There’s a lot of keyword tools out there, you hear a bunch of obscure names and then they fall off the face of the earth after a few months and the developer doesn’t keep up with support or updates.
There’s 2 names that have been around for a while now, both pretty popular.
Long Tail Pro and Market Samurai.
Now, before I mentioned that keyword research isn’t as important for most local businesses, because you’re focusing on topics, the services they offer, etc. I still stand by that.
However, there are certainly uses for keyword research tools like Long Tail Pro or Market Samurai that SEO companies, consultants and freelancers will probably like. Also very good for niche research if you’re interested in setting up blogs and affiliate sites.
Before Breaking It Down
In the interest of full transparency, I should disclose that I am signed up as an affiliate for BOTH Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro. Usually what bloggers tend to do, is trash the one they aren’t an affiliate for, and if they’re an affiliate for both, it seems to be a glowing review with no contrast of each product.
This isn’t going to be a fluff piece. I have nothing to gain by favoring one product over another.
In this post I will cover:
- Why I Have BOTH pieces of Software
- Features of both Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro
- How they both can be used for Local SEO
- Which one I prefer
- Free tools to add to your keyword research process
Market Samurai vs. Long Tail Pro
I purchased Market Samurai a while back because simply using Keyword Planner wasn’t good enough. I liked the demo, bought it, and it was good. People always spoke good things about it, and while I didn’t think it was anything ground breaking, earth shattering or lived up to the hype, I didn’t have any complaints about it.
I never intended to try Long Tail Pro or any other tool for that matter.
However, about a month ago I received an email from Long Tail Pro, and they wanted me to try it out and see how I like it compared to Market Samurai. They didn’t try to sway my opinion at all, they just said if I like it, they’d love to have me as an affiliate.
Those of you that have been reading my income reports know that one of the problems I have, is finding products or affiliate offers that I believe in enough to recommend. It was a no brainer to go ahead and try this out, at the very least it makes for a good comparison blog post and will maybe bring in a bit of search engine traffic.
Feature Comparison Long Tail Pro and Market Samurai
Who has the best features?
Market Samurai is more of a complete software solution, lots of features but I wonder how often people use those features.
When analyzing the two, it is clear that the two competing keyword research tools have a different audience. In my opinion, Market Samurai is more appealing to affiliate marketers, niche marketers, etc. while Long Tail Pro is more appealing to those that just care about Keyword Research.
Let me explain.
When you open up Market Samurai and enter your project details, you see a lot of different things you can do, OTHER than keyword research.
What you can do with Market Samurai is:
- Keyword research, obviously
- Find exact match domains, or partial match domains within the software
- Look at existing affiliate offers, and ways to monetize
- Analyze the competition
- Find content in article directories
- Publish content to wordpress accounts
- Find backlink opportunities
What you can do with Long Tail Pro:
- Keyword research
- Competition analysis
- Keyword research training via Long Tail University
- Rank Checker
- Domain Checker
Who Wins on Features?
Look, it isn’t as obvious as it seems and it isn’t as simple as it seems.
Market Samurai, clearly has more features and will probably be the choice among affiliate marketers but I have a few problems with their features.
Nearly every feature they have, is irrelevant. Finding content in article directories, which are usually spun to death and very low quality, really isn’t something you should care about. The backlink opportunities run a search for squidoo, hubpages, and bb forums. This shows me that they’re really behind in the times.
The affiliate program search is cool I guess, I haven’t used it so I can’t comment on it much.
The only feature other than keyword research which may have a tiny bit of value is the domain search. I’ve used it a few times, but I think I’m better at finding domains on my own, so it isn’t a feature I care about that much.
EDIT: Apparently I overlooked the domain feature in Long Tail Pro. You don’t even have to do it separately, it does it automatically, you just have to choose the option for it to display! Cool.
Keyword Research Comparison
Both Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro tie into the Google Keyword Planner, so your results aren’t going to be much different.
The difference comes into the ease of use and competition analysis.
Ease of use for Long Tail Pro blows Market Samurai out of the water. The sense I get is that Market Samurai is kind of like the jack of all trades, master of none while Long Tail Pro is specialized for keyword research and competition analysis.
Long Tail Pro is much faster, less bloated and clunky, when it comes to doing actual keyword research.
How they use competition analysis is different. Market Samurai uses Majestic to analyze the competition and Long Tail Pro uses Moz metrics, like Domain Authority, Page Authority, MozRank, Site Age and a few other things to determine their “Keyword Competitiveness” score.
I’m not a fan of Majestic at all, and even though I don’t care as much for domain authority and page authority, they are much better metrics to go by in my opinion.
Overall when it comes to keyword research and competition analysis, I think Long Tail Pro has it in the bag, easily.
How To Do Keyword Research for Smaller Cities
Whether you’re going to use keyword planner, Long Tail Pro, or Market Samurai, there’s one important thing to remember.
When you’re doing keyword research, chances are it is tying into keyword planner. Keyword planner is a tool with Adwords, not all keywords are displayed and the numbers are not always accurate.
Some of the best keywords will never show up in keyword planner, usually because the advertiser volume isn’t high enough, or the bids aren’t high enough.
To gauge what kind of traffic you can get, search the term you want to rank for + the nearest large metropolitan city. Now, take your target city and find the total population compared to the city you just searched for. For example:
Metro City – 600,000 population
Targeted City – 60,000 population
Now if Metro city gets 1,600 searches as shown in the keyword planner tool, you can assume that targeted city will get 10%, using the metro to targeted city ration. So that would support that your targeted city will get 160 searches a month.
That’s not all though, I have found that keyword planner is often wrong about volume and it’s actually higher. So take your estimated amount and multiply by 1.65 and you will have what is closer to your actual volume.
Cool Keyword Tool To Help With Local SEO
As promised in the beginning, I wanted to share a cool keyword tool to give you ideas on content, what to target, and different topics that will help you rank.
I’ve mentioned numerous times, there’s two things that matter in local SEO.
- Location Relevance
- Industry Relevance
So using this tool will allow you to build on your industry relevance, it’s called: AnswerThePublic
Basically, you put in your seed keyword and get a bunch of ideas, questions, etc. that you can use for content.
It doesn’t give you competition analysis or keyword search volume or anything like that, just ideas. Great for bloggers, great for local businesses as well.
Final Verdict
While it does seem like Market Samurai has more features than Long Tail Pro, more features doesn’t mean better. When it comes to keyword research and competition analysis, I think Long Tail Pro is the clear winner.
Market Samurai may appeal more to beginners or affiliate marketers but those wanting a solid keyword research tool above all else, Long Tail Pro is my choice.
I’ve found myself using Long Tail Pro almost on a daily basis, whereas for the last year or two, I have only used Market Samurai a couple times, because of how slow and clunky it seems to be.
Which do you think is better?
There’s a trial for Long Tail Pro AND Market Samurai, come back and let me know what you prefer!
Yeah i love Longtail Pro. I’ve been using it for years. They have a vip facebook group that connects you right with the developers if you’re ever having issues. Plus they take note of features you’re interested in seeing in future versions. Nice post dude.
Ahh, I didn’t even know about the FB group, but I don’t spend much time on FB anyway. Thanks!
They literally update it all the time too!
Ahh, yeah, I noticed that lol. With Market Samurai, it seems updates are few and far between, but when there is an update, it always seemed like things broke for a while until the next update. Kind of like Microsoft with their every other release thing. LOL.
Haha so true. I mainly use longtail for my US search volume and then take those terms that i was interested in and import those in adwords to get search volume by region or city. That’s one thing i recommended to longtail. Make a location selection for city or state. It would literally knock out a step in my process of gathering keyword data.
Any plans for them to integrate it? Seems like a nice feature.
Hey Nate,
I have had Long Tail Pro and the Upgraded Lifetime Platinum version for about almost 6 months now… Good to know I may have made a wise investment and need to just start using it!
Do you have the Platinum version, Nate? Or did I waste my money on Upgrade to Platinum?
Oh, and I never pulled the trigger on Market Samurai even though I downloaded the FREE trail years ago.
Marc
The one I have is platinum. I wasn’t aware of there being more than one version lol.
Hey Marc, if you do a lot of keyword research daily, Platinum is worth it. If you have a huge keyword list that you scraped from ubersuggest or scrapebox, you can run a search on 10k keywords all at once. I think adwords you can only do 800 with a csv import, 150-200 with manuallu adding keywords in keyword planner. Thats why i mainly upgraded to platinum. I normally dont use the kc metric anymore because it takes too long. I’ll mainly check it for a few keywords i use.
I personally am I Long Tail Pro junkie. Who needs features when in black and white you can see the “Competition Score” who cares about anything else? LOL I will be straight honest here.. anyone looking at this, don’t get the cheap version of it, the “Comp Score” is not included. If you are serious about getting serious with SEO I would personally just short of guarantee this is the product that will put you in a good position to really start gaining traction with your SEO efforts. I seriously can not say enough about LTP
Like I said above to Marc, I wasn’t aware there was more than one version, thought it was all the same, had to double check the version I have lol. I’m kind of upset I wasted the money on Market Samurai and rarely used it, I’ve had LTP open since the last time I restarted my computer, much better for my needs, though I can understand why some would like Market Samurai.
Is there some special link to the lifetime version of LTP that people talk about in the comments? Not too keen to add another monthly sub to my list of bills.
@Nathan why don’t you like Majestic? I don’t know if it’s true but I’ve heard several SEO authorities and bloggers say that the Moz database is way outdated and not updated frequently, whereas Majestic updates it’s database very often and is quite accurate compared to Moz.
I don’t know much about the lifetime version, hopefully someone else will chime in.
I’ve never been a fan of majestic, nothing against them but keep in mind many of these bloggers and authorities were in the tank for Moz when they offered an affiliate program. LOL. I wouldn’t say Moz is outdated, it’s updated less frequently but has more indexed urls than majestic. As far as accuracy goes, what kind of accuracy are we talking about? Citation flow, trust flow? These aren’t exactly Google signals… similarly, DA and PA, how can they not be accurate since it’s their own proprietary formula?
All in all, I think it’s a matter of preference, and I’m not a believer in the majestic metric, trust flow, or topical trust flow. I think it’s a fluffy strategy to give hope while sitting on a weak mound of lies.
Also, no reason for being biased here. I don’t promote either one of them haha.
Yeah no worries, thanks for your feedback on Majestic vs. Moz. I should clarify with accuracy, I was talking more along the lines of links found vs. the links you actually built yourself. So let’s say you did a 10k GSA blast to your site and a month later, you could see around 3-5k in Majestic while in Moz there might be 1k or so. Of course the TF/CF or DA/PA stuff is flawed, but at least majestics basis for calculating those (= links) are more in line with things compared to Moz, at least as far as the numbers are concerned.
If you’re doing 10k GSA blast to your site, you have bigger problems to worry about than the majestic vs moz stuff. haha! Seriously though… If there is that large of a difference in reported links, that’s pretty big. When it comes to integration into Long Tail Pro, however, I still would prefer Moz over Majestic integration in Market Samurai. Perhaps if this were about which site explorer to use, it would be a different story, and I think I would have to consider Majestic based on your argument, along with it being cheaper.
What’s interesting though, is that Moz is so far ahead in the branding game that people will care more about DA/PA than they will ever care about any other 3rd party metric.
Yeah you do. 10k blast of links. You cray cray
i loved AnswerThePublic! it’s free and so it’s cool!
Yeah, really cool site! Thanks for the comment.
One thing you did forget to mention in your article was cost.
Market Samari is a one-off fee of $149 and then that is it, you own it for life.
Long Tail Pro is a monthly fee that you need to pay each month in order to use it.
For me, that is a bit turn off. I want to be able to pay for something once and that is it, not have to pay for it each month, which by the time year 3 or 4 comes around you would have paid triple if not more of the cost of the other program.
If, as you say they are both similar, as you mentioned in the article, just one isn’t as nice as the other, then I think the winner here is Market Samari, as it is a lot more affordable in the long run.
Right?
I think for the core product if keyword research is what you want, LTP wins. Market Samurai hasn’t really grown much in the last 2 years, so you have to question how sustainable the product will be longer term. Honestly, I’m surprised they’ve continued with updates without a recurring model.
I’m with you though, additional recurring costs aren’t attractive. One time payments are much better, but at the same time, you know if there’s recurring cost they have a stake in future development and support.
I’m using SERPstat after I switched from LTP. There’s no way I’m buying a keyword research tool without access to its API.
Thanks for the comment Michael. I’ve never tried SERPstat, I’ll have to check it out!
Great post dude! As a new blogger, I was kind of lost as to what keyword tool to use for my niche so I ended up buying LTP & Market Samurai. It didn’t take me long to realize how clunky MS is plus it has so many features I don’t think I’ll ever need. I’m very comfortable with LTP plus you can run more than one keyword search in one go, to me LTP is a no brainer. I just asked for a refund from Market Samurai. Thanks for the post!
Hi i had purchased long tail pro pc version a year or so ago last week i changed laptop, i downloaded long tail pro as I’m about to install it it spits out its a damaged installer please contact author, so i do. All i said do you have a link for archives as your newer version is not installing he goes ive passed your msg to dev team next thing he closes the ticket without a update and bands me wow I’m shocked..
Weird, I would send in another ticket and ask them about it again.
That’s the thing im banned i cant open a ticket with the email that i used to purchase long tail pro..
you can still send a support email, right?
Thank you so much for your comparison. I am just starting out and learning about all of the resources out there. Too many! 🙂
I have actually already purchased LTP specifically for keyword research, so I am happy to hear your final take.
That “AnswerThePublic” is awesome as well!
Thank you! 🙂
Hey Cindy, thanks for your comment. Glad you like LTP so far, it’s a great tool. And AnswerthePublic is a really great one especially when it comes to generating ideas for content creation.
Best of luck to ya!
Both do their job well. MS can do everything LTP does, just slower. I tend to research using multiple sources before I create a site anyways and have my own way of figuring out the potential. LTP is better for sure, but everyone reading this, you’ll get the hang of building sites simply by doing it and knowing what to look for. Y
Hi, thank you for this post – I’ve had Market Samurai for a while now and just started to use it again in ‘anger’ as it were. But I find it too slow, s I’m looking for large volumes of traffic but with low competition, which means finding loads of different search terms and starting a new tab each time etc.
I have been looking at LTP as an alternative, and seeing what you said and your other commenters, it seems the way to go. I did take a look at Serpstat, as one of your other commenters reported, but this does not yet have a keyword competition/difficulty yet other than one for PPC, which I’m not interested in.
So it looks like Longtail Pro is the route to take.