This slide deck walks through Keyword Explorer, Moz's tool for keyword research, designed by Rand to help with many of the pernicious problems inherent in the keyword discovery and prioritization processes.

1. Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com
The Power of Keyword Explorer
How to use KWE to solve the most frustrating and time consuming
tasks in SEO-focused keyword research

2. Building a keyword list from
multiple sources takes
FOREVER#1

3. Standard KW Research List Creation Process:
STEP1: Start withAdWords Keyword Planner
STEP2: Expand each broad keyword with amanual search to
get Google’s Suggest and Related
STEP3: Use Ubersuggest or Keywordtool.io or another Suggest
scraper toexpand further
STEP4: Goto SEMRush, Spyfu, Keycompete, etc. toget
keywords the same URLs also rank for
STEP5: Getsemantically relatedkeywordsviaAlchemyAPI ora
topicmodelingtool(e.g.Stanford’s)

4. Standard KW Research List Creation Process:
STEP6: Put it all into Excel or Google Spreadsheets via manual
copy/paste or lots of exporting/importing
Ugh. Such apain.

5. Keyword Explorer Makes
This WAY Better

6. Starting with KWE is easy. Just enter any term or
phrase in the search box to get suggestions, metrics,
and analysis.

7. KWE’s suggestions
include every type of
term/phrase you’d get
from all of those other
sources.

8. Suggestions similar to
what you’d find in
Keyword Planner,
Google Suggest, and
Related Searches
combined, e.g.:

9. Broader, expanded match
terms like those you’d find
from drilling into other
keywords, e.g.:

10. Topic-modeling &
semantically related
keywords, e.g.:

11. Keywords the pages &
sites in Google’s results
also ranked for, e.g.:

12. 1
Creating a List in KWE is as Easy as:

13. 2
Creating a List in KWE is as Easy as:

14. 3
Creating a List in KWE is as Easy as:

15. Adding Keywords to a List is Equally Easy:
Check
Select

16. Adding Keywords to a List is Equally Easy:
Boom. It’s on my list.

17. All the keywords I want to target for this project can
be saved in one convenient spot – my list.

18. Adding the metrics needed
to prioritize keywords is like
pulling teeth.
#2

19. How popular
is this KW?
How hard is it
to rank for this
KW?
What % of searchers
will actually click on
organic web results?
How important is it
to my business/
campaign?
Need a
metric that
combines
these scores
to help me
prioritize

20. Every column is frustrating to get, and no two come from
the same source, which means setting up multiple
scrapes or APIs or manual retrieval processes 

21. Keyword Explorer Makes
This WAY Better

22. Every keyword I add to a list gets all
these metrics… AUTOMATICALLY!

23. It’s easy to copy or move
keywords to other lists I know when
metrics were
collected, and if
they’re stale, I
can update.

24. Changing importance is easy, and
KWE lets me increase relative
importance by 3X+, or reduce by
up to 2/3rds
Modifying importance scores affect the
overall “Potential” which I can use to
priority-sort my keyword list.

25. KWE exports beautifully into
CSV, so you can add/modify
data in Excel to your heart’s
content.

26. ONE CLICK TO
RULE THEM ALL!
Perhaps the most beautiful part of KWE’s lists is the
ability to update all your metrics, for every keyword
on your list, all at once…. With just one frickin’ click!

27. Metrics quality & consistency is
a pernicious problem for
keyword researchers#3

28. Every SEO knows that
AdWords’ volume numbers can
be way off reality. But there’s
never been an alternative, so
we’re stuck with it 

29. e.g. there’s no way the
organic competition for
“presentation tools” is
“Low” 
AdWords’ “Competition” is fine
for PPC, but it doesn’t
correlate to the difficulty or
ease of ranking in the organic
results.

30. Ranking #1 in the organic results for these two
queries will result in VASTLY different click-
through-rate due to the SERP features

31. Keyword Explorer Makes This
WAY Better

32. In our research samples, these
ranges accurately captured the
prior month’s true volume with
95%+ accuracy.
We use AdWords numbers,
combined w/ clickstream sampled
data, to produce a more accurate
and often more up-to-date volume
range score. Moz’s Russ Jones
covered our unique process here.

33. The updated, more accurate
Keyword Difficulty score
takes into account the
strength of the sites and
pages ranking on Google’s
first page of results to
provide a true, relative sense
for how hard it might be to
rank.

34. This keyword has one
AdWords ad at the
bottom, but is otherwise
all organic results
hence, a “94%” CTR
Opportunity

35. This keyword has 3
AdWords top ads and
Shopping Results in
the right-hand
column, hence an
“82%” CTR
Opportunity

36. Comparing lists of keywords w/
aggregate metrics is important,
but because it’s a pain, we all
avoid it
#4

37. I’m not even sure how to start combining, averaging, and
distributing the metrics in order to create comparable list metrics…

38. How do I figure out if lots of
the keywords I care about
have opportunity in other,
non-organic-web types of
result features? Should I look
at targeting through Google
News? Image results?
Maps/Local?

39. Keyword Explorer Makes
This WAY Better

40. At the top of every keyword list is a graphic
distribution of all the metrics about each keyword on

41. Comparing keyword lists to each other is fast and easy, too –
every metric is automatically totaled and/or averaged.
Just click this comparison view

42. Keyword Explorer records 16 of the
most common kinds of SERP
features, and shows a distribution of
those that appeared in the keywords
present on any list.
For this list, tweets, videos,
and news results are all
popular in the SERPs

43. #1: Go to http://moz.com/explorer & get 2 queries/day entirely free.
5 Ways to Try Keyword Explorer:
#2: Sign up for a free Moz community account & get 5 more queries/day
entirely free.
#3: Buy standalone Keyword Explorer starting at $600/year.
#4: Subscribe to Moz Pro at $149/month+; KWE is included.
#5: Already have Moz Pro? You already have Keyword Explorer!

44. Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com
Keyword Explorer FTW!