To simply describe Market Samurai as a keyword research tool is a bit like calling a Ferrari a car. It’s true, it is a car, but that description tells you nothing about what a Ferrari really is, (and no, I don’t own one).

In the same way, Market Samurai is a keyword research tool that has stood the test of time and is still as useful today as it was years ago when I first bought it. It was the Ferrari of keyword research tools, if you ever browsed the web and found a digital marketing forum where someone asked the question – “which is the best keyword research tool,” the chances are that Market Samurai would be the overwhelming response.

But, yes i’m sorry there is a but, compared to some of the newer, shinier and more feature-packed keyword research tools to have entered the marketplace recently, it is starting to fray a little at the edges. That doesn’t mean it’s not still good though – it is.

One thing you really need to take into account is the cost – Market Samurai is a one-off purchase, no monthly subscriptions. Some of the aforementioned shiny objects with more functionality, like Jon Leger’s Keyword Canine 3.0 for example, offers more but costs more too – a lot more!

The benchmark for keyword research tools has always been Google’s Keyword Planner – free of charge for anyone who opens a Google AdWords account, also free. That particular tool has been improved over the years but it still suffers from one thing – it belongs to Google and they can decide what they tell you, and what they don’t tell you. Google’s tool is good, no doubt about that, I’ve planned many a campaign using it but it’s well known that Google do suppress a lot of data so you only get to see what they want you to see and that’s why many professional marketers turn to alternatives like SEMrush, Keyword Canine, Longtail Pro and others where there are other sources of keyword data as well as Google Keyword Planner.

Market Samurai only uses Google AdWords Keyword Planner as its source, and that’s a shame. Other places where people make searches include Social Media sites, Amazon, eBay and so on and the searches they do are sometimes different to the ones they do on Google so to limit yourself to one source could mean that you are missing valuable data.

Leaving aside the source of the keywords, Market Samurai’s strength lies in its ability to analyse those keywords in much more depth than the AdWords Planner enables you to do. Market Samurai measures each word or phrase against a number of criteria including in-depth competition indicators that can really help you to spot the ones that could work for you and not be too difficult to rank for. Here are some of the factors that Market Samurai lets you examine when deciding which keywords to use:

SEOC (SEO Competition) – This is the total number of webpages that mention the keyword or phrase in the same (phrase) word order, in Google’s index.
SEOLC (SEO Local Competition) An estimate of the number of webpages mentioning all the words in a search term within the page title, this is country specific.
SEOTC (SEO Title Competition) Shows the number of webpages that include all the words in a search term in the page title.

Those are just a sample, there are many more so you can see the level of detail that Market Samurai lets you go into when researching keywords for your digital marketing strategy.

Market Samurai costs $149 for a lifetime license, no monthly fees unless you decide to use the keyword rank tracking feature, which I don’t. It is widely available at a discount so don’t be afraid to shop around. Do I still recommend it? – Yes but to risk repeating myself, take a good look around first.