Software Type: Web Based
Cost: $1.00

The original NicheBOT keyword research tool was one of the best free keyword research tools around. This old classic was first pushed aside for the premium NicheBOT v2. And since my review of v2, there have been more improvements, upgrades and a new release - NicheBOT X (the “X” stands for extreme).

It seems that NicheBOT even listened to my feedback because all the features I requested in my review have been included. How's that for a company listening to customer feedback!

So, just how extreme is NicheBOT X?

My Experience
After doing keyword research for a long time, people tend to develop and refine certain procedures to get the best results in the minimum amount of time. I’ve certainly got my own methodology which has several procedure pathways depending upon what I’m trying to dig out.

For example, the way that I research for pay per click (PPC) is quite different to how I research profitable new niches. Perhaps I'll share these different procedures with you some day.

Regardless of the style of keyword research I’m doing, I loosely follow a basic procedure. This work-flow can be crudely explained as:

• I poke around a bit
• I assess difficulty
• I assess profitability
• I go “lateral”
• I blow it up
• I clean up the mess.

Now each of these steps will be executed slightly differently depending on the outcomes I’m trying to achieve, but that’s my basic work-flow. Before NicheBOT v2, there weren’t many tools that allowed me to work with much continuity. Now, with NicheBOT X, things are smoother than ever.

Going with the grain instead of against it
I loved NicheBOT v2 from the outset, but it wasn't perfect. It fitted my keyword research style like a glove, but I found the interface to be messy (especially at first glance). Things have been cleaned up in NicheBOT X with a new interface that even allows you to switch between PRO Mode and Easy Mode. Both modes have their advantages, so you can change the view to suit your own style.

There’s a quick Tool comparison matrix that allows you to understand the limitations of each tool too, so you can quickly choose the right tool for your project from the drop-down menu. There's also a 5-step process outline that's logical and even has help bubbles to guide you through.

Another Version 2 gripe I didn't hide was the fact it lacked keyword management and pricing data for AdSense and heavy duty PPC. This has all been addressed and improved too; NicheBOT X now has the ability to grab Pay-Per-Click data directly from Google and Enhance.

Where NicheBOT v2 just "felt right", NicheBOT X is perhaps the "most right" of any of the 25+ keyword research tools I have spent time with. Finally a tool that is going with the grain instead of against it.

So let me give you a quick tour. You can give the system a run yourself for 14 days for a lazy buck here.

Getting started
When I first logged into the NicheBOT v2 my inner monologue said “Whoa! Steady on guys! It feels like I just walked into a room and everyone started talking to me at once. This page is busy!” When I login to version X however, I'm greeted by an introduction video with Jim Morris (founder of NicheBOT) explaining what steps I should take.

So first I download the NicheBOT Quickstart Guide. This explains step-by-step how to get started with some keen insights for the newbie. Once I got my head around it, it's research time.

Straight away I have the choice to continue with the Pro Mode Interface or switch to the Easy Mode interface (a cleaner, less-overwhelming option). I can easily switch between interfaces at anytime.

NicheBOT X clearly lays out their 5 step format, so this is easy to follow. As you do, see how the different sections match my keyword research style. It's worth noting whether it will matche your style too.

Step 1 – Create a project folder to organize my Keyword Research Through the keyword basket I create project folders to store and organize my research. That was easy - next step.

Step 2 - Quick Digging
You can use a whole bunch of free tools here to poke around and research different keywords, all aiming to identify core keywords for deeper digging. These tools won’t cost you any of your premium credits and include:

    * Keyword Discovery Keywords (Top 10)
    * WordTracker Keywords (Top 15)
    * WordTracker Thesaurus (Top 15)

So I input my keyword "fly fishing" and NicheBOT X returns me a bunch of keywords that I want to further research - fly fishing alaska, fly fishing equipment, alaska fly fishing trip, and so on.

Step 3 - Deep Digging
Normally when I'm keyword researching, I like to bring my lists down to a small group of keywords I call my seed group. These are the result of my initial “poking around”, difficulty and profitability analysis, as well as my lateral research. It’s at this point I try to “blow up” my keyword lists.

NicheBOT X does this perfectly by tapping into the WordTracker database. I expand my list to 500 keyword phrases per root keyword, and then drop my root keyword phrases and merge keyword lists together. Then using the power of sorting and filtering, I can find exactly what I'm looking for.

If you're not totally satisfied at this point, you can enter a root keyword phrase and this tool will find the top 10 Google results and retrieve the keywords from them. Better yet, the results are sorted into themes that you can then use to create LSI articles, and break your site up into main categories according to Google's methodology.

Google Keyword Cruncher digs deep - up to 15,000 keywords per root keyword phrase. So by using it you'll harvest keywords from the most powerful and popular search engine on the planet. This helps to uncover long tail phrases and seasonal keywords. No other keyword database can speak for Google, but NicheBOT X allows you to tap into the big G.

Checking out competition is always important. And NicheBOT X gives me the power to extract keywords from the top 30 websites that rank for them. So here I enter a URL and in 5 – 10 minutes I’ll have all the keywords for the top 30 sites in my keyword basket. Now I can see if I’ve missed any keywords that are proven to return results through Google.

Step 4 - Keyword Cleaning and Management
When you blow your keyword lists up to this size, you need a healthy way to manage and clean up your keyword lists. Here NicheBOT X has advanced a lot from Version 2. These are the cleaning features that have been updated since my Version 2 review:

1. Project Management Folders – you can easily setup a folder to organize multiple projects or various sub-tasks. This allows you to keep your Main Folder clutter-free and easily locate projects and even break down more complex tasks so they are easy to find.
2. Merging – easily merge multiple keyword searches into one keyword list that allows you to easily manipulate the list with the proceeding functions.
3. Sorting – after you have merged a number of lists and now have one major list of keywords, you can sort your keywords by various columns such as Keyword (alphabetical), Search Volume/Count, Competition, KEI, Ratio.
4. Filtering – once begin to notice the difficulty level of the keywords, you can then begin to pare down your list of keywords with NicheBOT's Instant Keyword Filtering that allows you to set a criteria of what keywords you wish to see. You can set a minimum and maximum for Search Count, Competition, KEI, Ratio, Search Phrase Length, which positive keywords you wish to see and which negative keywords you wish to hide from the list. This feature alone is so powerful – it can boil a list of 5,000 keywords down to the bare essence of a few hundred of your most important keywords.
5. Move Keywords – project management is made completely flexible with the ability to transfer keyword data from folder to folder.
6. All-In-One Custom Export – NicheBOT X allows you to completely customize the way you export your data in either a text (.TXT) file or an Excel spreadsheet (.CSV) format. You can choose in the options to include whatever data columns you wish (in CSV only), including heading titles, and even choose which column to sort the data alphabetical order – A to Z or Z to A or by ascending or descending by whatever numerical column you wish.
7. Powerful Keyword List Processor – If the Instant Keyword Filtering doesn’t do the trick for you inside the keyword reporting view, you can splice and dice your keyword list with the Keyword List Processor. You can re-duplicate, remove multiple spaces between keyword phrases, adult filter, alter the case of keyword phrases, powerful find and replace, remove unwanted characters, keep only certain characters, keep phrases of certain lengths, appending text before and after keywords, AdWords campaign style export with quotes, brackets or all three ways, and sorting. This thing is truly powerful.

NicheBOT X hits the nail on the head for keyword cleaning. And a big "congratulations" is in order for their customer feedback - every feature I suggested in my review of NicheBOT v2 had been added and then some! I guess that’s why Jim calls this Version X for extreme. :)

Step 5 - Keyword Analysis or Assessing difficulty Now my "fly fishing" keywords are in my investigative basket, so I'll run a bunch of checks to assess their competition using the Keyword Analysis tool. This tool allows me to switch between multiple search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to assess competition on all three of the big search engines.

Now I have some really important data on my fly fishing keyword results, including:

• Volume
• Google Competition - using checks to see how many pages contained that term in four different manners (a) title tag (b) title and anchor text (c) anchor text or (d) exact phrase match.
• KEI
• Ratio
• Analysis
• Save Results to recall later - Now I will just stop for a second here to explain this neat feature. For every keyword, you can hit this analyze button. NicheBOT X goes out and grabs the top 10 sites (can be up to 100) on Google for that phrase, and sees how tough they would be to crack SEO wise. For each of those top 10 URLs it looks at the backlinks, the number of indexed pages and the page rank. Nice!
  
  And if I want to also grab the Alexa data to see the traffic and contact information for each site (where available), I can also do that by spending a tenth of a credit (.1) for each site.
• Get WordTrend Comparisons - This is a great feature if you wish to see the kinds of seasonal trends of your chosen keywords for the largest search engine on the planet -- Google.
  
  As you are looking through your saved keyword searches, you quickly click one link and get a quick WordTrend graph to see if there is a current trend on Google for the keyword of your choice.
  
  Or, you can choose multiple keywords (up to 5) and create a WordTrend Comparison chart that allows you to measure the trends of multiple keywords against each other.
  
  What a great way to verify the true popularity of a keyword when pulled from smaller databases and see what the behemoth Google has to say about the trend of a keyword being search on Google.com

Oh – and did I mention – this service is free as part of your subscription and doesn't cost any Premium Credits?

Using these free tools I was also able to find myself lots of related lateral keywords to add into the mix and get ready for the next phase.

NicheBOTLive Call-in Show
NicheBOT offers a lot in the way of customer support - 50 Training Videos, the Quickstart Guide, and online customer support. But it seems that wasn't quite enough for Jim; now he's available to personally help you.

Yes – that’s right! Jim is devoting 1-3 hours answering all of your questions about anything from keyword research, site critiques, the strategies he uses, marketing tips, email marketing tips, optin landing page tips, site construction, you name it. His standard charge is $500 per hour for individual assistance, but now it all comes bundled as the Avid Keyword Researcher account.

The verdict
The verdict? The verdict is I love it! If you do any keyword research at all, you must at least try this service. It only costs 1 buck to get your feet wet. Just make sure that you set aside at least 30 minutes to get your head around how it all hangs together so you can get the full picture of the power of NicheBOT X.

Summary
A keyword research tool that makes sense as it closely follows how users conduct their research. Ability to expand your lists to up to 15,000 words per seed keyword.

Recommended. Go get it!

Strong Aspects

• Design matches solid keyword research methodology
• A variety of tools pulling from several different data sources
• Ability to expand your lists dramatically
• Strong keyword cleaning functionality

Who is it ideal for?
This tool would suit almost anyone who does any kind of keyword research, event PPC and AdSense focused users.

Check Out NicheBOT X Now!