I know the feeling of targeting a keyword that was perceived by me as of low competition.
After spending hours of time to write the post, and hitting the publish button, you wait for a day or two. You now check the rankings of your site.
Darn! Your site is nowhere in the top 10 for the target keywords. How disheartening will it be to realize that you wasted 5 hours for the blog post that’s found nowhere on Google?
Seems familiar huh?
Type | Keyword research tool |
Price | $149 to $299 per year |
Features | Keyword research SERP analysis SERP watcher |
Competitor | LongTailPro |
Pretty much the above scenario happened to me every week or so. But not now. I’ve mastered the art of keyword research using some tools and also my brain!
Okay.
I’ve been using the paid version of KWFinder, and I thought of reviewing this tool.
In this post, I’ll be reviewing KWFinder and explaining you how the tool has helped me get some low-hanging keyword ideas to get great traffic to my niche sites.
KWFinder is a great keyword research tool, that’s making a lot of buzz lately in the market. Using this tool is pretty straightforward and I personally liked the way the KWFinder has managed to make the user interface more simple and fun to use.
It is a full-fledged keyword research tool that helps you come across different keyword ideas and also enables you to determine the competition of the keywords accurately.
In-depth review of KWFinder
Let me dive into the KWFinder review.
I’ve used the KWFinder tool
I also compare KWFinder with other similar tools.
Is there even a need of modern keyword research tool?
In short , yes!
Here’s why.
For doing SEO, a good keyword research tool is absolutely essential. Even a newbie blogger understands this. This need further increased when Google Keyword Planner has started to hide exact search volume of the keywords and made the accurate metrics available to only their active AdWords users.
And also the “keyword competition” that Keyword Planner displays is only for advertisers and not for SEO publishers like us. Many people mistake this.
Good keyword research tools return good keywords. They also offer you keyword difficulty feature that lets you know the competition of any keyword you are searching.
You may already know that the proper keyword research is the most crucial thing you need to do to drive good organic traffic to your site. If the keyword is highly competitive, no matter what kind of SEO you do, you’ll not get good search rankings and you’ll burn money and time.
For any online business that relies on SEO, a good keyword research tool that lets you accurately determine the competition of the keywords is highly essential.
You may think that a good competitor analysis tools like SEMrush are enough. But the fact is that, after researching the competitor keywords, if you again use tools like KWFinder, it further drills down and determines the competition of the keywords accurately.
With this, you get great keywords that make a difference in the graphs.
What about the user interface and experience of KWFinder?
Let’s be honest. This is the truth. Nobody likes to use the tool that has clunky and outdated interface. How awesome the tool will be, you’ll not use it if it’s outdated and very slow.
It’s time to twirl up the things a little bit.
Once you start using the KWFinder, the first thing you notice is the clean attractive interface. The various features are laid out greatly enhancing user experience. The tool is fast and returns the data more quickly than any other keyword research tools I’ve tried.
You will see everything you need to know about that keyword in a single screen. The great user interface simply makes the keyword research much more addictive.
Is the keyword metrics accurate in KWFinder? (Or is it just guess work?)
The KWFinder returns you various metrics like search volume, keyword competition, trend, CPC and also PPC.
Let us compare the keyword volume and metrics of KWFinder with those of SEMrush and Ahrefs below.
The above is the keyword metrics as returned by KWFinder.
Below are the results returned by Ahrefs and SEMrush respectively.
As you can see in the above screenshot, the SEMrush failed to report keyword volume of a couple of keywords. Whereas, the Ahrefs and KWFinder have reported reliable keyword volume for each of the keywords, although the numbers reported by them are slightly varied.
Apart from this, with KWFinder you can do location specific keyword research.
In case you want to do local SEO, this will be very helpful. The local search volume will be displayed.
Keyword difficulty score (comparison to LongTailPro)
Guys.
Here’s the most important part of the review.
Imagine what it would be like if you are able to accurately determine whether it is easy to rank for a keyword or not, with a single click? How awesome will it be?
KWFinder also takes into account certain factors like presence of the keyword in the title, URL, content, backlinks according to Majestic, domain authority, trust metrics and also the number of search results for a keyword to accurately determine the competitiveness of the keyword.
At the time of writing this post, I conducted a poll on Facebook. These are the results I got.
According to the poll conducted by me, doing own manual keyword competition research was a winner. However, for doing manual competition research, you need to combine the use of many free tools and also you need to have a good experience in spotting out a weak SERP for an opportunity.
Although manual keyword research is the winner, if you are willing to see the competitiveness of multiple keywords on a single click, a good keyword difficulty checker comes to your rescue.
You can’t just manually check the competition of dozens of keywords.
The KWFinder comes with SERPChecker that makes your manual research process easier.
I know that you are in a big dilemma!
If you are having a dilemma to choose between KWFinder, LongTailPro, and Ahrefs here are the keyword difficulty scores returned by these tools for same money keywords.
I do not use Ahrefs for keyword difficulty as the scores turn out to be strange sometimes (see the screenshot).
Based on my experience, the difficulty scores suggested by KWFinder is slightly more accurate when compared to LongTailPro. And also, added to that, KWFinder is fast and user-friendly. The interface of LongTailPro appears outdated. Needless to say, both of these tools rely on Majestic metrics for keyword analysis.
Finding the keyword competition in KWFinder and again verifying it using some manual keyword competitive analysis using SERPChecker tool of KWFinder is great.
If you have a list of keywords whose keyword competition score has to be checked, you can make use of the keywords import feature that KWFinder comes with.
If you already have a list of keywords that you are willing to know the competition, this feature is further very useful. I use this feature more than any other feature. I use tools like Suggestomatic and Ubersuggest to come up with great keywords, and plug those into the KWFinder to instantly know the keyword competition.
I later pick up some low competition keywords and conduct the manual keyword competitive research process.
How helpful are keyword suggestions by KWFinder?
There are two additional types of keyword suggestions you can choose as you can see in the screenshot. The autocomplete feature pulls down the keyword autosuggest keywords via Google API and presents you to the keywords along with all the metrics including keyword difficulty score.
Whereas, the “questions suggestions” returns all the question kind of keywords that contain words like what, why, and how, to name a few.
I personally would have replaced this type of suggestions with “commercial keyword suggestions”. Nevertheless, you can make use of keyword filter feature to make KWFinder only return money keywords.
Harnessing the power of keyword filters
You are wrong.
Though this feature seems simple, this is a more powerful feature than you think.
Let me explain.
This is the feature I use most of the times while doing keyword research for my niche sites. The keyword filter feature helps you save mental energy by exactly displaying keywords that are relevant to you.
Here are the typical keyword filters I use when doing Amazon affiliate keyword research.
Listen. You need to tweak the keyword filter settings according to the nature of keyword research you are doing. No single filter settings is a fit for all.
Although I can set the keyword competition range from 5 – 30, I usually set it up to 25, as I like ultra low competition keywords. Cuz, I’m lazy to build backlinks!
Below is the screenshot of what I got for the above search.
A big shoutout to “coffee maker” guys out there. “Here are your keywords!”
You can just add the keywords to your lists.
Rather than copying the keywords to a notepad, again checking the keyword competition while writing on them, saving keywords right inside KWFinder dashboard saves you a lot of time.
SERPChecker makes manual competitive analysis easier
Guys.
As you saw in the FB poll I conducted, people love to do manual keyword research like me.
Even KWFinder understands that by giving option for doing manual analysis, people will love the tool more.
For this reason, they’ve put forward a tool called SERPChecker. It helps make your manual keyword competition research much easier.
In here, as shown in the screenshot you need to click on “Analyse SERP”. Now, the SERPChecker tool will be opened.
Here the top ranking results are presented along with some of the useful metrics for you to analyse the competition manually.
Rather than going to SERPs and messing up with various tools like MozBar and other toolbars to make out the competition of the keywords, the SERPChecker tool makes it super-easy to do manual keyword research.
You can choose between 51 metrics from Moz, Majestic, and also social metrics to show next to the SERP URLs. I personally rely on Majestic metrics and use Moz for DA / PA mainly.
Rather than messing up with various browser extensions to do competitive research, this tool saves me a lot of time once the keyword sorting is done based on the competitive scores.
SERPWatcher
It’s a great tool for you to track the position of your site for the keywords.
Above is a sample screenshot of what you can expect from the tool.
It helps you track the rankings of your site for the keywords. The tool has its own metrics called “Dominance Index”, and also it estimates the visits you are getting per month from the keywords you are tracking based on the keyword volumes and the positions in which you are ranking.
You can compare the rankings from timeframes, and also filter the keywords are more specific analysis.
SiteProfiler
SiteProfiler gives you a fair overview of the structure of site, top content, backlink profile, and all other metrics.
You can also view the top content by Facebook shares, audience and also the competitors.
With the backlink profile section, you can display the growth of backlink profile (link velocity), link types and also dofollow/nofollow backlink ratio, etc.
This tool just gives you a fair overview of the link profile (according to Majestic), if you want more details, you need to use the tool – Linkminer which I’ll review in the next section.
Linkminer
This is one of newest tools offered by Mangools. With this tool, you can display the backlink profile of any website
It pulls the backlink metrics from Majestic API.
As an overview it pulls the Citation and Trust flow of the site. Along with it, you can also see the total backlinks and referring domains.
For the backlinks, you can add in the filters. For example, if I wish the backlinks with trust flow only above 20 to show up, I can add the above filters.
There are also other filters for nofollow/dofollow, and also new/archived backlinks.
The new backlinks section allows you to spy on the recent backlinks your competitors are getting, and try to get them for your business too.
Pros and cons of Mangools KWFinder
I think I’ve covered all the features that KWFinder has got to offer you. Now, let me discuss about pricing and limitations. Before that, here are some of the pros and cons of KWFinder.
Pros
- The user interface is awesome
- Accurate search volumes
- Best keyword difficulty score
Web based application with no compatibility or speed issues- Cheaper prices when compared to the industry standards
Cons
- As this is a keyword research tool, you still may need a competitor analysis tool
- Not suitable for heavy-hitters (who do more than 3-4 hours of keyword research daily)
KWFinder Pricing – Is it a rip off?
The KWFinder package from Mangools comes with all the tools like KWFinder, SERPChecker, Linkminer, SiteProfiler and also SERPWatcher.
Above is the complete screenshot of their pricing structure. If you are a casual blogger I recommend you to get a basic plan that comes at $149 annually (without our readers’ exclusive 20% discount).
If you are running 2 or more niche sites and planning to push the tool to the extremes, then the premium plan will be great for you. It costs you $299 without the discount.
And also, you do need to note that premium plan comes with 500 lookups per day and 700 related keywords per search. Whereas, the basic comes with 100 searches per day and 200 related keywords per search.
This price is less when compared to the LongTailPro, which has the starting price $25 / month.
A fact about keyword credits that you must know: The starter plan of LongTailPro comes with 10000 monthly keyword credits. Every keyword suggestion returned by their tool counts to monthly credits. That means, if a single seed keyword returns 100 related keywords, it’ll cost you 100 credits.
In this case, KWFinder seems more generous by only counting lookups as opposed to results towards the credit usage (200 – 500 lookups daily depending upon the plan). I spent only 13 credits to write this review in KWFinder. Whereas, with LongTailPro I spent 115 credits just from two searches.
KWFinder discount – Don’t you love saving money?
If you are considering to get KWFinder, here’s the deal. You need not pay the full amount. I’m offering you a special discount of 20% off exclusively for our readers.
You need to go through a link to apply the discount. You need not enter any coupon code manually, and it won’t work that way as it’s an exclusive link.
KWFinder – FAQs
Does KWFinder provide a free trial?
Yes. You will get 15 days of free trial to explore the tool.
How can I get new keyword ideas with this tool?
You can use Google Suggest feature to get the best matching phrases, autocomplete feature for finding the long-tail keywords, and questions feature to get the questions based keywords.
Can I filter the keywords based on the probability of ranking?
Yes, you can apply a filter based on several metrics like search volume, CPC, PPC, etc and filter out the keywords that you can rank easily and also eliminate the keywords that are not good.
Can I group the keywords by managing keyword lists?
Yes, you can create as many lists as you want(upto 1000 keywords per list) and group them. It will be really helpful if you have multiple sites or client websites to manage.
Can I import the keywords in bulk?
Yes, you can do this with its bulk import feature. You can also use this feature to improve your local SEO.
Bottomline
From my personal experience, very few tools are accurate when it comes to keyword difficulty score. After reviewing so many tools, the real competition was between KWFinder and LongTailPro. And, as you’ve seen in my study, KWFinder turns out to be accurate.