategy, but just haven’t had a chance yet)

First of all, unless you’ve got an extra $70-$80 a month burning a hole in your pocket then you can forget about SECockpit and SEMRush.  They’re both great tools and are potentially beneficial to grab for one month if you are planning to build tons of micro niche sites, but there is no way in heck I’m dropping $1,000 a year to do keyword research; it’s just not gonna happen.

So that really just leaves Market Samurai, which has pretty much been the industry standard for the past couple years (or so I’ve read).  Well I can tell you right now that Long Tail Pro is not as powerful as Market Samurai.  But the real question is, why does it have to be?

I don’t need a keyword research tool that does 20 different things I’m never going to use.  Here’s what I was looking for:

• Ability to quickly analyze the Top 10 for specific keywords
• Ability to quickly check the rank of sites for specific keywords
• Ability to input multiple seed keywords and find a list of long tail keywords based on certain criteria

That’s what I wanted and that’s exactly what Long Tail Pro does well.  If you’re looking for more than that, then Long Tail Pro isn’t for you.

Where can you get Long Tail Pro?

You can get Long Tail Pro from Spencer’s site www.longtailpro.com (aff link), where you can also find some demo videos and a bit more information.

Final Thoughts

I created this review primarily because I’ve had a few people ask me about Long Tail Pro lately.  I won’t be doing many reviews on this site, and I was a little hesitant to do this one.  Either way, the bottom line is you don’t need keyword research software to be successful.  When I first started I used nothing but GAKT.  And while I love Long Tail Pro, I still use GAKT probably more than any other tool.

Keyword research tools are great, but like I said above they are just a tool to assist you and until you fully understand a bit about doing keyword research they’re not going to benefit you.