The following is a paid review. Please note: my time is being paid for but my opinions are my own.
Keyword research is an essential element of search engine optimization. Not surprisingly, there are many tools to help make this process easier and more effective, some free and some paid.
Wordze is a new entrant into this popular field of keyword research tools.
Once you login you are presented with a range of options including such tools as (obviously) a keyword research tool, a typo database, historical keyword trends, a web site keyword density tool, and a tool to see how difficult it is to rank well for a particular keyword.
The keyword research tool is probably where you’ll start most of your research. Fortunately, it is responsive with a cleanly designed interface.
When you search on a keyword you’ll see the number of times that term was searched for in the last 30 days (apparently based on ISP log data) along with an estimated number for the next 30 days across all search portals (I would emphasize the word ‘estimated’ here).
The keyword research tool also provides a KEI (keyword effectiveness index) number to show how easy or difficult a keyword will likely be to rank for (basically, it compares the number of searches for a keyword to the number of results).
From the keyword research tool you can access the WordRank tool for a particular keyword. This tool analyzes the competition for that keyword by running a search for it and then analyzing the domains that rank highest.
For example, it will show you the number of links into a domain, the age of the domain, its page rank, and so on. These are all combined to give a WordRank index, similar to the KEI, where the lower the number (the closer to zero) the harder the term will be to rank for.
The misspelled words tool was quite useful and could help you find some common misspellings that could generate some traffic — although you would definitely be dealing with the long tail here.
On a side note, I could see how you could also use this tool to improve your site search by putting these variations into a page’s meta data.
The historical data tool is useful to see which way a keyword is trending and will show you data for 30, 60, 90 days and one year. This tool also shows you in which geographical regions the keyword is most popular.
Wordze appears to have all the tools necessary to effectively research keywords. I’m not familiar enough with the competition to say how it compares to them.
However, I found it easy to pick up and comprehensive in its features. Pricing seems reasonable as far as paid tools are concerned, too.