13 Best Free Keyword Research Tools For SEO: An Ultimate Guide

Here is a comprehensive guide for you…

In this guide, you will learn:

☛ Fundamentals of Keyword Research
☛ Types of Keywords
☛ Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?
☛ How Do You Make Websites To Link To You?
☛ How to find keyword ideas?
☛ Keyword Research Tools
☛ Key Factors for Choosing Keywords

Fundamentals of Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process that enables you to research mainstream search terms that people enter in the search box of search engines. Further, you use them in your content strategically so that your content appears on top of the search engine results page (SERP).

Suppose, for effective Keyword Research For Local Business, you need to select a topic for your content keeping in mind a set of targeted keywords that would help to rank your content.

Types of keywords

Keywords are split into two categories based on search volume.

a)- Short-Tail Keywords: Such keywords are commonly searched and their conversion rate range from 15 to 20%. They do not have any specific details and contain low word counts. They receive high search traffic, but the conversion rate is low. For instance, “Buy fans” is a short tail keyword.

b)- Long-Tail Keywords: Such keywords have a conversion rate of about 70-80%. They have enormous of specific details and have extensive word counts. The search traffic is less, but contains a higher conversion rate. For example: “Buy fan with light” is a longtail keyword.

You should use different Semantic and Long-Tail Keywords for SEO to target a wide range of audiences. That way, you can boost your chances of securing a customer.

Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?

Keyword research is required to be done in every type of SEO task you perform such as searching content topics, email outreach, on-page SEO, and content promotion.

That’s why keyword research is always the initial step of any SEO campaign.

In other words:

Keywords play a crucial rule in SEO campaigns: they tell you which direction is right for you and whether or not you’re making growth.

As a bonus, performing the effective Keyword Research for SEO improve helps you know who are your target audience. That’s because keyword research provides you with a knowledge of what customers are looking for… and the accurate words or phrases that they use.

How to Find Keyword Ideas?

Keyword research strategies are different for every different type. But, in this blog, we will tell you every type of best practice that can make your way to identify the right keywords for your target audience at the right time.

Let’s dive right in.

a)- Brainstorm a List of Topic Ideas

For instance, you are running a digital marketing agency which is offering SMO, PPC and complete SEO Services India.

Now, you need to ask yourself: ”What are the topics related to my business that people search for?”
A few topics that hit the mind would be like:

• SEO
• PPC
• Social media
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Website traffic

Remember, these are just the relevant topics based on your business and not “keywords”. There are different ways to find Keywords by Industry.

So, now gear up to learn some methods to find keyword ideas based on your search:

b)- Wikipedia Table of Contents

Wikipedia is a keyword research goldmine which is usually overlooked. Where else can you get articles hand-picked by the majority of industry experts… all arranged into neat small categories?

Steps to Use Wikipedia for content ideas:

1. Visit Wikipedia page and type in a broad keywords word:

That will direct you to the Wikipedia page of ‘Tea’.

2. Now, check out the “contents” section of the page. Here, you will find the list of subtopics covered on that page. And a few of the subtopics listed here can be considered as the best keywords important for SEO such as tea culture, tea bags, instant tea etc. that would be hard to find any other way:

c)- Searches Related To

Another ideal way to find keyword ideas is to look for the “Searches Related to” section, which is located at the bottom of Google’s search results.

For example, you are searching for the topics among which one was “search engine marketing”.

Now, when you go down to the bottom of the page, you will get a list of 8 keywords that are quite relevant to your search term.

When you click on any of these topics, scroll down and you will get another set of related keywords. And the process goes on and on.

d)- Use Google Suggest

This is the most usual way of finding keyword ideas. Just Google search for example “social media marketing” and see what all terms Google Suggests to you.

These are relevant keywords to include in your list.

Why?

The reason is, if Google suggests a keyword, you know that many people around the globe are searching for it.

Keyword Research Tools

If you want to know how to increase website traffic, then firstly you need to find the relevant keywords. You can take the help of keyword research tools to make your job easy.

If you search for a list of SEO tools, you’ll find that there are n number of options available in the market now.

Each of them differs in features, sources of data, and costs. But which of them can meet your needs well? And, above all, do you have to spend your hard-earned money per month, or is there any way to cut the costs?

Today we’ll discover 13 of the best free keyword research tools. All of them are a great fit for keyword research task and do the job no worse than their paid ones.

13 Best Free Keyword Research Tools

1. Uber Suggest

This is a free application that helps you explore over 100 long-tail keywords in a couple of minutes. This tool gives complete information about your website traffic as well as organic keywords.

Standout Features:

✓ You can explore organic keywords from different websites.

✓ You can access a complete SEO report to get details about the competitor’s page ranking for keywords.

✓ You can get to know the backlinks affecting your website rankings.

✓ You can get to know the competition, search volume, and seasonal trends for each keyword.

✓ You can get a list of keywords based upon what other people are searching for on Google search engine.

✓ This tool lets you create better content based on the topics that people are keen on.

2. SEMrush

SEMrush acts as a Swiss Army Knife of SEO. Rather than generating a list of keywords, SEMrush suggests 5-10 quite specific keywords that are already in use by your competitors. Through this tool, you may also get to know how to increase website authority based on your domain authority score.

Standout features:

✓ You can get a list of long-tail keywords and explore ad group ideas.

✓ You can receive yearly keyword trends

✓ You can get an insight into worldwide CPC distribution statistics

✓ You can access the complete keyword research toolkit

✓ You can do keyword difficulty analysis and study organic traffic insights

✓ It is also among the trending link building tools with amazing features

3. Keyword Tool Dominator

Keyword Tool Dominator allows you to find long-tail keywords your audience is looking for. It gives keyword tools for Amazon, eBay or Etsy. You can utilise this application to receive a list of over a hundred keyword phrases.

Standout Features:

✓ It gives real-time keyword suggestions.

✓ You can get hundreds of keyword suggestions in lesser time.

✓ Keyword Tool Dominator allows you to look for phrases from one search term.

✓ This application shows the result from other internet users.

✓ It provides with a list of the results of what it thinks you are searching for.

✓ You can find the exact most popular search terms.

4. Soovle

Soovle is another tool that offers suggestion services from Google, Bing, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. It provides the list of trending keywords arranged in alphabetical order. You can also save your keyword suggestions.

Standout Features:

✓ It allows you to switch from one search engine to another.

✓ You can get customized searching options.

✓ You can get suggestions by doing a search on the provided search engine.

✓ You can access to the saved items anytime.

5. AnswerThePublic

Answer the Public is a free keyword generator that provides you with the report with data to determine the campaign effectiveness. Also, this is the fastest and simplest way to explore popular questions based on your business niche as it combines your main keywords with several question words (like what, who, why, etc.). For example, if are not getting any topic ideas for guest posting for SEO, you can try this platform to get niche-based ideas in just a minute.

Standout Features:

✓ You will get around 1500 PR keywords worldwide.

✓ This tool gives the entire visualization of the data.

✓ You will get content suggestions based on the word entered in the search textbox

✓ You will get keyword suggestions through common questions for featured answers as well as voice search optimization.

6. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free online application that monitors the popularity of top search queries in Google. You can utilize it to discover across different language as well as regions. This tool utilizes graphs to compare the search for different queries.

Standout Features:

✓ You can understand daily search trends as well as real-time search trends.

✓ It gives several categories like food, news, athletes, people, beauty, fashion, etc.

✓ Google Trends provides with year-wise statistics.

✓ It helps you to understand the people’s interest at any given time and compare search rank to one another.

✓ This application automatically spots topics on the basis of the search keyword.

✓ It provides with a drop-down menu to switch between trending as well as most searched views.

7. QuestionDB

Questiondb provides the list of the questions people are asking related to a specific topic. These questions come up from a database of 48M questions sourced from Reddit.

Standout Features

✓ Questions are organised by popularity. Also, you can sort them by topic.

✓ This is helpful when writing blog posts. It helps you find which questions to answer.

✓ If you check the comments, you can get answers fast, which makes your content research even faster.

✓ You can export CSV file having questions at the touch of a button.

8. YouTube Autocomplete

When the search for a keyword on YouTube, they provide with autocomplete options that are based on your question and searched for by users. You can go through all the provided queries and find keywords that are related to the users.

Standout Features

✓ You will get to know what users are searching for, which gives your idea for marketing strategies.

✓ You can check the competitors’ channels and get some amazing insights on keywords and related topics that really do well with your target audiences.

✓ You can check out the videos performing best, and analyse each video for keywords within the title, the video and the description.

✓ Review the comments and find which phrases are people talking about? Save these as possible keywords.

9. Amazon Autocomplete

Amazon is the largest online retailer from where people shop the most, we all know. But just envision the number of searches done per day on their website. Even if you enter a word in a search section, you will get as many as keywords phrases which they suggest. This is due to amazon autocompletes, which is truly a goldmine of data which we can use.

10. Also Asked

Also Asked was designed by the help marketers to know how questions are grouped based on the topics. These questions can help in finding the keywords as well as related keywords. Also, it also tells you what questions are required to answer in content.

11. Google Ads

Google Ads is also considered as the best source of keyword ideas. In order to collect keyword ideas for a website, you should have access to an account that invests money on Google Ads. If you cannot success such an account, Google tends to provide broad ranges of keyword traffic instead of more accurate data.

12. Google’s “People Also Ask”

Google is an excellent source if you are searching for questions people are asking usually. If you type query with your keyword, you will see a section know as “People also ask”.

Standout Features

✓ You will get popular keyword queries based upon your keyword that individuals have searched for on Google.

✓ When you click on “People also ask” entries, you will see the list expanding.

✓ You can continue clicking selections until you have a big list of related questions.

13. Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool

This tool compares URLs and collects data based on the keyword strategies of different sites. If another site is continually ranking higher for terms you need, you can rapidly see their on-page keyword strategies.

Standout Features

✓ This tool is time-saving and provides you with charts you can add in reports.

✓ The on-page analysis data displays abundant of information on how they are utilizing keywords such as number of keywords per page, number of linked pages, keywords in head tag elements as well as meta descriptions.

Key Factors for Choosing Keywords

While performing your keyword research for major types of SEO, there are few factors that you can’t overlook and will help you get the list of ideal keywords and enable your target audience to engage with your brand.

1. Keyword Relevance

While choosing the keywords you want to rank, it’s crucial to check the relevancy of keywords based upon your business. For instance, if your company sells ABC Cosmetics, you’ll want to rank your product page for a keyword like “ABC Lotion.” Even though keywords like “ABC” and “Lotion,” have their specific search volume. Ranking for any of those queries by themselves is not relevant to the “ABC Lotion” you basically sell on the page where you want to draw your visitors.

2. Keyword Search Volume

When you identified your search queries or topics using any of the above-mentioned keyword research tools, this will help you find how many individuals are searching for this specific phrase on a monthly basis. If you can eventually rank on the Google’s first page for a keyword that is searched 10,000 times versus 10 times, you will provide yourself with a much better opportunity to drive substantial organic traffic to your website through that keyword.

3. Keyword Competition

Who is taking your position for the keyword or phrase of your choice? Do you a strategy to grab your place back? How would you discover? The most ideal approach to discover who is ranking for keywords of your choice is by performing a Google search with personalization turned off as well as finding what crops up. This technique is great for getting the general idea that who is your online competition.

4. Keyword ROI

Why do you need SEO for your business? What is the role of keyword? Will traffic through it bring about the change you need on the page you optimized for it? Traffic from long tail keyword converts at a high rate than traffic from short tail keywords. These are things you need to take account of when choosing which pages to enhance for which keywords.

5. Keyword Intent

You can handle the type of user you bring to a specific page by controlling the keywords responsible for ranking the page. If you purpose is to boost conversion, you may have to add a call to action in the key phrases. If you need a user who is starting their research process, a different, more extensive or less action-oriented phrase should be utilized.

Conclusion

There are a lot more things to learn about keywords. Finding the right keywords is not just the end of the story—you also need to make a strategy to rank them. Considering the use of above-mentioned tools and factors can help you get started with keyword research and hopefully rank your website on the first page if Google SERPs.

LinkBuildingCorp, a provider of themetic link Building Services, can help your business to stay ahead from your competitors with its result-driven strategy. Contact us today to make your business grow online. We are looking forward delivering unbeatable results.

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