Market Samurai |
Market Samurai Review – This is an Adobe Air based application (just like Tweetdeck) that was developed and marketed by Noble Samurai, an Australian software company founded in 2008.
We’ve been using Market Samurai for years and think of it as being one of the best tools and applications on the market for Keyword and Market Research and much more. Really, you can think of Market Samurai as a comprehensive internet marketing tool. The product is extremely popular and used by an estimated 300K SEO marketers around the world.
One of the ongoing challenges for us and something that should be underscored in any review is its reliance on Adobe Air and the constant state of development. But, the tradeoff for the latter is it is always being improved in terms of features and capabilities and you don’t have to worry about cross-browser issues using an application that runs on Adobe Air.
This is a superb product that is very useful for SEO optimization, keyword research and market niche identification. But, it has an associated learning curve and it takes some time (3-6 hours) to get up to speed with the product and another 6-8 hours to become proficient.
We should point out the company has great video and web tutorials that are well done and most helpful and will help to minimize the learning curve. And, they have a great knowledge base and community forum that can be accessed via the web site.
We really like Market Samurai’s reliance on SEO best practices for keyword research (as should you): Relevance, Traffic, Competition and Commerciality – these are the underpinnings of their keyword research across their seven modules. If you are serious about do it yourself SEO and keyword research this is a great product and we also like and use their companion Domain Research App, Domain Samurai.
Competitors include services such as Keyword Elite, SEOmoz, SpyFu, Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, and Keyword Spy.
Market Samurai has seven core modules that are integrated in one interface. Again, it takes some time to get up to speed on the interface; but, the modules all have a very similar look and feel.
Keyword Research
SEO Competition
Monetization
Find Content
Publish Content
Promotion
Rank Tracker
Market Samurai is an Installed Adobe Air App: Meaning, you don’t have to worry about cross-browser issues with this and Adobe Air is free and installs on most desktops, workstations and Macs in a few minutes.
Keyword Research Module: Good comprehensive keyword is easy to do; fine keywords and related keywords to your core keywords, analyze the traffic, Adwords values, competition, buying intent and more. We really like the way this module is configured – providing you with a color coded map that lets you see (at a glance) the top ten domains and their core SEO factors including: domain age, pagerank, keyword in title and URL counts.
SEO Competition Module: Market Samurai will analyze top ten results for your keyword and who you how well they rank, with an integrated rating for SEO factors.
Monetization Analysis Module: Enables you to find products you want to promote via your web site via Clickbank, Amazon, Commission Junction and related sites. This module helps you research sites for money making potential – it’s well done and powerful.
Find and Publish Content Modules – Not a lot of value with these modules in our opinion; most of this content is not very good and would not help your overall content strategy and there are better publishing tools for WordPress on the market. The Find Content module will give you some hints about content you may want to develop.
Promotion Module – enables you to find web 2.0 sites, blogs or forums related to your keywords for SEO backlinking purposes. This is a great module and will save you considerable time for backlinking and commenting.
Rank Tracker Module: This is another powerful module – enables you to add your domains and keywords and Market Samurai will show you where your sites rank for your keywords over a period of time via top tier search engines including: Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Domain research. You can do research regarding open domains as well as domains that are about to expire in relation to your keywords. Although, we would like this functionality better if it had more integration with GoDaddy’s API, enabling the user to dig deep into domains being auction (budget domain names).
We like the fact that Market Samurai does not charge a monthly service fee like many of their direct competitors. It can be purchased for $149. and they also offer a free trial period as well. We have to also point out they frequently update the product and there are no add on charges after you purchase the keyword research product. And, there is a lot of value in this product – it’s highly recommended.
Market Samurai is a great product; here’s why:
Highly competitive price point, especially when you weigh the costs of competing products; WordTracker charges a monthly service fee as an example.
This is a powerful and sophisticated keyword research product that has great ancillary features, with seven modules overall.
We like their free, consistent updates and improvements to the software.
Training modules (videos, forum, and knowledgebase) are well done – you can’t call them on the phone, which can be frustrating at times, but they are very responsive to emails and the customer service reps do an excellent job.
Things those are not so good:
The more keywords you track, the slower the software operates, which can be frustrating.
Keywords all have to be separated by project – you have to train yourself to work in this manner.
The interface is complex, with about a 5 to 10 hour learning curve, or more, if you aren’t SEO savvy (keyword research, domaining, backlinks, pagerank, etc.).
Market Samurai runs on Adobe Air, which can in some cases be a bit touchy, depending on your operating system and type of workstation/PC.
Overall, this Market Samurai review awards 9 out of 10 stars as a great keyword research product!