A really useful feature is getting the data on the number of links a site has, both inbound and outbound links.There is also info on where these links are coming from, listed by country and by U.S. states.

They have a list of useful slash tags to get you started, and you can always use any tags that you want. The idea behind slash tags is that they are a way to refine your search results.

One thing that may be a bit of a pain in the neck is that if you want to use your own slash tags, you have to register as a user. It’s free, so it’s not a big deal, but I’m not sure why they are doing this.

Here’s a short video demo from the CEO of Blekko:

 

My initial impression of Blekko is that it is worth looking into. The ability to customize my search results and to see how many links my competition have could be really useful. I’m still not convinced that I need to add the Blekko Toolbar to my browser, so I’m going to wait on that for now.

Blekko looks like a new way to search, and the help section of the site does a good job of getting you familiar with the features of this search site. Give it a shot and see what you think of it. Click here to go to http://www.blekko.com

Let’s go through an example that will show you why it’s not always a good idea to target a keyword based ONLY on how many searches it gets. This is especially true in the mega-markets such as golf, dogs, and digital cameras. For this example, I’m going to use the weight loss market. Weight loss is a huge market, because there are always going to be people who are interested in losing weight.

I enter the keyword phrase “weight loss” in Market Samurai and find out that there are 818,630 searches per day!

That’s a lot of searches, and if you could get a first page listing on the search engine results page, you’d get a lot of traffic.

Let’s look at how much competition there is for “weight loss” – 65,200,000 sites. Over 65 million sites!

The main lesson here is to ALWAYS look at the competition you’re up against before you decide to use a keyword. Even though “weight loss” is very competitive, you can still enter the weight loss market. When I entered “weight loss” in Market Samurai, I got a list of 200 keywords and the competition for each one.

Looking through the list of keywords, I decided to look for the keywords that had less then 100,000 competing sites that still had a lot of searches each day. Here’s what I found:

• weight loss menus – 325 searches per day – competition of 14,400 sites
• weight loss meal plan – 595 searches per day – competition of 23,400 sites
• weight loss software – 266 searches per day – competition of 26,900 sites
• safe diet pills – 398 searches per day – competition of 45,800 sites
• fastest weight loss – 730 searches per day – competition of 62,300 sites
• rapid weight loss diet – 595 searches per day – competition of 80,600 sites
• weight loss patches – 398 searches per day – competition of 98,600 sites

These are just a few of the keyword phrases that came up, and they show that while there aren’t as many daily searches for these phrases, there is a LOT less competition. And a much better chance for you to use one or more of these key phrases to get traffic to your site.

Weight loss IS a competitive market, but it is also a market where people are spending a lot of money. You can still enter the market using related keywords that don’t have as much competition and will give you a much better chance of getting your web pages ranked well and driving traffic to your site.

Spend your time working with the keywords that you have a chance at ranking well for instead of trying to rank for the keywords that have the most searches. That way, you can still enter any market you’re interested in and start getting the free traffic you’re after.

The tool you use to do your keyword research is important as well. As you’ve already noticed, I use Market Samurai for my keyword research as well as all of the other features such as rank tracker, finding content, publishing content and much more. What you need to know is that the keyword module is ALWAYS free. Once the trial period is over, you can still use the keyword research part of Market Samurai forever. It’s a great tool to make keyword and competition research quick and easy. Get your copy by clicking here.