Best Keyword Research Tool Options

Which Keyword Research Tools Are The Best?

Keyword Research Is the First Step Towards Driving the Right Organic Traffic to Your Website.

There are a ton of different keyword research tools out there that can help you choose the best keyword phrases for optimizing your website pages, and the tools listed below can be a good place to start. Research for the RIGHT keywords is important because it will help drive the RIGHT organic traffic to your web page. Just because a particular keyword gets high search volume, does not mean that it will drive the RIGHT traffic to your site to help you achieve your online marketing goals. Always keep your target audience at the focus of everything you do for your business.

As you may have heard, Google has recently made an update, setting their default search to secured. This means that we can expect to see the amount of “(not provided)” keywords continue to increase. While this does make it harder for us to know exactly which keywords are bringing organic traffic to a website, organic ranking is still driven by how well a web page is optimized for a key phase group (among a ton of other factors). Here is a little helpful tip – link your Google Analytics and your Google Webmaster Tools so that you can gain additional insight on users’ search queries under the Traffic Sources section below Search Engine Optimization.

You also may have also heard about Google’s most recent algorithm update, known as Hummingbird – this is Google’s way of trying to better predict what search engine users are looking for so that they can return the best-suited results. These updates do not throw everything we knew about Google out the window, it merely reinforces the long-time understanding that providing quality, unique content is key. The main thing to remember is – you should never write your content just to appease search engines. Your target audience should come first, search engines second. Remember to choose your target keywords based on the context of each individual page, not the other way around. Once you know what type of keyword you want to optimize a page for, use your research findings to determine which ones have the most search volume and reasonable competition rate. Now use those keywords as the focus and incorporate them into the context of that page. At a minimum, you should aim to include the primary focus keyword in the URL, page title, H1/H2 tag, image alt tag, throughout the content (2-3% keyword density). Where applicable, it is also beneficial to include relevant video content (search engines love this and so do humans).

If you want to learn more about which keyword phrases are best for your business website or how to use any of the keyword research tools listed below, contact us here – we are happy to help!

Before you get started with your research, you should create a list of your own based on what you think people would search for to get to your site and the keywords/phrases that you want people to find your site under. This will give you a good base to start with and allow the keyword recommendations to stay closely related to what you want to target.

Good luck and start researching!

Best Keyword Research Tool List

As with anything, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Choosing the best keyword research tool is all based on what you’re looking for. Here are a few places you can start, or maybe you will find a keyword research tool from this list that you haven’t heard of before. As I find new keyword research tools that I try and find effective, or if I see one that looks like it is worth checking out, I will add it to the list. Please comment with any others you have tried and had success with as well!

https://ferzy.com/
Ferzy is a keyword research tool that lets you discover profitable and easy-to-rank keywords in minutes. It provides accurate search volume, keyword difficulty score, and a thousand long-tail keywords in a simple and easy-to-understand interface. There is a free plan available so you can test it right now with no installation needed. For small-medium size websites, I recommend getting on the starter plan. The business plan is the way to go if you want to get serious about your keyword research and get the most out of your SEO efforts. One of my favorite features of this keyword research tool is that for each search query, Ferzy will show you the top search results along with specific competitor comparison domain metrics which can be useful for determining your chances of ranking well. See for yourself!

https://accounts.google.com/
While the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool is designed specifically for PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, it also provides great insight for choosing organic keywords and phrases. Recently, Google has made an update replacing the old Keyword Tool with the Keyword Planner. They decided to combine the functionality of Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to make it easier to plan search campaigns. Once you have created a Google Adwords account, you can find the keyword planner in the drop-down menu for Tools and Analysis. From here you will see three different options under “What would you like to do?” – Search for keyword and ad group ideas, enter or upload keywords to see how they perform, and multiply keywords. Use the second option and upload your list to see how they perform. If you see any that meet your criteria, add them to your plan by clicking on the blue arrow. Once you have narrowed down your original list, click on “modify search”  to get additional keyword suggestions for your optimization. Keep in mind that sometimes this data can be a bit skewed, as Google seems to hide a good bit of their data… and let’s be honest, their main priority is getting higher bids on keywords so they can rake in the cash from their online advertisements. It can also sometimes be difficult to get long-tailed keyword data in Google,  which may be just where you need to focus your attention to target your audience.

https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/diagnostics/keyword/research
Bing Webmaster has a few keyword tools that can be helpful for your keyword research as well. These tools are still in Beta, but I expect them to continue to improve these tools. The keyword research tools seem to be more streamlined and provide less information than Adwords, which makes the search process simple and to the point. You can get a quick analysis of the number of searches that any specific keyword has received in Bing over any given period of time. You will also see a list of related keyword recommendations on the same page (although I have to be honest and say that I have seen some pretty unrelated keywords pop up…hopefully, they will refine the tool more in the future). Plus, bing had a fun TV campaign there for a while, but they will never be able to compete with Google.

http://www.semrush.com/
SEMRUSH can give you the inside scoop on what your competition is doing. You will have to upgrade to the pro version if you want to see all of the data, however, they do give you a free sneak peek that shows some highlights that can be helpful in your research while giving you some insight into where you stand against your biggest competitors. Definitely worth checking out!

https://grepwords.com/

Okay, so let me preface this next statement by first saying that I have never personally used grepwords as a keyword research tool… At least not yet. Why? Well, because you have to be a paid subscriber, and I can be kind of cheap when it comes to using tools that I can find for free elsewhere. However, I have to say that I am quite intrigued by this keyword research tool. I only recently stumbled across this one but the video does look like it could be worth the money. I think grepwords should give a free trial with their keyword research tool to allow us data nerds to try it out before handing over the credit card info. Regardless, here is the video if you want to check it out!

Here are some other keyword research tools that you may want to consider:

• Moz Keyword Researching Tool
  • We use Moz for some of our client’s keyword tracking. I don’t typically do my initial research through Moz, but I do check back on the keywords using Moz often. Probably not your best place to start, however, it is good for seeing the keyword difficulty of various terms and phrases. You do have to be a pro member to have access to this as well. The base pricing is $99/month.
• Wordstream Keywords Tool
  • Wordstream attempts to rope you in by giving you a limited amount of free searches per day and blurring out some of the most important information. So, you won’t get the full good unless you shell out some money, but you may want to give it a try.
• Long Tail Pro Keyword Research
  • This is another that I have not tried myself yet. This one costs money, but they do have a 10-day free trial available, which you may want to check out to see if it is the best keyword research tool for you. I like the amount of filtering you can apply to your search results. The video is worth watching to see if this would work best for your keyword researching needs.  The cost is $97 for the pro. Cost for “Pro + Platinum” is $97 one time fee plus $17/month.

Looking for even more SEO tools? Check out this SEO tool list from Linkio.

What other Keyword Research Tools have you tried? Tell us in the comments below.