20 Free Keyword Research Tools – Comprehensive Insight
Dainis Graveris
Before you write any good article or optimize website, you have to know how and why you have to select right keywords. SEO is very easy to overuse and do even worse, if you for example start to do keyword stuffing or repeating the same words over and over again without good thought. For regular content like blogs, people always like to argue about what you need to put in the first place – SEO or your readers. I am thinking you must do both – using simple but consistent and smart SEO and try to write as compelling article as possible to your readers.
If you haven’t already I strongly you suggest to read the first post -
How To Create Popular Blog With Keyword Research, Heatmaps And SEO? from series to get little starting overview.
In that case you’ll get good search rankings because of SEO and trackbacks,comments you’ll get if article will be really good. ( of course, don’t forget about PageRank – new blogs usually don’t rank very well in Google). I must also mention, how good is to establish community, who actively discuss article in comments – Google just love content, which updates regularly. In short – people who add comments to article actually update and continue your article, plus each comment is taken as article update – very important aspect!
Okay, I got a little bit away from main article discussion – this time as promised I am featuring free keyword research tools, which are the most popular now.
Note, at the end of article you’ll find also several non-SEO tools, but still which can be used seriously to optimize your site, help to choose right keywords and understand niche you are optimizing your site to! I suggest you at least visit all of these sites, so you pick your favorite tool because really all tools differentiate a little bit from each other.
Enjoy this article and remember there are several more series to come soon, where I will try to explain how I do my SEO as well as link you to several more useful resources and articles you really should read!
1.Google search based keyword tool
The Search-based Keyword Tool provides keyword ideas:
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Based on actual Google search queries;
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Matched to specific pages of your website with your ad and search share;
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New to your Adwords account (typically excluding keywords matching those already in your account).
I thought it will be better to add official product introduction, than explaining what this tool does with my words to give you good overview.
2.Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas. Select an option below to enter a few descriptive words or phrases, or type in your website’s URL. This tool gives you approximate keyword search volume statistics for Google search network and because of Google growing and dominating search network, you really can get pretty precise results.
3.Google Insights for Search
Google Insights is a powerful tool that offers features not available on most other free tools. For seasonal or fluctuating niches, you can view stats by year or a specific time period. For regional niches, you can view stats by country, state or even city. The graphical reports are great for seeing trends. One of the only downsides is that they don’t show absolute search volume but instead normalized data that is shown on a scale up to 100. Also since the data is normalized the detailed stats are limited.
4. Google Trends
Use commas to compare multiple search terms – one more great product from Google allowing you to research and compare trends.
5.Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker
Wordtracker helps website owners and search engine marketers identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to their or their client’s business and most likely to be used as queries by search engine visitors.
Use the free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker to help your website rank higher in the search engines. This tool can generate up to 100 related keyword phrases and show daily searches.
If you use Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or 3, you can add the Wordtracker Keywords search to your browser.
6.SEO Book Keyword suggestion tool
This tool is powered by Wordtracker, get comprehensive overview about different search volume statistics for Google, Yahoo!, MSN daily estimonials – export whole list to Excel *.csv file for later research!
Top Paying AdSense Keyword Lists
Also good introduction to this tool – definitely suggest you to watch this video.
7.Good Keywords v3
Free and downloadable Windows software helping you to get out more of Google keyword research, worth checking out!
8.SEMRush
What you may do there:
- Discover competitors’ sites with common Google keywords;
- Get list of Google keywords for any site;
- Get list of AdWords keywords for any site;
- Check your competitors landing-pages for SE and AdWords traffic;
- Investigate long-tail keywords for any domain;
- Get estimated SE and AdWords traffic for any domain;
- See sites’ spending for AdWords;
- Get hidden related (and low-cost) keywords to optimize your AdWords campaign;
- Find potential advertisers for any site;
- Find potential traffic sellers for your site.
9. Free Search Term Suggestion Tool
Trellian KeywordDiscovery keyword data is compiled and collected from a number of search engines to provide a far more accurate cross section of searches performed world wide. This tool can generate maximum 100 keywords and collect search term data from over 200 search engines world wide.
10.KGen
KGen (Keyword Generator) is Firefox extension that allows you to see what keywords are strong on visited web pages. This plugin retrieves every words of a page and lets you know how many time they appears on her and their weight in the page (a word in the title of a page has a stronger weight than a word in a paragraph).
11.Wordpot Free Keyword Tool
Try this free keyword research tool,which is quite usable, but creators limit your access trying to sell you paid version, generally you still can get pretty good overview.
12.NicheBot Classic
Type a keyword or keyword phrase and get the top 50 most popular keyword listings.
Non-SEO tools, but still extremely useful:
13.Synonyms Thesaurus with Antonyms & Definitions
Synonym.com is good web resource for English synonyms, antonyms, and definitions. Type in a word and the synonym finder will come up with a list of synonyms. Check out the most popular online synonym searches to find the right word for any occasion. Use the antonym tool to find find antonyms and check out the definitions feature to read the definition.
14.Thesaurus
Thesaurus.com is produced by Dictionary.com, LLC, a leading provider of language reference products and services on the Internet.
To use the thesaurus, simply type a word in the gold search box and click the ‘Search’ button. A list of synonyms and antonyms will be returned.
15.Delicious
Bookmarking service, but still very useful for searching keywords. I usually find similar popular articles or websites and check which tags are used to bookmark that page. Extremely useful!
16.Dictionary
Dictionary.com is a multi-source dictionary search service produced by Dictionary.com, LLC, a leading provider of language reference products and services on the Internet. Dictionary.com is hiring, please find information about career opportunities.
To use the dictionary, simply type a word in the blue search box that appears at the top of every page and then click the ‘Search’ button.
17.Wikipedia
Everybody knows wikipedia, but did you ever think about using it to research your niche – related categories, language people in your niche are using? Useful to visit from time to time in research purpose!
18.Keyword questions
People often type questions into search engines. Now you can find these questions, answer them and get some great search traffic. You’ll be targeting long tail keywords and providing content that readers want to read and link to. Also try the keyword tool the professional SEO uses. Enter a single or a short keyword to find the questions people are asking in your market.
19.Twitter Search
Keeping up with interesting news and people you care about is one dimension of Twitter, but what if you need to find out what’s happening in the world beyond your personal timeline?
There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. Twitter Search helps you filter all the real-time information coursing through our service.
20.MetaGlossary
MetaGlossary is able to precisely extract the meanings of terms and phrases from the often frustratingly unmanageable mass of information on the web. It provides you with concise, direct explanations for terms and phrases, not just endless links to sift through in search of a comprehensive definition.
Series coming up:
Introduction – How To Create Popular Blog With Keyword Research, Heatmaps And SEO?
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Free Keyword Research Tools – Comprehensive Insight (done)
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How I do keyword research – Behind the Scenes Overview
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Why And How Heatmaps Improve Your Blog?
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How To Optimize Images For Search Engines?
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Above The Fold – What Every Web-Designer Should know?
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Readers Participating: Keyword Research Experience And More SEO Tips
For Further Reading:
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andyglissen
Posted 40 days ago 57This article is very useful and nice. everyone can take benefits from this article
dataseven
Posted 55 days ago 56Good collection you got there.
By the way, Im using Google Adword Keyword Tools and Micro Niche Finder when doing keyword research.
shalini
Posted 75 days ago 55I think this is an informative post and it is very useful and knowledgeable.
SEO Tools
suhas enterprises
Posted 83 days ago 54so nice to such a brilliant information for my site thanks firends
Bible Scriptures
Posted 94 days ago 53Encouraging Scripture. Bible Scriptures For Life – The Bible is
God’s manual which reveals His love for mankind. Keep
putting the word out and good information to help keep
us motivated.
Oliver
Posted 131 days ago 52Great list of Keywords research tools. Google insights and trends are very helpful tools. I think that Twitter also gives unique perspective.
nadine
Posted 150 days ago 51thanks GOD i found this article,this one for my research tool.
raina
Posted 168 days ago 50I want to stay fit, I usually only use Google.
sphincterotomy
Posted 193 days ago 49I have moved over from Wordtracker to Wordpot. Love it!
Asterisk
Posted 213 days ago 48Very helpful list. I used to bookmark these tools myself. But over time, some of the tools has moved from totally free, to free preview, to free-after-register, to pay-only tools.
Rhonda Dalbey
Posted 227 days ago 47My friend and I were arguing about an issue similar to this! Now I know that I was right. lol! Thanks for the information you post.
Dilip Rajpurohit - SEO Analyst India
Posted 255 days ago 46Very nice and informative post on Free Keyword Research, Analysis & Suggestion Tools…i have shared that on my blog too.. http://www.seo4world.com/2011/06/free-seo-keyword-research-tools-techniques-suggestions/
Di
Posted 258 days ago 45Wow! It’s really useful information! But I found some more, check this link: thesaurus
ninatsa
Posted 267 days ago 44Great post , thanks :)
Henry
Posted 274 days ago 43Nice list. The thing to always keep in mind is to find profitable keywords that are affordable and for which you can achieve rank. See some tips, that I have written here: seo-keyword-research-tool.info.
simon
Posted 282 days ago 42hey thanks for the list..I was looking for it
Robert Bloch
Posted 349 days ago 41Great information for new kids on the block like me.
Paul Y
Posted 473 days ago 39Great post. I agree you should write articles that you can satisfy your readers and for the SEO sake.
glen james
Posted 483 days ago 38I currently use both Market Samurai and Micro Niche Finder and although they are both very good keyword tools in their own right, most of the time now i just use Googles keyword tool and take the keywords that i have found and run them through an Adwords campaign which is the most accurate way of establishing the amount of searches on a particular keyword.
Alex
Posted 367 days ago 40I agree Glen, I also use market Samurai most of the tiime but as you say, sometimes you will find the best and most accurate results by running them through adwords. However, there a couple of new tools I’ve seen here which I haven’t used before and I’ll give them a try.
marco
Posted 485 days ago 37Good post – agree with most things but in the past have found the google keyword tool to be totally inconsistant to a ridiculous degree – where as one month it has said hundreds of thousands of searhes for a keyword or phrase and several months later only a few hudred searches for the same keyword or phrase on an exact search!
I have found wordtracker to be more precise but obviously there is the cost!!
Andyl
Posted 575 days ago 36Excellent stuff for any newbies Dainis.
I would echo what one or two others have emphasised on here. Don’t ever lose site that your keyword seo use should never be at the expense of the visitor experience.
By all means get use various tools to get the keyword phrases, use keyword density, anchor text, LSI etc etc, but always remeber to write in a natural way which is relevant to the topic concerned.
You can have the best keyword phrases there are but if no one reads your post/article then you’re waisting your time in the long run.
There are loads of other tools you haven’t mentioned as well. Some free, others that cost. Some of them are absolutely brilliant at keyword research and also seo generally.
Check out http://www.keyword-selectortool.com
Andy
Pam
Posted 580 days ago 35Great post I found it very useful especially when you pointed out the Non SEO tools!!
biber hapı
Posted 629 days ago 34thanks frower web pages
neha
Posted 636 days ago 33Simply a very good and useful tool,good to came across.
Srabani Sengupta
Posted 658 days ago 32Wow, great list of keyword research tools at one place. Its very helpful.