KeySearch Review: Is KeySearch worth the cost? [2024]

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KeySearch is a popular keyword research tool among bloggers and online business owners. But is it worth the cost? In this KeySearch review we’ll look at what exactly KeySearch does, how it can help boost your SEO efforts, the type of results you can expect and it’s limitations.

Keyword research is a hugely important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In fact, I would argue it’s the most important part of SEO. Why? Because you can do everything else right, but if you write blog posts on topics no one is searching for you won’t get any traffic, and if you write blog posts on topics that are too competitive, you won’t stand a chance of ranking… and so you’ll get no traffic.

One of the most popular tools on the market for keyword research is KeySearch. KeySearch claims to offer a suite of powerful, yet easy-to-use, keyword research and SEO tools, at a much more affordable price point than its competitors.

In this review, I’ll be sharing what exactly KeySearch does, how it can help boost your SEO efforts, the type of results you can expect from using KeySearch, as well as its limitations and downsides, to answer the most important question: Is KeySearch worth the cost?

But first up, what exactly is KeySearch?

What is KeySearch?

KeySearch is a suite of keyword research and SEO tools designed to help bloggers and online business owners grow their websites.

KeySearch aims to gives small business owners access to the kind of features and data that is usually only available to big businesses and large agencies, while at the same time offering tools which are easy to use and quick to learn – rather than the steep learning curve and overly complicated feature sets that more expensive tools offer.

In short, the goal of Keysearch is to offer high quality, simple to use SEO tools at a price that is affordable to everyone.

In this review we’ll see whether KeySearch lives up to those aims…

**Psst… If you decide after reading this KeySearch Review that you want to purchase KeySearch, you can get 30% off with my exclusive coupon code PB30**

What can you do with KeySearch?

KeySearch is best known as a keyword research tool, but in fact KeySearch offers a whole suite of SEO tools.

KeySearch gives you tools for:

Keyword Research

KeySearch’s keyword research tool is very easy to use – even if you are a complete beginner at keyword research. All you need to do is type a keyword into the search box, select your target location, select ‘related keywords’ and hit ‘search’.

This will give you Volume and Keyword Difficulty scores for your chosen keyword, but it will also give you a list of up to 700 of related keywords, which you can then sort by Volume or Keyword Difficulty, to help you find low competition keywords with good search volumes. Keyword Difficulty is helpfully colour coded, so you can see at a glance keywords that you stand a chance or ranking for.

But KeySearch’s keyword research tool also offers some great features for more experienced bloggers. For example, you can filter results to help you find keywords within specified parameters. You can see search trends for the past 12 months. And this tool also gives you a detailed search engine results page (SERP) analysis.

If you want to learn how to use KeySearch’s keyword research tool, check out my complete step-by-step tutorial on how to use KeySearch for keyword research.

Competitor Analysis

KeySearch’s ‘organic keywords’ competitor analysis allows you to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for. You simply type a competitor’s URL into the search box and hit ‘search’. You can sort this list by rank, traffic or volume.

There is also a competitor gap analysis which allows you to compare your site with up to 3 competitor sites, to find keywords they are ranking for, but you are not. You can then sort the results by Volume and/or Keyword Difficulty.

You can also analyse your own website with this tool to identify which keywords you are ranking for and in what position. This is a particularly good way to find keywords you are ranking for, but where you currently don’t have a really great blog post on that subject. Since you know you already rank for that keyword with a ‘bad’ result, you can pretty much guarantee you’ll rank better and get more traffic with a new blog post that is really ‘on point’.

Backlink Analysis

KeySearch’s Backlink Analysis tool allows you to see where your competitors are getting backlinks from. This tool shows which pages on your competitor’s site are getting backlinks, whether they are are follow or nofollow links, the anchor text used and the domain strength of the backlink.

This will give you ideas about how you can strengthen you own backlink profile – for example, sites that are currently accepting guest posts, the types of posts that naturally attract backlinks and sites to reach out to, if you believe your site offers better information than your competitor.

You can also use this feature to analyse your own backlink profile, which can also give you helpful ideas for how to get more and better backlinks.

This is also a great way to find well-known publications which have linked to you, to use in your ‘as featured in’ section and boost your E-E-A-T.

(Case in point, this tool helped me discover that I’d been linked to in Entrepreneur!)

Keyword Rank Tracking

KeySearch’s Rank Tracking tool gives you a list of the top keywords that your website is currently ranking for and allows you to track how those keywords perform in Google’s search results over time. Depending on which plan you are on, you can pick 80 or 200 keywords to track. This will help you identify any keywords that have fallen in the rankings, so you can know which posts you need to update and improve.

Brainstorming

Stuck for ideas? Then you are going to love the Brainstorming tool! Just type a ‘seed’ keyword into the tool and you’ll instantly get a list of suggestions taken right from Google (and other search engines).

Click on any of the ideas and you can go straight to the Keyword Research tool to get a full analysis of the keyword idea.

Content Optimization

Keysearch has a brilliant Content Assistant tool to help you optimize your blog posts.

First, you type your keyword into the search box and hit ‘search’.

KeySearch will tell you the Volume, Keyword Difficulty Score and Average Google 1st Page Word Count. It will also give you a list of Recommended Keywords to include in your blog post. These are based on the keywords most commonly found in the blog posts that are currently ranking on the first page of Google.

It will also show you the headings used by the top ranking posts and popular questions from Google Search related to your keyword. I love these features as it gives you a very quick and easy way to come up with a comprehensive outline for your blog post.

Next you can paste or write your blog post draft into the text box and the Content Assistant will give you your current word count and highlight which words from the Recommended Keywords list you have included. This is a great checklist to help ensure you have covered the most important points and written a blog post which thoroughly answers the reader’s question.

Of course, this tool should be used with a large dose of common sense or you risk writing a blog post which covers too many angles or attempts to shoehorn in a ridiculous number of keywords – neither will lead to a great UX and such an article is very unlikely to rank well on Google!

AI Writing Tool

But it gets better, because KeySearch also includes a built-in AI Writing Tool. You can use this tool to:

• Create an blog post outline
• Help you write your page title
• Help you write H tags
• Create an intro paragraph
• Create a conclusion paragraph
• Create main content
• Create meta descriptions
• Create a listicle

It’s worth bearing in mind that you only get 5000 AI writing credits on the starter plan and 1500 AI writing credits on the Pro plan and each time you use the tool it will eat into these credits and use 1 credit per word generated.

Lots Of Tutorials

Stuck for how to use a particular feature of KeySearch? KeySearch has lots of tutorials to help you learn how to use each tool and how to get the most out of each feature.

And more!

And that’s not all. KeySearch also offers:

• Explorer – which will analyse a whole site or a specific page
• Quick Difficulty – which lets you paste in a list of up to 50 keywords to quickly analyse the difficulty
• Site Audit – which scans your site for technical SEO errors such as, broken links, missing title tags, duplicate or missing meta descriptions, duplicate content and images with missing alt text
• URL Metrics – which allows you to do competitor research at scale
• YouTube Research – similar to to KeySearch’s keyword research tool, but for YouTube

How much does KeySearch cost?

KeySearch offers two paid plans: Starter and Pro. The Starter plan costs $17 per month and the Pro plan costs $34 per month. Annual plans are also available at $169 for the Starter Annual Plan and $279 for the Pro Annual Plan.

However, if you use my exclusive KeySearch discount coupon PB30, you can get 30% off KeySearch, making the starter plan just $11.90 per month.

What’s the difference between KeySearch Starter and KeySearch Pro?

There isn’t a huge difference between KeySearch Starter and KeySearch Pro. Both plans give you access to all the features of KeySearch.

The main difference between KeySearch Starter and KeySearch Pro is the number of keyword searches you can do per day. You get 200 keyword searches per day on the Starter Plan and 500 keyword searches per day on the Pro Plan.

With KeySearch Pro you also get more Rank Tracker Keywords, more Site Audit Pages and more AI Credits per month.

Personally, I have always found the starter plan completely sufficient for my needs.

Can you get Keysearch for free?

Yes you can. KeySearch offers a free 1 month trial to new customers. However the free plan is very limited. On the KeySearch Free Plan you only get 5 keyword searches per day and you get ZERO Rank Tracker Keywords, Site Audit Pages and AI Credits. You also do not get access to the Competitive Analysis tool.

If you are on a tight budget, I recommend a better approach is to pay for 1 month of the KeySearch Starter Plan, which gives you access to all the tools and 200 keyword searches per day, do all your keyword research for the year and make use of all the other tools that month, then cancel KeySearch before the end of the month. This approach will benefit you far more than opting for the free plan.

Can KeySearch help you find good keywords?

While KeySearch offers a whole suite of SEO tools, it is most well known as a keyword research tool and that is what most bloggers and online business owners buy KeySearch for.

So, the most important question is… Can KeySearch help you find good keywords?

The short answer is YES! KeySearch makes it really easy to find good volume, low competition keywords.

You can type any keyword into the KeySearch Keyword Research Tool and instantly see the Volume and Keyword Difficulty scores.

Better still, when you run a report on a keyword, KeySearch will also give you dozens of related keywords, which you can then sort by Volume or Keyword Difficulty.

You can also filter the results. So for example, you could ask KeySearch to show you all the related search terms that have a Volume of 500+ and a Keyword Difficulty score of less than 40.

Another great feature of the Keyword Research Tool is it will show you the Google Page 1 results for the keyword phrase you are searching for. This allows you to see at a glance the Domain Authority scores for all the top ranking websites for that search term. And while, DA is by no means a perfect metric, it gives you a good sense of whether you stand a chance of ranking for that search term.

For example, if you currently have a DA of 30 and all the results on page 1 of Google have a DA of 80+, you can be fairly sure that you don’t have a chance of ranking for that keyword! Whereas if you have a DA of 30 and you see a couple of results on page 1 of Google that are in the 20s, you can be pretty confident you have a chance of ranking.

(You can use the free MozBar to look at the DA scores of all the top ranking posts, as I outline in this post about using Google for keyword research, but KeySearch makes it so much quicker and easier – especially if you are researching a lot of keywords all at once!)

Of course, no tool is perfect. It’s important to remember that no keyword research tool (even the really expensive ones!) has access to Google’s data, and so Volume and Keyword Difficulty scores are estimates extrapolated from much smaller data sets, not absolute values.

However, I have been using KeySearch for over a year, now, and I have found KeySearch to be nothing short of brilliant at helping me find good keywords for my websites – keywords which have helped me grow both my websites over the past year.

Can KeySearch help you get more pageviews?

So, the million dollar question (kinda literally!) – can KeySearch help you get more pageviews?

I think the best way to answer this is with my own personal example. I have been using KeySearch for over a year now and traffic to my food blog, Easy Peasy Foodie, is up 27% year over year.

It’s important to point out here that Easy Peasy Foodie was already a successful blog by most people’s standards, and that I’ve been following SEO best practice for a long time on Easy Peasy Foodie, and so my SEO was already pretty dialled in. The biggest change I have made over the last year is I started using KeySearch for my keyword research.

If I had a smaller, less established blog, I would expect the results to be even stronger.

(Case in point is this blog, which is much smaller than Easy Peasy Foodie, and where traffic is up 59% year over year. However, KeySearch is not the only significant change I have made to this blog over the last year, so I cannot attribute all of that growth to KeySearch.)

Of course, simply owning KeySearch will not magically increase your pageviews! However, if you use KeySearch well and follow all the other SEO best practices, yes KeySearch can help you get more pageviews.

Can KeySearch help you earn more?

Research shows that there is a strong correlation between number of pageviews and income. Since it’s clear that, when used correctly, KeySearch can help you get more pageviews, it follows on logically that KeySearch can help you earn more too.

Again, drawing from my own example, my food blog revenue is up 19.5% year over year – and the only significant change I have made to that blog over the last year is to start using KeySearch.

(The revenue increase is less than the traffic increase as Easy Peasy Foodie is monetized mainly through ads and RPMs have dropped this year.)

And, in case you are wondering, Productive Blogging’s revenue is up 101%, but as I mentioned before, I have changed a lot more on Productive Blogging, so I cannot attribute all of that growth to KeySearch. Also, Productive Blogging is mainly monetized via digital products, so the link between pageviews and income is not so linear – adding extra products, running sales and improving sales funnels all significantly boosts RPMs, meaning revenue growth can easily outstrip traffic growth.

Is KeySearch easy to use?

KeySearch is VERY easy to use. In fact, aside from the fact that KeySearch has helped me to grow my blog traffic and income significantly over the last year, my favourite thing about KeySearch is how easy it is to use.

I have tried many keyword research and SEO tools over the years and KeySearch is by far the most user friendly, in my opinion.

I have found that the more expensive SEO tools have so many features and options that there is a huge learning curve and it’s hard to get to the information you really need without jumping through a million and one hoops.

Conversely, I have found the cheaper SEO tools to be clunky, with a poor user interface and confusing results.

KeySearch is the happy middle point – a nice, simple to use, easy to understand user interface, with all the features you need and without the complexity and annoying hoop-jumping of the more expensive tools.

What are the downsides of KeySearch?

Of course no tool is perfect and so, of course, KeySearch does have some downsides.

No access to Google’s data

The biggest downside to KeySearch is that, like every other SEO tool on the market (even the really expensive ones!), KeySearch does not have access to Google’s data. As a result, the Volume and Keyword Difficulty scores are estimates extrapolated from smaller data sets. Most of the time I have found them to be good estimates, but they are estimates nonetheless and should never be read as 100% fact. As I always say, keyword research is as much an art as a science and you should always use common sense and a judicious amount of gut instinct when doing keyword research.

Lacks the bells and whistles of more expensive tools

The other main downside to KeySearch is that it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that a more expensive tool like Ahrefs, SemRush and Moz do. If you are doing some very complex, high-level SEO work, and you are willing to pay top dollar, you will probably find that KeySearch is too basic for you.

(However, if you mainly want a tool for keyword research, competitor analysis and to help you improve your on page SEO. I would actually see this ‘disadvantage’ as a pro, as you are getting a tool which is much easier to use and you not paying for features you don’t need!)

Very limited free version

Another negative point is that the free version of KeySearch is very limited, with only 5 keyword research credits per day and no access at all to Rank Tracker Keywords, Site Audit Pages, AI Credits or the Competitive Analysis tool.

It would be nice if there was a free version that included access to KeySearch’s full suite of tools.

Conclusion: Is KeySearch worth the cost?

So, taking everything into account, is KeySearch worth the cost?

My answer is a resounding ‘YES’.

If you are looking for a keyword research tool that is affordable, easy to use, and which delivers great results, then you will love KeySearch.

KeySearch is perfect for bloggers and online business owners who want to grow their website traffic and income, but who have modest budgets and don’t want to pay top dollar for complicated tools with features you don’t need and a steep learning curve.

KeySearch is a great tool if you are a beginner, as it’s easy to use and very affordable.

But KeySearch is also a great option if you are an established blogger who knows a lot about keyword research and SEO, as KeySearch provides everything you need to do keyword research, competitor analysis, on page SEO optimization, improve your backlink profile and conduct technical SEO audits.

Case in point, I am an experienced blogger with a very strong track record when it comes to keyword research and SEO (I have my own course on SEO, with over 2750 students enrolled and incredible student success stories and testimonials!) and KeySearch the only SEO tool I pay for.

(I do also use free SEO tools like Google Trends, Google Search Console and MozBar.)

In short, I have never found an SEO tool that offers such a great feature set for such an affordable price – in my opinion, KeySearch is definitely worth the cost!

KeySearch discount code – get 30% off KeySearch!

At $17 per month, KeySearch is great value – no question.

But it gets better…

Because I’ve negotiated an exclusive discount especially for my readers. By using my discount coupon, you can get a whopping 30% off the regular price – every single month!

Just use coupon code PB30 at the checkout to get your 30% discount off KeySearch!

KeySearch tip for bloggers on a budget

Love the sound of KeySearch but on a tight budget right now? One of the great things about KeySearch is, although it’s a monthly fee, you’re not tied in.

So, my recommendation for anyone on a tight budget is just get KeySearch for a month, do all your keyword research for a year and make use of all the other tools as much as you can… and then remember to cancel before the month is out!

So, basically you can pay just $11.90 for all your keyword research for a whole year!

(Though I have to admit, I bought KeySearch over a year ago, fully anticipating I’d just use it for 1 month and I found that I loved it so much, I just couldn’t do without it… and I’ve been a happy customer ever since!)

Want to learn how to use KeySearch for keyword research?

If you want to learn how to use KeySearch, and get the most bang for your buck, check out my complete step-by-step tutorial on how to use KeySearch for keyword research.

But remember, keyword research is only one part of SEO. To get the full benefit from keyword research you need to get all the other parts right too. If you want to boost your SEO and maximize your pageviews, check out my SEO course, SEO Jumpstart

(Not quite ready for a full SEO course, snag my free DIY SEO Audit!)

Over to you…

Do you have any questions about KeySearch? I’m happy to help – just type your question into the comments below. Or perhaps you already use KeySearch? I’d love to hear about your experiences with KeySearch and how much it has helped you grow your blog – and I’m sure my other readers would too. Let us know in the comment section!

More on this topic…

• How to use KeySearch for keyword research: step-by-step tutorial
• A beginner’s guide to keyword research for bloggers
• How to write longer blog posts (that your readers actually want to read!)
• 137 essential SEO terms every blogger should know! (+ free printable)
• 17 SEO mistakes to avoid in 2024

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