Keyword research is a fundamental part of SEO.
It allows you to gauge the popularity of topics in your niche, helps you get a deeper understanding of your audience, and enhances your content to a great extent. For that reason, having a reliable keyword research tool is a must if you want to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).
A free AdWords tool for advertisers, the primary use of Keyword Planner is to help advertisers research profitable keywords for PPC campaigns.
But Keyword Planner can also be used effectively as an SEO tool to research organic keywords.
With Google’s Keyword Planner, you can:
Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the best free keyword research tools in the market. Data obtained from this tool can help you create compelling content on a consistent basis.
Price: Free
If you’re aiming to dominate search engines with your content, you’ll need a tool like SEMrush by your side.
SEMrush allows you to:
Serpstat is a powerful SEO and PPC platform which also has a nifty keyword research tool.
Serpstat allows you to quickly find all the common keywords you and your competitors are ranking for. Furthermore, you can uncover new keyword opportunities your competitors are targeting and track positions of your site for the keywords you’d like to rank for in SERPs.
With Serpstat, you can do the following:
It allows you to gauge the popularity of topics in your niche, helps you get a deeper understanding of your audience, and enhances your content to a great extent. For that reason, having a reliable keyword research tool is a must if you want to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Google’s Keyword Planner
A free AdWords tool for advertisers, the primary use of Keyword Planner is to help advertisers research profitable keywords for PPC campaigns.
But Keyword Planner can also be used effectively as an SEO tool to research organic keywords.
With Google’s Keyword Planner, you can:
- Search for new keywords
- Get traffic forecasts for keywords (predicted clicks and estimated conversions)
- Get search volume for a list of keywords
- See how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together.
Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the best free keyword research tools in the market. Data obtained from this tool can help you create compelling content on a consistent basis.
Price: Free
SEMrush
If you’re aiming to dominate search engines with your content, you’ll need a tool like SEMrush by your side.
SEMrush allows you to:
- Perform In-depth Organic Research – Gather key information like search volume, new organic competitors, competitors’ best keywords, position changes of domains in organic search results, etc.
- Find Related Keywords and Phrase Matches – SEMrush also analyzes the common keywords found on the top 100 domains for a search term on Google and Bing. These related keywords come with synonyms and other suggested variations.
- Research Long Tail Keywords – Keywords with the highest search volumes tend to have the fiercest competition. As such, it’s always wise to aim for long-tail keywords as the competition is significantly low, helping you rank high in SERPs much faster. SEMrush collects all keywords that have a search volume of at least ten queries per year.
- Analyze Keyword Difficulty – Targeting difficult keywords with the highest competition is not always the best idea. The SEMrush Keyword Difficulty tool helps you determine keywords’ difficulties. By indicating a particular keyword’s percentage of difficulty, this tool helps you estimate how easy it would be to seize your competitors’ organic positions in the SERPs.
Price: Starts from $99.95/month
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is an all-inclusive cloud-based SEO software which includes a powerful keyword suggestion/research tool that you can use to obtain a fantastic set of short tail and long tail keywords.
Not just that, but you can drill down to detailed statistics on the selected keywords: monthly search volume, KEI (keyword effectiveness index), competition, suggestion bid, etc.
Just enter your seed keyword into the search box and SE Ranking will fetch the following data:
- Search Volume
- Click Cost Assessment (CPC Cost)
- Traffic Cost Assessment
- AdWords Competition
- Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)
- Websites in SERPs (Top 5 Google SERPs)
- Advertisers
- Similar Keywords
- Most Popular Keywords Ads
Price: Starts from $4.20/month (billed annually)
Serpstat
Serpstat allows you to quickly find all the common keywords you and your competitors are ranking for. Furthermore, you can uncover new keyword opportunities your competitors are targeting and track positions of your site for the keywords you’d like to rank for in SERPs.
With Serpstat, you can do the following:
- Competitors’ Keyword Map – Find out what pages of your competitors’ sites rank for which keywords and on what positions.
- Cluster Research – Discover all search terms and phrases that are semantically connected to the queried keyword.
- Insights on Search Questions – Research niche questions and find ideas for creating traffic-driving content.
- Positions – Check your site’s rank distribution on search engines (top 10, top 20, etc.)
- SERP Analysis – Shows you top 100 Google results in organic and paid search for the keyword.
Price: Free (30 searches/month); Pricing starts from $19/month
Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool uses Google Autocomplete data to create its database of long tail keyword suggestions.
Since Google’s Keyword Planner is primarily a PPC research tool used for AdWords, a few experts believe Google hides valuable, lucrative keywords that you can discover via Keyword Tool.
This tool is free for the first 750+ keyword suggestions. You’ll need to sign up for the pro version to see data such as search volume, CPC, competition, etc.
Price: Free (for the first 750+ keyword suggestions); Pricing for pro plans starts from $48/month
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a tool primarily known for checking and analyzing backlinks. But Ahrefs also has a powerful tool called Keywords Explorer (now called Keywords Explorer 2.0) which has a database of over 3 billion keywords, helping you generate tons of keyword ideas, analyze keyword difficulty, and much more.
With Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer 2.0, you can do the following:
- Discover new keyword ideas – With the latest update, Ahrefs provides you with massive amounts of keyword ideas, including phrase match, having same terms, search suggestions, and more.
- “Clicks” metric – In addition to search volume for keywords, you also get to see clickstream data, allowing you to calculate search volumes more accurately.
- Keyword Lists – Once you come across some new keyword ideas, you can now save them into a list for future reference. A huge time saver if you’re doing keyword research for multiple projects.
- Keyword Difficulty Score – Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty (KD) score is an estimation of how hard it would be to rank on the 1st page of Google organic search for a given keyword. It is measured on a scale of 1 to 100 (low difficulty to high difficulty).
- SERP overview & Positions History — Ahrefs’ new SERP overview report brings all the core SEO metrics together to help you make educated decisions about the actual difficulty of a given SERP.
Price: Starts from $99/month