Keyword Elite Review

By Tom Armstrong

Keyword Elite is an impressive bit of software with lots of keyword digging tools. The ability to create 10,000 word strong keyword lists is much appreciated. There's a couple of minor frustrations though.

PRODUCT SCORE

85%

Date reviewed:	26th September 2006
Product Name & Link	Keyword Elite
Price	$176.00 (Includes free lifetime updates)

What does this software do?	Keyword Elite builds large keywords lists, helps you manage those lists and performs in-depth competitive analysis for your keyphrases. I remember there was a lot of buzz and hype when Keyword Elite was released. The website offers a number of promotional videos showing what the software does. As with other keyword research software, there's 2 main parts: • Building & managing keyword lists • Analyzing competition for the phrases you're interested in The software's broken down into 5 distinct areas: 1) Create keyword list 2) Analyzer PPC listings 3) Select a keyword list 4) Analyze keyword competition 5) Spy on Adwords competition
Initial notes	If you read the sales page for Keyword Elite, you'll be bombarded with videos and text telling you that it's the best thing since... well... ever apparently. I was really excited to play around with this tool and see if it lived up to the hype. The first thing I have to say about it is that the feature list is absolutely HUGE. Keyword Elite comes packed with so many research, management and analysis tools that I just can't fit them all into the space I have here. But I'll do my best to fit as much as I can in here without writing a Bible.
Buying notes	Keyword Elite isn't a cheap tool. It cost me $176.00 plus an extra 17.5% (which is the annoying tax we have to pay in the UK). The buying process was very easy thanks to ClickBank. I've bought thousands of dollars worth of stuff through ClickBank and never had a problem with them. The download file was 14+ megabytes - so it looked pretty substantial.
First impressions	When you fire up Keyword Elite you're confronted with a simple (but colourful) panel that gives you access to all the different tools. It's a little overwhelming at first but don't be afraid to click on the links and play around with each feature. There's an excellent (and mercifully brief) manual that comes with the software that takes you through each step. The promo videos on the site are also surprisingly helpful at learning how to use the software. If you can put up with the sales pitch that is!
What I liked	Slick, professional interface It's apparent from the get go that this is one sexy tool. Well, as sexy as things can get when it comes to keyword research. The interface fits on different sized screens and can be resized to fit comfortably. Simple icons, tabs, buttons and drop down boxes make it clear what each function does. I didn't bother with the instruction manual and opted for playing around (and following the videos listed on the sales site). It's all fairly easy stuff and I was able to figure out what each tool did within an hour. Brings back up to 10,000 keywords On the first project, the keyword list builder, you can set the tool to bring back anything up to 10,000 keyphrases. Of course you'd have a hell of a job managing that many words in one list. And not all searches would produce that many keywords. But the facility is there if you want it. Keyword Elite builds up meaty keyword lists alright. Gets lists from Lots of sources This is the first time I've seen Ask.com offered up as a source for building keyword lists. From experience, every search engine offers up a slightly different set of keyphrases and expands your list a little more. Keyword Elite uses many different places to draw keywords from. I was able to find words and get new ideas I'd missed before. Build those sources into one comprehensive list You can view results from the different keyword sources separately, or as one colossal list. Keyword Elite really does bring back a staggering number of keywords and creates some of the biggest lists you'll ever see. Lots of good list managing tools Once you've got Keyword Elite to create a keyword list, you can prune or expand it with any number of built in tools. One I really liked was the Filter Out Words tool. You simply enter one or more words and if any of those words appear in keywords in your list, that phrase is removed. It all happens real time. Few other tools have the capability to do this. So this is a huge plus. Different ways to sort your list This is important here because Keyword Elite is capable of creating simply monster keyword lists. You can sort alphabetically, by the number of searches or in other ways. Pretty useful and will take a lot of the manual editing out of working with your lists. Work out the bids for adwords One thing that saves a lot of time with Keyword Elite is that once you've made your search, you can click on the phrases that are returned (they're all links). This stores them in your keywords basket. When you're done choosing the words you want to keep you can export them easily and work on them in Excel or your text editor.
What I didn't like	No score for each keyphrase The first thing that really had me scratching my head was that once you've built a keyword list, the list of words you see doesn't show a 'count' beside each phrase. You can choose to sort the keywords so the most searched for one is at the top of the list, but it would be great to have a simple score next to each phrase. To get this you have to export your list into project 2. Can't search on multiple words. With Wordtracker, Keywords Analyzer and other tools, you can search for multiple keyphrases at a time. For example I might set my tool to build a keyword list based on: cheap cars bargain cars cheap auto Whereas with Keyword Elite I can only search on: cheap cars OR bargain cars OR cheap auto ... in the project 1 search. I hope they fix this in future updates as it would improve the user experience a lot. Not as fast as it looked on the videos I'm not on the world's fastest connection here (still 1 meg broadband) but it's still not that slow. Keyword Elite didn't run as fast as it looked on the site's promo videos. Not really a big deal though as it still ran at acceptable speeds. I wouldn't use all the projects Keyword Elite is a little like a really great movie that could use a few more scenes editing out. Some might disagree, bit I felt that not all of the projects were especially useful. For example Project 3 lets you query an internal database of common keyphrases. Sounds great BUT... If you're working in really niche markets, you're not going to find any relevant phrases here.
Strengths	Superb interface that's easy to work with Builds bigger lists than any other tool I've seen Compose lists from Google, Ask, Yahoo and more Excellent list management tools & ways to sort A large number of tools to analyze the competition Good help manual with illustrations and step-by-step help
Weaknesses	Can only search on 1 phrase at a time Doesn't give a simple score for each phrase Some of the projects are not that good Not all words in the huge lists will be relevant
The verdict	Keyword Elite is a huge monster of a tool. There's a lot of innovative ideas in there (perhaps too many?) and if you're serious about keyword research, and have the budget, then it's worth buying. Would I buy it as my first tool? No. Would I buy this as my only keyword research tool? No. I'd go for Keywords Analyzer. It's half the price and does more than what's you get with Keyword Elite. Still. this is a very impressive keyword research tool that you should consider seriously if you want to capture as many keywords as possible.
Refund details	Keyword Elite comes with a 60 day money back guarantee.

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