payperkick.com (blog)

To start from the beggining… I wanted to give a try to the new google Search-based Keyword Tool to check the most popular decade of Michael Jackson’s career. So I typed “micheal jackson” as a seed keyword and “michaeljackson.com” as a website to extract keywords from… and this is what I got back:

Keywords related to Michael Jackson

Just in case Google don’t return it anymore I saved the screengrab of the results:

wow!

I mean I didn’t know how to react …

… but finally I decided to continue the research with slighly different objective in mind… so these are the results:

phentermine is, by far, the most popular drug related to Michael Jackson (according to google).

Was it the one which sent him to the other, more peaceful world? hmm…

The alpha version of PPK keyword research tool has been integrated with Google Adwords API. At the moment it is only possible to retrieve “broad matches” as the API doesn’t support exacts yet. We are looking forward for next release, which should be ready fairly soon (http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/2009/06/adwords-api-v2009-launch.html).

See below some of the functionalities available at the moment:
– bulk keyword estimation (no number of keywords limit – tested on 150.000 keywords)
– keyword suggestion
– import from Google Adwords Keyword Tool
– filter based keyword segmentation

Currently we are looking for projects/companies interested in being part of the testing before the beta release (please contact me on: mm@momoweb.co.uk).

Sorry. This tool doesn’t have any interesting history. It is just an offspring of the previous one. The idea behind it is to find the keywords that two keyword lists have in common. At the same time, the tool will also find the words that are not repeated in the first list, in the second list and between both lists. So in our usual step-by-step guide, it goes like this:

Step 1 Take two keyword lists and paste them to the tool.

Step 2 When you click on the submit button, if you are lucky, you get as a result one list of common keywords tree of unused keywords (from the first list, the second list and between both lists).

click here to see: used keywords finder tool

So the story of this tool is pretty straightforward, but worth mentioning, as this is the first tool I wrote by myself, without Matt’s “mentoring” that is. So if this tool is crap it’s all my fault, but anyway it’s my first baby and I am ready to take the criticism on the chin. Anyway, a bit of history just for the sake consistency. When I came across the problem of having a long list of keywords with many duplications, I realised that I would need a tool to get rid of them, so took to the “writing board”. The tool took me literally 20 minutes to write. Yes, you could argue that I could have used Excel to remove the duplications. True, but I have to say at that time I was already addicted to trying to solve every single problem, including my difficult relations with my wife, using Ruby. The Duplication Remover tool is so simple it is almost self-explanatory. However, this is how it works:

Step 1 Take the list of keywords from which you wish to remove eventual duplications and paste it to the tool.

Step 2 Click on the Submit button and enjoy your results.

The process of creating the next tool followed almost the same pattern, as necessity is the mother of invention.

We had this enormous list of keywords, which hadn’t been grouped nor categorised. We needed a tool to group them and assign them to the relevant destination urls. After struggling to find a ready-made tool to solve the problem and the endless discussion that ensued, Matt came up trumps yet again and just simply wrote the tool for us, in the blink of an eye.

Neither this tool nor Keyword Concatenator have changed much since their beginnings. I have used them time and time again. Obviously, however, when you create your own tool your are not restricted to the initial features. Should you need to, you can easily add new ones, which I have done a few times.

Anyway, here you can see the tool itself (Keyword Categoriser) As you might need a bit of explanation on how to use this tool, find below our step by step guide:

Step 1 Take the keywords you want to categorise and paste them into the tool.

Step 2 Create a list of filters you want to group your keywords by. To do that, you need to follow this pattern: [name of the group]: [keyword 1], [keyword 2] ... [keyword X] (e.g. mobile: mobile, cell, handset).

Step 3 Paste the list of filters into the appropriate text area.

Step 4 Click on the Submit button and enjoy your results.

It was back in 2006, I was working for one of these small start-up companies. We were about to restructure our PPC campaign. Our marketing director had been using a trial version of Keyword Concatenator, which expired some time later as trial versions tend to do. After two hours’ Google search for a new tool, Matt, who was as interested in marketing as a bald man would be in a hairdryer, went: “I can write Keyword Concatenator in less than 30 minutes”.

Matt obviously didn’t write the Concatenator in 30 minutes. It took him about 1 hour, which was still damn impressive. What made it all possible was the fact that 2006 was also the year we discovered Ruby, a powerful tool to create tools.

This whole experience changed my way of thinking. After the “Keyword Concatenator” case, I started using Ruby to solve many problems, which then prompted me to write many more keyword tools. I was completely switched on:)

So what is Keyword Concatenator for?

Well, this is how it works. You take two list of keywords, you paste them into the tool and it comes up with all possible combinations. It’s as simple as that.

Click here to go to the keyowrd tool described above

It was few days ago when Chris went: “Michal you have to publish your tools”. I thought: “Yes, it might not be a bad idea”. So here we go.

I would like to start with Keyword Transformation Tools. A few reasons. They were the first tools Matt and I ever created. It’s kind of sentimental as well, because their creation goes back to our beginnings with Ruby.

Another reason for introducing them first is their beautiful simplicity. There is something about good tools being simple. Also, a good tool should be able to solve at least one real problem. That’s it. This is the one truth about tools. A simple truth.

1. Keyword Concatenator – to interlink two lists of keywords
2. Keyword Categoriser – to group keywords using filters
3. Keyword Duplication Remover – to get rid of duplicated keywords from a list
4. Used Keywords Finder – to find keywords used in one list of keywords versus the other
5. Formula-based Keyword Concatenator – to get all variations using formulae and groups of keywords
6. Keyword Permutator – get all possible variations of each phrase from the list. # Keyword Competitiveness/Effectiveness Checker – to compare search volume with the competition # Keyword Relevancy

Curious? Check out the article about Keyword Concatenator, coming soon on our blog.