NicheBOT is a very handy online tool for making the keyword analysis part of your search engine optimization efforts more effective.
Simply choose which database you want to use – WordTracker or Overture – and enter your keyword phrase and NicheBOT will spit back a list of related search phrases along with a ranking based on the number of times the phrase was searched for in the last 60 days, the number of pages listed in Google with the same keyword phrase (i.e. your competition), and the resulting ratio – the number of sites competing for that keyword phrase (lower is better).
This “Ratio” score makes it very easy to focus in on keyword phrases that have a high number of searches but less competition.
You can then click on “Analysis” for a particular phrase and see the top 15 Google search results along with the number of backlinks to those sites, the number of pages those sites have indexed in Google and the Page Rank of each site.
On this page, in my opinion, the PR column is the most useful as it enables you to see what page rank your site will likely need to achieve to have any chance of making it into the top 15 results. For example, for “professional web design” I would estimate that you would need to have a PR of 5+ to get into the top 15.
NicheBOT also has a thesaurus and a “lateralus” tool, both of which help you to find related keyword phrases and synonyms.