Top 5 Keyword Research Tools for SEO

Keyword research is key to your online presence.

It is what makes all the difference between a site that’s visited quite often and another that fails to drive as much traffic. It’s the heart and soul of any search or online marketing campaign.

And this is so because keywords tell you what questions your target audience is asking. And how this audience is searching for those queries on the internet.

Not only does knowing the right keywords help you optimize your website, but it also aids you in figuring out what kind of content you want to create for your audience.

For Neil Patel, keyword research is both a science and art. And it’s certainly not limited to working with the “biggest keywords in your industry.”

The 21st century is rife with an excess of keyword research tools designed to help you optimize your SEO. You might just find yourself confounded with the invasion of such means.

So, where do you begin?

Here’s our pick on the five, top-notch keyword research tools to kickstart your SEO process.

1. Google Trends

You might be familiar with this one.

This free tool from Google keeps track of changing trends. It shows you the “relative popularity” of a particular search query some time.

This helps you gauge how popular or relevant a query is at a given time. For instance, “deadlifts” could be a term that’s more sought-after in a particular month of the year. And if you run a fitness blog, you might want to take advantage of that.

Google Trends also comes with the bonus of “related queries.” The “related queries” box gives you a glance at things that are trending currently and are on their way to rising popularity.
You could be the first to chance upon a nascent query and use it to your own advantage!

2. Moz’s Keyword Explorer

You might think keyword volume is the most significant factor in determining the right keywords. But it’s not.

Determining the level of competition is crucial too. And there’s no simple way of doing this.

Keyword Explorer by Moz is one tool that lets you in on a lot of things when it comes to finding keywords than just volume. It gives you access to an excellent competitive research method that helps you optimize your business better.

The tool also gives you difficulty and opportunity scores. This adds more depth to your keyword search and helps you gauge what works best for you.

It also aids you in prioritizing keywords to target through a priority score.

You can measure the cost and benefits of working with a particular keyword. And design better marketing strategies for your business.

3. SEMrush

SEMrush is a great keyword research tool, with support for both competitor-based and traditional keyword research methods.

It doesn’t just hand you a list of the most popular keywords. It shows you what’s more profitable as well.

You can see the ads your competitors use for a particular keyword. And try to redo your content and taglines like those mentioned in the ads to increase your CTR.

The tool also offers you over a hundred regional databases to help you align your keywords to different regions.

The tool lets you in on details like the number of results, trends, volume, and so on. It comes handy for building effective marketing strategies.

4. Keywords Everywhere

This is probably the easiest of all keyword research tools.

Not only is it free, but it’s also available as a free extension on Chrome. The chief benefit of having a keyword research tool work as a Chrome extension is that you save you a lot of time. You can instantly get the keyword search volume by easily typing a word on Google. Along with the volume, it also displays added and related keywords in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

The best part is, these keywords would be displayed along with CPC (cost per click) and other competition data in the form of small tables. If you’re someone who can’t invest time in doing keyword research separately, Keywords Everywhere is the answer for you.

5. Answer the Public

This is another free tool that helps you do keyword research and build an effective marketing strategy.

When you enter a seed word, it bombards you with tons of prepositions, questions, comparisons, and other related searches.

For instance, if you enter the word “content,” it will first show you an extensive list of search questions containing what, who, why, where, how, when, which, are, and is. It does the same with prepositions, comparisons, and so on.

Answer the public does a great job at visualizing tons of searches or possible queries people are posing on the internet. And helps you gain an insight into these.

The presentation works well too, as it demonstrates everything in the form of a huge cloud. This makes the tool very accessible and delightful to use. To ensure you don’t drift off while doing your keyword research, which is critical to your presence on the internet.

Conclusion

Keyword research is imperative to help rank higher on SERPs. More distinguished rankings naturally increase traffic to your site. This, in turn, enhances your brand visibility and helps you grow your business manifold.

Thanks to technology, finding the right keywords today is a matter of a few minutes. There’s no dearth of tools you could use to get the right keywords to optimize your chances for more visibility.

While some give you tons of keywords after you put in a seed word, other tools evaluate what keywords your competitors are using and give you better ones. It’s ideal to use both these methods to find the keywords that will help boost your traffic.