I had a little fun last week. I made homemade truffles for the Fourth of July. In the past I’ve always hand rolled them, then coated them in chocolate, but this time I tried something new. I used chocolate molds. So much easier, even though it was my first time making molded filled chocolates. The right tool made the work much simpler, as well as faster. The resulting truffles looked better too.

The same goes when you’re running your home business. Get the right tools for the job, and you can work more quickly and get better results.

Don’t pick just any tool, of course. For my truffles, I had to pick molds which were deep enough but not too deep. I had to like the looks too. I found some brain shape molds which were tempting for sheer silliness, but far too large or small for my truffles. Think similarly about the tools you choose for your home business. They have to be right for the job.

First consider what it is you want to speed up. I’ll use keyword research as an example here, as Market Samurai is a favorite tool of mine, and it’s a huge help with keyword research, as well as in other areas.

There are a few factors to consider, such as price, features and support. I like all of these on Market Samurai. It saves me a lot of time on keyword research. They keep it updated too, as the tools they use to bring you the information change over time. I don’t use it as much as I should, but when I do, there are always great keywords to consider for my websites.

Perhaps that’s what you need, perhaps it isn’t. It’s worth a look.

A tool to manage your social media marketing is also a good plan, within reason. You don’t want to overdo the automation with social media, but a certain amount can be reasonable. I’ve used HootSuite for a long time now, for example. It lets me schedule tweets and manage multiple accounts. Plus it’s online, rather than downloaded, and has both free and paid versions. Hootsuite is also available as an app for various devices as well.

Be careful that you don’t choose tools that will do more harm than good. If you look at the changes made in Google’s Penguin update, they significantly target unnatural link building techniques. You don’t want tools that will make it too easy to build up low quality links, at least not if you’re looking at the long term with your website.

Also don’t use tools that fill your site up with content regardless of quality. Content is important, but it must be interesting to your visitors. Don’t use a junky content spinning program to fill up your site with every possible keyword variation. Don’t pull content from all over the place. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s generally not a good idea. Consider the long term costs and benefits, not just the quick and easy issues.

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One of my favorite research tools is Market Samurai. It’s more than a keyword research tool, although it does that quite well. It helps you find ways to monetize those keywords and promote your website too. For now, let’s start by learning how to find keywords using Market Samurai.

You don’t have to buy Market Samurai. They offer a free trial. Download that and do some heavy keyword research before you decide if you want to purchase it. I’m an affiliate, but I’m also a happy user of Market Samurai. The purchase was worth it and continues to be worth it for me, but using the free download first helped me to know that for certain.

Step 1: Start a project and enter your initial keyword.

To start researching keywords, you simply type it into the keyword space for your project. You can set up a new project for each keyword or have multiple keywords in a project. Don’t jumble up your projects with unrelated keywords. Keep them separate. It’s not that hard to switch from project to project when you’re ready to switch gears.

Step 2: Generate keywords.

The keyword generator is very easy to use. You can add in related keywords if you like, but it will come up with plenty for you. You’re best off if you have a Google Keyword Tool account, as this will allow you to generate more keywords. You can include permutations of your keywords, add positive keywords which must be included, or negative keywords for words you absolutely aren’t interested in.

Click on “Generate Keywords,” and it will give you up to 800 keywords for analysis if you signed in with your Google account, fewer if you didn’t.

Step 3: Analyze keywords.

The basics of this are quite simple. Click the button to go to the keyword analysis screen, and tell it to analyze them. This can take several minutes. I usually work on something as it runs, then check on it. There’s a lot of data to be retrieved, depending on the factors you want to look at.

The keyword analyzer doesn’t just tell you about searches and competition, although those are valuable information. It can give you estimates as to the value of the keyword. These are just estimate, of course, and what you earn from any keyword is up to you and your ability to monetize it.

You can choose whether to look at broad, phrase or exact match searches. There’s a certain value to each type of searching. Broad can be misleading and exact gives more precise information. Just look at this example when I switch from broad to exact on the phrase “work at home.”

Broad match for work at home: 49,315 searches daily

Exact match for work at home: 1,989 searches daily

Some columns you have to make a little extra effort to get the data. It’s not Market Samurai’s fault, but it can be a bit of a pain if you’re looking at a lot of keywords. SEOTC (competition for the page title) and SEOTCR (a score that can indicate the level of competition for a keyword) must be obtained by a click for each individual keyword. Fortunately, a click on one generates the other, as they’re related. It didn’t use to be this way, but the data is no longer so readily available that it can be grabbed at the same rate as the rest.

Step 4: Choose your keywords.

People have different opinions on how you should choose the keywords you focus on once you have the data. In part, this depends on your goal for the keywords you choose. If you’re trying to sell a product, for example, you want good numbers in the Commerciality column. It’s nice to have good numbers there other times too, but this may not be your primary goal.

Some people recommend focusing on keywords with less than 1000 competition in the SEOTC column, which is pages with the keyword in the title. These are potentially easier to get high rankings for. Just make sure they get enough searches to be worthwhile.

Absolutely consider the long tail keywords for your niche. Not all of them will have great stats, but the traffic from them adds up over time.

Step 5: Look at what else Market Samurai can do for your online business.

Keyword research isn’t all Market Samurai is good for. I like tracking the rankings of my websites for some of my more important keywords. It’s also nice being able to keep an eye on the competition. It can help you research domain name ideas. I’ve only used the monetization and promotion modules a little, as I already have other ways to do those things that are pretty much habits. I really do need to explore them more, however.

Seriously, if you don’t have a good keyword research tool already, try Market Samurai. That’s what the free trial is there for. While you’re at it, take a look at everything else it can do for your online business.

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