With the number of tools out there designed to help you with SEO, there is no reason to guess at which keywords and phrases you should be using to reach new people on Google. In fact, you can get pretty specific about what words people are typing into search – and better yet – you can use this data to amp up your SEO strategy. Here are a couple of great free keyword research tools that will help your business become the answer people are searching for.
Google Keyword Planner
With Google’s own keyword planner, you can easily search for words or phrases related to your products or services. Perfect for preparing to run paid advertising, Google’s tool will give you insight into how often certain words are searched and how those searches have changed over time. This can help you narrow your keyword list down to the ones you really want. It will also provide a suggested bid estimate for each keyword, so you can determine your advertising budget.
Biggest Pro: Hyper-local Search Volume allows users to view keyword volume based on a very specific area.
Biggest Con: Designed for paid advertising - sometimes too generic and not very descriptive
AnswerThePublic
What questions are people asking Google that your business could be the answer to? AnswerThePublic – combines your main keywords with various question words (like who, what, why, etc.). Along with questions, you will also get a handful of “preposition” keywords (when your seed keyword is combined with another word via a preposition) and “comparisons” (like “your keyword vs another keyword”) By using suggested searches from Bing and Google, the tool combines results and visualizes them in what is referred to as a search cloud.
Biggest Pro: Optimize for voice search
Biggest Con: The free version only allows 3 searches a day
WordStream
Designed specifically for marketers, Wordstream provides competitive, industry-specific information and keyword analysis features that help you prioritize and make the most of your marketing budget. Just enter a keyword and then choose your industry and country (if desired). You’ll get a list of related keyword suggestions, including long-tail keyword variations, as well as their Google search volume. You can also enter a website URL – such as a competitor’s homepage – to get contextual keyword suggestions and ideas to help you compete against similar businesses.
Biggest Pro: Offer industry-specific information such as benchmarks
Biggest Con: Gated content, must provide email address
RankTracker
Looking to track keyword rankings for a location different than your own? Or, perhaps, for multiple locations? Rank Tracker is the only local rank tracking software that accurately checks positions for the exact location of your choice: country, state, city, or even an exact street address. It also combines several tools in one – Google Ads Keyword Planner; Competition research; Domain Research; Related Searches; Autocomplete tools; Related Questions; Google Analytics and Search Console.
Biggest Pro: Provides 23 different keyword research tools in one
Biggest Con: Learning curve to navigate the platform
