Explore 9 Effective Keyword Research Tools
People need to come across your website on organic searches, but if they don’t then you will miss on traffic, leads and conversions. The best way to resolve this dilemma is to use a keyword research tool.
Why use a keyword research tool?
Keywords are essential for receiving organic traffic from the search engine result pages. Searchers will find your URL only if Google believes it is relevant to the search intent. Keywords are crucial algorithms for search engines to understand the webpage content and rank it accordingly. Therefore, using keywords that searchers use in your content will influence Google ranking and people can find you.
Using the right keywords in your term increases your website’s search engine visibility, ranking, and organic traffic. Keyword research tools are designed to help users reinforce their content marketing strategy.
Keyword research identifies where your target consumers are in their journey. Generally, a person seeking ‘how to do’ is on the hunt for information. On the other hand, a searcher who types ‘where to buy’ is searching for brands to purchase. This data can be used to create relevant content, which influences the consumer to make an informed buying decision and convert.
In brief, keyword research identifies the most significant keywords suitable to your website’s objectives. If done rightly, it offers direction as to what to optimise for consideration, awareness, or conversion.
Let's Explore The 9 Best Keyword Research Tools
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is an ecosystem of multiple keyword research tools combined to create a unified keyword research workflow. SEMrush database has 23+ billion keywords in its 140+ international databases. Some crucial research tools the platform offers:
- Keyword overview – Supercharge your online marketing strategy with the best organic and advertising value keywords based on intent, search value, difficulty, competition level, search volume, variations, and more.
- Keyword magic tool – With a single seed keyword generate hundreds of keyword combinations.
- Keyword gap – Find new opportunities and launch a successful SEO campaign.
- Keyword manager – Create a potent master list suitable to your SEO goals and strategies including real-time metrics of up to 1,000 keywords at the same time. Share the research results with clients and the team.
- Organic research – Discover new ways to find profitable keywords.
- Organic traffic insights – SEMrush is integrated with Google Analytics, so leverage it to find keywords not provided and perform the cross-check for website performance.
With a free account, users can make 10 queries daily including keyword analytics and domain queries. Start with free as a trial then upgrade to Pro and gain access to an entire SEO toolset.
2. Google Trends
It is good for identifying the keyword’s evergreen value. You can get to know the latest yet popular keywords still not showing volume within keyword tool databases because they are current. Use Google Trends to ensure that the keyword volume is solid in the tool, which means it is worth targeting.
Sometimes you can get across keywords that are generally growing popular but show low competition and volume. You can grab the opportunity to target those keywords to rank and generate traffic, authority, and backlinks before tough competition strikes.
On top of that, it is also a FREE tool!
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is suggested to be similar to a bloodhound with content research. It was designed for backlink analysis and still has the largest backlink directory in the world. For link building, it is the best tool. You can check when a link went live or whether it is a no-follow or do-follow kind, its anchor text, etc.
Check any website’s ranking history for any term, phrase, or keyword as well as analyse & monitor outbound links, automate internal linking, see which links perform better, and identify backlink prospects and link opportunities.
Unique click metric is its distinguishing feature. You can see the search result volume in clicks, average click number per search, how often the same keyword is used in 30 days to search, and click distribution between organic & paid results.
Ahrefs offers a one-week trial for $7 and if you find it suitable pay $99 per month.
4. Surfer SEO
It is a tool for content optimization. It analyses the content of a webpage against more than 500 on-page signals. Surfer SEO can be used to analyse the first page SERP for the target keyword in your blog post. First-page results have been ranked for a reason. Its main feature is the SERP analyser, which offers detailed data breakdowns like keyword density & frequency, hidden content, average word count, page speed, alt text, partial match keywords use, character count in title tags, and more.
Some unique data like how many words are above the fold, the H2 heading number on every page, or how many links the first-page result inclines are interesting, exclusive, and useful.
Content editor allows outlining and writing optimised content for search engines. It scans content for LSI keywords, which can be weaved within the content. The content structure for the first-page result is also analysed including image number, word count, and paragraph count.
It has a keyword research tool that functions like most other keyword tools. It differs in a single feature – SERP similarity. You can see how much overlap there is with keywords typed in the tool, especially the long-tail keywords. It tells you to create different pages for each overlapping long-tail keyword.
5. SE Ranking
SE ranking has a keyword rank tracker, which allows you to know if your site will be visible in search results. The keyword suggestion tool helps to analyse keywords thoroughly, assess keyword competition, and find new opportunities. Analyze core parameters like search volume, difficulty score, paid & CPC competition, and more.
SERP checker helps in competitor analysis. It is crucial to outrank organic leaders by getting an insight into their SEO strategy. Keep track of on and off-page metrics and discover the volume of traffic you can direct with selected keywords.
6. Google Keyword Planner
Enter a single or multiple keywords in the search box to gain an insight into 30-day search trends, average monthly searches, 3-month & year to year changes, and competition level. Refine keyword tool helps to filter by different keyword attributes.
You even get to see what marketers have factually bid and paid for a specific top-page keyword. If you are actively advertising, then your ad impression share associated with that specific keyword/s will be seen.
You can add filters and date ranges to see the highest bid on the most popular keyword. The Grouped ideas tab is worth exploring as you get to see broad topic groups, which helps create content. The tool is also FREE!
7. Ubersuggest
You can filter keyword suggestions based on the question, comparison, and preposition variations. It even offers data analysis about SERP, website, and core keywords. Its comments like – ‘The average URL that got listed in the top 5 for this KW has XYZ backlinks and domain score XYZ is useful. Its content ideas feature reveals the pages that are well-performing for specific keywords along with Pinterest and Facebook shares.
The free version has its limitations. You can choose a free 7-day trial plan and then upgrade at $29 per month.
8. AnswerThePublic
It is one of the fast SEO keyword research tools available under a free and paid plan. Today, people do more voice searches from a smartphone. It means the searches are in question format instead of the keyword phrase they type. AnswerThePublic helps to find such questions, which will help you optimise content and increase organic traffic.
The keyword suggestion tool offers a chance to get creative ideas that can add value to existing content. You can always find a new angle by asking questions and finding the best keyword and topic to cover. You can start with a free plan and then upgrade to a pro plan at $99 p/m.
9. Moz Keyword Explorer
The tool is for basic keyword data including rank monitoring, page optimisation, and site audits. A priority score is offered to help find whether a specific keyword is valuable based on your ‘My Score’ and keyword data. My Score is the ranking you determined about keyword relevancy to your business.
It is a good platform for beginners or those looking for a less crushing yet more spontaneous platform. The tool is free up to 10 searches in a month and paid version is for $99.
Keyword research is a crucial part of a good SEO strategy. Google is always updating its algorithm, so it is not suitable to depend on data scanned exclusively from Google’s SEO toolkit.
There are lots of paid, totally free or limited free, or trial-free keyword research tools available for creating an effective SEO campaign. Paid tools offer a lot of useful features easy to identify keyword gaps and opportunities. Free tools are also insightful without the hefty price tag, but have their limitations.
The 9 unique keyword research tools mentioned above can help beginners, intermediaries, or experts in creating a solid content marketing strategy.
