Tools to determine target keywords are well-established. But new tools - see Market Potential / Market Demand Tools - provide a lot more analysis of market potential or customer demand for products than the established software/systems. Many of these query the excellent Google research database available direct from Google as the Googlr Keyword Tool or Google Insights for Search.
For ideas on using these analysis tools - see this series on Keyphrase analysis by James Gurd.
Most popular keyphrase analysis tools
The best known and longest established keyword tools are:
Market Potential / Market Demand Tools
These are the newcomers to the field and often offer more sophistication in estimating the customer demand in terms of volume and types of searches.
- Market Samurai Integrates data from several sources including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! to find out potential market size. Impressive.
- Keyword Examiner Windows-only Tool using Google Keywords database. Useful in that finds true competition based on quotes, title, backlinks.
- Hitwise is powerful for its keyphrase analysis and competitor benchmarking tools. It's use is restricted to larger organisations, but I have found that agency/consultant access can be arranged as I have done on several occasions.
Keyphrase behaviour visualisation
- Wordstream Another new tool for Keyphrase analysis brought to my attention by Bill Hunt. I'm not clear what it's differentiating features are?
Rank tracking tools for SEO
Other Google Tools
Google has a series of other tools which show seasonality in demand. Market Samurai uses many of these: