Online Tools for Working with Words

Online tools for working with words

The following is from an email that I received from Internet Marketing expert Perry Marshall.
If you are picking words for your webpages or writing marketing copy you can find these tools very helpful. Marketing is more about words than about logos and images.

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First, I always liked the idea of a thesaurus but when I'm actually trying to write something, somehow I don't find most of them the least bit helpful. But here's an online tool I just love:

http://visualthesaurus.com - Generates visual trees of related keywords, sort of like a mind map. You type in a term and rich word trees spring up. Then you can click on the next word and the next word and the tree continues to morph. I just sent the latest Renaissance Club newsletter to the printer and I think I used it six or seven times to find just the perfect word. There's a free demo and a yearly membership is a paltry $20. Give it a whirl.

Spy Intelligence: Sometimes it's quite useful to have an idea of what your competitors are doing on Pay Per Click, what keywords they're bidding on, what they're spending, stuff like that. Disclaimer: Neither of these tools provides a completely accurate picture but they're both very useful:

http://spyfoo.com/ - Gives you a list of major keywords your competition is bidding on, an estimate of their daily budget, data about their organic listings, average bid position, and how many competitors they have. Rather insightful.

http://www.googspy.com/ - A related technology, but presented in a different way. The keyword list it generates is incomplete but quite helpful.

http://www.lexfn.com/ - Type in a word and it gives you related terms and concepts.

http://buzz.yahoo.com/ - Following pop culture to see what's hot this week? This is a great place to do it, 'cuz the clicks always tell a story. I don't know that this is terribly useful for keyword research per se (unless you have a very deliberate strategy that plays on celebs & stuff like that) but it certainly gives you topic ideas that you can tie into newsletters, rants, etc.

The equivalent tool on Google is called Zeitgeist:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Google's Keyword Suggest - http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en - as you type a search term, Google suggests related words.

Have fun with this stuff.
Perry Marshall
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Here's a great tool for writing killer headlines - because headlines are the welcome mat for your website or marketing copy.
Headline Creator Pro


George Torok

Personal Marketing

Marketing Speaker for conferences and corporate meetings