Let’s talk about free keyword research tools. Never used a keyword research tool before? I’ll assume that’s the case. This is a basic guide on the top free keyword research tools available for 2019, laid out in a way that should answer your questions and guide you to the best free keyword research tool best suited to your needs.
I am writing this post because I need some tools to make my life easier for keyword research. I had been searching on the internet for a few days but still couldn’t find many free tools of high quality. I am not sure if all of you had similar problems as me, but I think not.
Best free Keyword Research Tool 2021
WordStream’s Keyword Tool (free)
Ahhh yes… Of course I could never forget WordStream’s very own keyword tool for both SEO and PPC keyword research.
The WordStream keyword tool allows you to target certain niches (groups of related keywords), gives you further suggestions, and also allows you to group them based off of a common theme for easy ad group launches.
This keyword research tool gives you 30 searches for free, after that you’ll have to sign up for their WordStream Advisor to use it additionally.
Google Trends
Google Trends visualizes the relative search popularity of a keyword over time.
For example, if we look at the term “costumes” for the past five years, we see that popularity spikes every October.
This is because of Halloween.
But how is this useful for keyword research?
For starters, it can help you plan your content calendar. Let’s assume you sell costumes online. Publishing or republishing a list of the “10 Scariest Halloween Costumes for 20XX” each September/October makes perfect sense.
Here’s a less obvious example:
Interest in “iPhone specs” peaks every September when Apple launches a new iPhone.
If you run a tech blog, it would make sense to update and republish any related posts every September.
Going beyond content calendars, Trends can also help avoid targeting the wrong keywords.
Take a look at these two:
If you could only create content for one of these keywords, which would you choose? It’d be the one with the highest search volume, right?
Not so fast, because search volumes are averages taken across many months or years.
If we check data for the past 12 months only in Google Trends, we see that searches for “apple watch series 5” recently overtook those for “apple watch series 3.”
So if you were running an ecommerce store and had to prioritize one of these keywords, it would almost certainly be “apple watch series 5.”
After all, searches for the Series 3 are only going to decrease as time goes on.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest provides a wealth of information with its free version. When you enter a search term, it displays the search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and CPC.
Immediately beneath that display, it identifies the number of backlinks you would need to rank on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase.
As you scroll down, you can view lists of keyword ideas and page content ideas.
The list of page content ideas displays related blog titles. At a glance, you can see how many people click on and share each article. You can export most of your data reports to CSV to save and sort. Ubersuggest provides a free Chrome extension to see data right on the SERP easily.
The free version limits your use to a single website and 3 keyword searches per day.
Most keyword tools focus on Google and other search engines. However, platforms like YouTube, Amazon, eBay, and Etsy have their own algorithms.
For e-commerce stores or sellers whose goals reach beyond ranking on Google and other search engines, tools like Keyword Tool Dominator and Soovle help you target the platforms you are using.
Soovle
Soovle is great for e-commerce websites or marketers using multiple channels. It helps you find popular keywords across several megasites, including Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, and eBay.
Soovle works as a keyword research tool and a keyword generator. As you type in your target terms, it autogenerates phrases to help you expand your ideas.
Soovle includes unlimited searches for free. On the downside, it is limited to an idea generator and does not include metrics like keyword difficulty or search volume.
Keyword Tool Dominator
Keyword Tool Dominator helps you identify search trends as they happen. It brings you the autocomplete databases from Google, YouTube, Amazon, Walmart, Bing, Etsy, and eBay to uncover up-to-date keywords and search terms.
It’s an outstanding resource for sellers and multichannel marketers who want to rank on more than Google or the other search engines.
The downside of this fast and easy-to-use tool is the free version limits you to 2 searches a day. For more queries, you’ll need to pay for a plan.
Keyword Generator
Keyword Generator finds up to 150 keyword ideas for any seed keyword.
For example, if we search for “bitcoin,” we get one hundred keyword ideas containing that word along with their estimated monthly search volumes.
We also see a list of 50 question-type queries.
For the first ten keywords on each list, we also show the Keyword Difficulty (KD) score. This is a number between 0–100 that estimates ranking difficulty. Generally speaking, the higher it is, the more backlinks you’ll need to rank.SIDENOTE. Keyword Difficulty (KD) doesn’t take anything else into account besides backlinks. It’s important to take content quality, search intent, and website authority into account when assessing ranking difficulty. Learn more in this post.
Note that search volumes and KD scores are relative to the chosen country, which is the United States by default.
If you’re looking to rank elsewhere, just choose from one of the 170+ countries from the dropdown.
You can also use the Keyword Generator to find keyword ideas for Bing, YouTube, and Amazon. Just switch the search engine at the top of the page.
AnswerThePublic
This is a great tool for discovering phrases you might not have thought of or have forgotten.
AnswerThePublic has a free version of their tool, and with it, they allow you to see visualizations of questions and phrases asked around a particular root keyword. The related phrases are fantastic for research and ideation. Note that you have to pay for the Pro version to get regional information for each root keyword. Let’s look at how the tool works. They break the info down into related questions, prepositions, queries by alphabetical order, and related searches.
Google’s “People Also Ask”
If you are searching for questions people are asking, Google is a great resource. If you enter a query with your keyword, often a section displays called “People also ask”. It looks like this:
Here you will see popular keyword queries related to your keyword that people have searched for on Google. The more “People also ask” entries you click, the longer the list will become. You can keep clicking selections until you have an extensive list of related questions.
Also Asked
Also Asked was created to help marketers understand how questions are topically grouped. These questions can help with keywords and related keywords, and also give you a direction on what questions to answer in content.
Here are a couple of the questions that came back for the query “SEO”:
- Does SEO work anymore?
- Why is SEO so expensive?
- Can you pay Google for SEO?
If you are writing about SEO services, reviewing all of these questions could help you determine which phrases to focus on and what questions to answer in your content.
What to look for in a great free keyword tool
In keyword research, you go through stages to understand what keyword searches your audience performs and how to use them. Keyword tools will be useful for discovery, categorization, and keyword list building. Let’s look at some of the things we look for in a great keyword analysis tool.
1. Discovery
Keyword research requires you to step back and think. It’s not all about the data, it’s also about the imagination. Some tools help you get perspective by adding a few data layers and questions you may not have considered.
2. Metrics
In keyword research, you must understand not only what the right keywords are, but their frequency, the traffic they drive, how difficult they are to rank, and the cost to buy advertising to appear on them. These free tools sometimes impose limits and reserve that data for paid versions.
3. Keyword difficulty
How difficult it is to rank for a keyword depends on the CPC (cost per click) in paid search and on a number of SEO factors, such as the number of sites that rank, the strength of backlinks profiles, and the strength of domains. Tools that provide an indication of the difficulty to rank in SEO provide added value as they allow you to pick easier wins.
4. Diversity and geography
It’s much easier for a tool to provide the best English language keywords for the U.S. market via Google and Bing than provide those keywords across multiple markets and languages from sources outside traditional search. Some tools plug into sources such as Amazon, YouTube, and international search engines like Yandex and Baidu.
Conclusion
There are many tools that can assist you in finding the best free keyword research tool.
When choosing the best free keyword research tool , you need to put some thought into it. You don’t want to just jump onto the first site that gives you what you need. You want the most accurate information, because this information will help determine your SEO strategy for your website.
Tools play a big part in keyword research. In the past, most people have relied on paid tools to find the best performing keywords. However, nowadays there are many outstanding free keyword research tools that can be used.