The most basic function of any keyword tool is to provide a list of keywords with some associated raw data. Most keyword tools do this part pretty well as generating keywords is hardly rocket science at this point. The big way in which keyword tools tend to distinguish themselves is through some sort of filtering interface, derived column (KEI, PPCMV), or graphic visualization. In order for a tool to be called The Last Keyword Tool™, it would have to have an extremely powerful filtering and derived column interface. It would have to be more than just a form with drop downs and text boxes (though this has its place), it would need to let you express complex relationships and equations. Why? As an example let’s take a trip down silo lane.

Part of the methodology for using silos to construct your website is that larger, more competitive terms form the basis of your silos, and content within the silos uses smaller, less competitive terms to support the silo. What does this mean in practice? There are many ways to define competitiveness but if we define competitiveness simply as the number of competing pages, then it means that the silo page should have terms with a lot of competing pages, and content within the silo should use terms that have a smaller number of competing pages.

So then we’d pull open our favorite keyword tool, we’d find out how many competing pages our silo terms had, then we’d filter the list using whatever interface was available to limit the list to only terms whose competing pages were smaller, but not too small. Then repeat for each silo. This particular example isn’t completely awful, but think for a moment about this process. It’s a filter that’s supposed to limit the list to keywords smaller than the seed term, but that seed term will always change size, which means that you always have to twiddle the filter. Seems like it’d be a lot more efficient to just be able to type:

keyword_competing_pages < seed_competing_pages and keyword_competing_pages > 10000

So why don’t keyword tools let you do that? Safety and difficulty. The user can’t just be allowed to type in their own SQL string because it’s not safe or secure. It’s also non-trivial to write a custom parser to turn a meta-language like this safely and properly into a real query. If something is going to be The Last Keyword Tool™, however, it’s going to have to be able to handle this sort of thing to a pretty advanced degree. It’s going to have to let you create and save arbitrarily complex filters and columns based on the available raw data, and it should probably have some defaults to help you get started. Some examples might look like the following:

• KEI Column: (keyword_clicks_per_day^2 / keyword_competing_pages)
• PPCMV Column: (keyword_clicks_per_day * keyword_cost_per_click * 365)
• Good Long Tail Filter: keyword_clicks_per_day > 0 and keyword_cost_per_click > 0 and keyword_is_long_tail
• Niche Mining Filter: keyword_clicks_per_day > 0 and keyword_cost_per_click > 0 and keyword_competing_pages < 300000

Of course, you might want something other than ‘2′ in your KEI or you might want a smaller or larger threshold for your niche mining, but now you can change it to your liking. It’s a whole new, more empowering way of analyzing the raw data. No more specifying the same filters over and over, no more being a slave to somebody else’s magic columns, it’s all out in the open and ready to be tailored to your liking.

- Kelley
Update (May 23, 2009) The Last Keyword Tool™ is now available at Theme Zoom

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