If you want your website to rank well on search engines, it’s important to make keyword research the foundation of your SEO services or content marketing strategy. Choosing the right keywords is critical to successful SEO efforts.
Luckily, there are many keyword research tools available, both paid and free, and they all serve different purposes. It might be overwhelming to figure out which ones work best for your business’s website, so we’re offering up the keyword research tools which have been exceptionally useful for us over the years. These 8 tools will help you efficiently develop keyword lists, understand the value of each keyword, and conduct competitor research.
Google Suggest
Google is a perfect place for keyword research, given its stronghold as the mother of all search engines. When using Google for search, you may have noticed when entering a search query, it auto-suggests words that might come at the end of the phrase you are typing. This can help marketers know what content already exists, as well as the popularity of related searches, which may end up being new keywords if they’re relevant to your business. Not only will Google suggest words at the end of a query, but also in the beginning or middle of your phrase. Just use an underscore in the search query, where the missing word would go. This tool is especially useful for blog topic inspiration, and the best part is that it’s obviously free!
KW Finder
If you’re looking for a long tail keyword research tool to enhance SEO strategy with low-competition words and phrases, look no further than KW Finder. This tool offers search volume data and trends, cost per click (CPC), level of difficulty to rank for a given keyword, and other related keyword suggestions. The best part of KW Finder is that users can click on keyword suggestions and see an extensive list of domains that already target that keyword. KW Finder provides domain backlink data, social data, and traffic data. Additionally, this tool is wonderful for local keyword research because it allows users to target specific cities, states and countries. KW Finder offers free, basic and premium plans.
Keywordtool
Keywordtool, similar to Google Suggest, generates keywords based on the words and phrases users are searching for on various search engines, including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon and the App Store, which is helpful in finding unique keywords for content creation. If you are unsure about how these keywords can help your strategy, this free tool provides detailed information and tips for each search engine.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a nifty little tool for those struggling to find long tail keywords and topics for blog posts. This free tool offers hundreds of keywords, generated from search engine auto suggestions, using every letter in the alphabet. Each keyword suggestion is accompanied by monthly search volume, CPC and competition score.
Google Related Keywords
Another Google surprise - what is found at the bottom of a search engine results page (SERP)? A list of searches related to the original search query. While this feature was most likely created to help users, it can help marketers even more. This tool provides keyword suggestions based on your original search term. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this fast and free keyword research tool?
Google Keyword Planner
Since Google is the leading search engine, it makes sense to utilize its tools while researching keywords. Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool that is especially great for discovering keyword search volume data and trends. Google’s keyword tool allows users to discover relevant keywords and check out competitors’ keywords, too. Use the “your landing page” field to enter a competitor’s URL and see the keywords that searchers used to arrive at that site. The only catch is that this tool is only available to Google AdWords subscribers.
SEMrush
Instead of entering seed keywords to generate a list of more keywords, SEMrush allows users to enter competitors’ URLs to generate extensive keyword lists outlining their highest-ranking keywords. Although SEMrush is a paid tool, the company does offer a 14 day trial. Regardless, we think this tool is worth every penny. SEMrush helps users dig deep into competitors’ landing pages, highlighting traffic stats, search engine reports, rankings and backlinks. This information is invaluable. Oh, and did we mention that you can conduct a full SEO site audit with this tool? SEMrush constantly rolls out useful, cutting-edge tools to help marketers, and they’ve come out with some preeeeetty cool stuff, such as the recent SEO Keyword Magic Tool.
MOZ Keyword Explorer
MOZ Keyword Explorer is another paid tool that is completely worth the money, but if you aren’t sure about it, try it out for 30 days free. So, what does this tool offer? Like many others, MOZ provides keyword search volume, but also provides data on how difficult it will be to organically rank for a given keyword. Other details include the click-through-rate (CTR) of organic results on SERPs, other keyword suggestions, and a full SERP analysis including competitors’ pages’ domain authority, and social data.
Now that you have a basic understanding of the keyword research tools available, it''''''''s time to pick one or two to get started. If this still seems overwhelming, hiring a professional to help with keyword research and digital strategy can help your business fly to the top of Google. Find out how Hudson can help.