The first step in using Keyword Excavator after installation is to log in. Since this software is on your hosting server having a login requirement is a good idea for security purposes.

After that you're presented with a place to input your keyword phrase and excavate on either Google, Yahoo, MSN live, or using a URL or even copying and pasting the contents of an article. You type in your keyword phrase and then you have an opportunity to select the language and the country typically what I do is select English and the United States as this is my main market. I then click on the button that says, "Dig Me Up Some Keywords!". After that Keyword Excavator goes to work.

The amount of information you will get back is extremely amazing so give the software time to work its magic. The first thing you will see will be the latent semantic analysis summary which shows your key phrase, the language that you chose, the country that you chose, the search engine that you chose, etc.

The table below that then shows you a variety of different information from multiple search engines and also shows you a large number of narrower searches where you start to get into your 3, 4 and 5 word phrases, the Google advertisers for the key phrase with the actual ads they are right in a small window for you to see.

As we move down we have another incredible table to look at. This particular table shows you the top 20 sites for the key phrase that you chose. The table also show you at a glance such useful information as page rank, whether or not the key words are in the URL, whether the keywords are in the domain name or the keywords are in the title, the word count of the homepage, the key phrase count of the homepage, and the key phrase weight on the home page.

In addition to all this information the very next thing you'll see is something extremely useful and that is a series of graphs. The first graph shows the Google page rank on the y-axis and the search engine position on the x-axis. The next graph shows Yahoo back links on the y-axis and the search engine rank or position on the x-axis.

This is very interesting information. I was surprised to see many sites without high page rank in the top 10 sites for my chosen key phrase. The next graph shows the page word count in relation to the search engine position this seems very interesting because you may find a data correlation here and any correlation is information you may be able to use to increase your ranking.

The next graph we see the page keyword count on the y-axis in the search engine position on the x-axis. As we move down the page we see page keyword weight on the y-axis and the search engine position on the x-axis. When they said that a picture is worth a thousand words look at these graphs and you can see at a glance what may or may not make a difference in your rankings. Just being able to see what the top sites all have in common is extremely valuable. There are also additional graphs that provide an even greater level of detail.