Before I tell you about how to use Traffic Travis as a free keyword competition tool, I’ll tell you something that was a bit of an eye-opener for me.
Today, a friend told me about one of his articles that had had 1,500 views in only two months. It pointed back to his site, but he hadn’t really made any money from that site.
This made me wonder why… And my husband and I had a conversation about it over dinner. (Chili con carne – with a HUGE amount of chili.)
My husband is not into Internet marketing, but he can often nail it, and that happened again today.
He said: I don’t get it. What do you want all that traffic for? Traffic in itself cannot make you money.
I argued: No, but if he changed the size and the placement of the ads, I’m sure he will…
My husband, who is normally a very polite man, interrupted me: No, I still don’t get it. Why should those keywords make him any money? When people have found his site, they’ve found what they were looking for. Why should they click on an advert?
And he was right. Whereas it was only a wild guess he took, based on reason, probably, I was actually able to proof his theory with the help of Traffic Travis.
This is an example with different keywords, but following the same principle.
Because I love hummus, I did a search for that keyword, and came up with an interesting long tail keyword “how to make hummus”.
This keyword had:
* 14,800 monthly broad searches
* 12,100 monthly phrase searches
* 8,100 exact monthly searches
Nice potential, eh?
When I checked the competition, it also looked inviting: less than 300 results, when I searched for those words between quote marks (phrase search).
Before I rushed out to purchase a domain for this delicious dish, I thought: Why not switch to Windows and check in Traffic Travis if there’s money to be made in this niche?
And you know what? Traffic Travis said “NO!”.
This programme is a work of genious. I really love it, and it’s one out of two programmes I actually fire up my Mac in Windows mode for. It comes in a free version with some limitations and in a Pro version. For this exercise, I used the free version.
Traffic Travis can find not only the available ads for a keyword phrase, but also changes in the past. As you can see, there wouldn’t be much point in a domain called “how to make hummus”, if I planned on monetizing it with AdSense.
This is by the way only one of the features in Traffic Travis. When I make mini-sites, I also use it to check SEO, and I aim at getting an A+ each time. It’s fun, easy, and rewarding.
Why don’t you fetch your copy of Traffic Travis now? And if you’re a Mac-user like me, please create a support ticket and ask them to make a Mac-version.
Isn’t it time for TT for mac? I mean it’s 2011 now…
Nice review. I used traffic travis too and i think is a great tools for seo…
Hi Britt,
This is absolutely one of those review that we need to determine Traffic Travis power. I am also using it (the Free version) of which I was discover that it is good for getting us information about the keyword competition (just like Market Samurai).
Another great feature that I like the most from TT Free is that they are providing the onpage analyzer so that we know what we lack doing for our site. Anyway, I just want to say thank you for this review of yours because it provides more great info for TT user like me.
I had forgotten all about Traffic Travis until I found your site while searching for a solution to a particular keyword traffic data issue I am dealing with. I am going to go download the latest trial version and see if it will work for my needs. Thanks for the reminder.