An in-depth Review: Is Market Samurai Really Worth $97?

Before using Market Samurai, I had heard all of the stories and reviews about this product and I was generally impressed. I was interested to find out more about Market Samurai and more specifically determine if it could cut down the time I spend doing keyword research for my micro niche sites.

I eventually bought it (managed to get a $50 discount) and here is my experience after a month of using it. You will find my guide as one of the best in-depth reviews about Market Samurai and I hope it will help you to decide whether or not you should buy it in order to speed up your keyword research, which will eventually lead to more sales.

An All-in-one Tool

If you have been doing SEO, Internet Marketing and keyword research for a long time, then you’ll know how time consuming it is to research keywords using the Google Adwords Keyword tool. This is because you need to then go and check your competition data and then do the link building.

From my experience in using a variety of keyword tools, I can say that Market Samurai does not equip you with the absolute best set of tools that are being sold on the market right now. BUT Market Samurai has done a great job in building a centralized set of modules that can help you cut down the time and effort required to do keyword research as well as Internet Marketing and SEO.

“Modules” are a core concept for Market Samurai and each module will give you different functionality.

Market Samurai has nine modules:

• Rank tracker: This module is used to track the current position of your website in the search engine results pages. You can see how the position of your web page goes up and down according to predefined keywords.
• Keyword research: If you want to come up with a list of potential keywords and then research how much traffic each keyword receives as well as the competition data of each keyword, then this module is for you.
• SEO Competition: Track the top 10 competitors for a specific keyword. Market Samurai automatically analyzes all of the information about that competitor for you include PR, backlinks, page backlinks and much more.
• Domains: Find a potential domain for you.
• Monetization: Automatically find products on Amazon, Clickbank and other affiliate sites that relate to your keywords so you can promote those products.
• Find content: This module will find articles and websites etc to help you understand more about the topics around your keyword. This is a really powerful and useful module.
• Publish content: If you are too lazy to login to your WordPress account or open a Microsoft Word document, then you can type into the supplied text editor inside this module and then upload the article to your blog remotely. This is not really something I would use, but others may find it useful.
• Promotion: Are you struggling to find websites in your niche to comment on or leave backlinks?  This module is an amazing tool to find related sites with your keywords and analyze the types of backlinks for you so you can start building backlinks for your niche site.

Review on Market Samurai Rank Tracker Module

I have used a lot of rank tracker tools before, because I find that they are the best way to track the rank of your website on search engine result pages for specific keywords. For example, I have used the SEO Book Rank Tracker tool as well as other free and paid tools.

What I like:

• Allows you to export your project in CSV format. In you are using Market Samurai to work for somebody else, Market Samurai allows you to export the results in CSV format, which is really nice. In my case, I just export what I have discovered and pin it the board in my office so that I can remember and compare my current rank to the rank I have achieved a month ago etc.
• Tracks a list of keywords, list of pages and the domain: Market Samurai allows you to check your rank on multiple keywords and pages. So if you have a new list of keywords and web pages that you want to track, you don’t actually need to start the tracking process from scratch again.
• Track rank on multiple search engines: I am able to track my rank on various search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. That’s good because whilst Google is the main search engine, Yahoo and Bing can bring you some extra traffic, which can boost your income as well as backlinks to the site.

What I don’t like:

• No graph support. No tracking records. Market Samurai does not log your rank day by day and then save it to the database. What it does is just simply update your rank status and that’s all. I wish Noble Samurai could make some great modifications in the next version so that users can easily record their website rank daily and display it as a graph so a user can easily compare and track the performance of the SEO.
• No additional search engines supported besides Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google, Bing and Yahoo are the only search engines that are supported by Market Samurai right now. Therefore, if you have a foreign website and wish to use Market Samurai so you can rank high on local search engines like Google UK or Google CA, it’s really hard to do.

Review on Market Samurai Keyword Research Module

I have been using the Google Adwords Keyword tool for years as well as the WordTracker keyword tool. When I started to use the Market Samurai Keyword Research Module, I instantly recognized this is the best in-depth keyword analysis tool that I have ever used.

If you are serious about doing keyword research, you should use it right away because you can:

• Analyze the daily traffic and competition. I purchased Market Samurai when I needed to do keyword research for the “affiliate link tracker” keywords. I could see instantly how much traffic per day I could potentially receive by ranking in the first position as well as the competition for that keyword.
• Analyze the average Cost per Click. The average CPC is useful since it helps to me understand how much money I can make from a particular keyword. For example, when I do the keyword research for “make money online”, that keyword can bring you around $6000 per day. However, getting the top position for that keyword would be a lot of work!
• Filter potential niches and sub-niches. If you are looking for a potential niche for a theme keyword you are searching for, this is the right tool. I think the strength of the Market Samurai Keyword Research Module lies in its ability to filter and drill down into a keyword. For example, say I needed to research the keyword “wedding planning”. I can use Market Samurai to give me the list of potential keywords in this niche. In the results I can drill down and research something like “wedding planning guide”. According to my research, this keyword receives good traffic but has less competition than the keyword “guide to wedding planning”.

However, the Market Samurai Keyword Research Module still has some drawbacks:

• Complex to use: Honestly, I needed to read their guide to understand how to do a keyword research in Market Samurai as well as how to drill down and filter keywords. I’m a tech guy so I think Market Samurai is not for newbies. This tool is for intermediate to advanced users where you need to completely understand how to do a keyword research, understand what are theme keywords and what are niche keywords, etc. For beginners, I recommend that you start by using the Google Adwords tool. It’s a powerful tool without complexity like Market Samurai and it’s free. When you need more features, you can then purchase Market Samurai and have a better experience with it.
• Don’t offer match type: Instead of offering match type like the Adwords tool, Market Samurai uses Phrase-to-broad to filter keywords, which can confuse a lot of users.

Although Market Samurai does have some drawbacks, I still think it is the best keyword analysis tool on the market right now. Some of the drawbacks that I have mentioned don’t really affect how much value this module can deliver for you. I’m also quite picky.

Complete SEO Competition Analysis Module

In order to outperform your competition, you need to understand their strengths and weaknesses as well as your own strengths and weaknesses. This module adds a convenient tool which reduces the time to research your competition and then find their weakness in order to beat them on the search engine result pages.

I have used the Market Samurai SEO Competition Module to:

• Know the top 10 competitors in my niche. When I researched for the “wedding planning guide” keyword, I was able to see who were my top 10 competitors. Here’s an image of the results with some key elements to outperform them in the search engine result page. As you can see, the situation doesn’t seem too bright. I have some very strong competitors. However, ranking in the top 10 would not be hard, but it will take a while and some effort.
• Know what I have to do to rank high. When a key element is highlighted, you  know what you need to do to outrank your competitors.

Review of the other Market Samurai Modules 

The other Market Samurai modules help you to save time and be centralized around only one tool instead of bouncing back and forth between many websites to search for products to promote or to find content.

For example, I have used the Monetization module to search for products across sites like Amazon and Clickbank, etc to search for products around my keyword niche.

The Promotion Module allows you to search for sites around the keyword niche so you can leave backlinks. Market Samurai will automatically analyze whether the link is a do-follow link, the page rank and the page backlink of the source. I think this module is nice for bloggers because you can leave comments in some do-follow blog around your niche. But do not only chase do-follow blogs. Google takes everything into account and commenting on no-follow blogs will also boost your page rank.

So is it worth $97?

In my opinion, Market Samurai is well worth $97. All of the modules are centralized to help you with the typical activities of an Internet Marketer. It will really save you time and effort. Since using Market Samurai, I have cut my time in half while improving my productivity by at least 25%… so yeah, it’s definitely worth $97 to me.

But if you are a newbie to keyword research, use the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool first so you can get some experience in keyword research before purchasing this tool. A lot of people buy this product, but are overwhelmed with it’s features, so they never end up using it which is a shame.

So what do you think about Market Samurai? Have you used it yet? What are your opinions?

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