Keyword Research Tools

For example, pulling keywords from the subreddit dogtraining, we can learn that people are talking about the following:

• Anti anxiety medication

• Dog food brands

• Easy walk harness

• Invisible dog fence

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a great tool for keyword discovery. Though it won’t give us a complete analysis of the keywords as other tools do, it pulls a massive database of keyword suggestions based on the seed keyword that we enter. When we enter a keyword, let’s say, dog food, we’ll see several questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, and related searches around the topic.

Ahrefs Keyword Generator

Though Ahrefs is a paid SEO service, it offers a free tool called Keyword Generator. When we enter a seed keyword, it gives us the top 100 related phrases and 100 related questions on the topic, along with their search volumes. We’ll also see the keyword difficulty for the first ten entries in the list. Besides pulling information from Google, we can also use the same tool to get keyword ideas from Bing, YouTube, or Amazon. Just click your preferred search engine from the options available at the top of the page.

Google Trends

This free tool from Google comes in handy for both keyword discovery and keyword analysis. When we enter a word or phrase into the search bar, it gives us a list of related queries and topics from Google’s searches.

To help with keyword analysis, it gives us a graphical visualization of how the interest of searchers for the keyword changes over time.

There are several unique features included. We can compare the interest trend between different subregions in a country of our choice (the United States by default). We can also compare searchers’ interests over time for two keywords on the same graph. Additionally, by adjusting the option, we can also pull keyword data from YouTube instead of Google.

Soovle

With Soovle, we can get a collective result of related keywords from several popular sites, including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and Answers.com. We can gather plenty of new keyword ideas to add to our database during the keyword discovery phase. We can save suggestions and download them into a CSV file. However, it does not offer a complete keyword research solution. We’ll need other tools for analysis.

Paid keyword research tools

Here’s a list of some popular paid keyword research tools worth trying.

KWFinder

KWFinder is one of the go-to tools for SEO professionals and beginners alike. It’s easy to use and offers some strong features to level up our keyword research. At $29.90/month, it’s one of the cheapest options out there for comprehensive, all-in-one-place keyword research. For every search, it gives us the stats for that keyword, together with related keywords and the stats for each. We can view and compare keyword trends, search volume, CPC, PPC, and KD all on the same page. Besides the conventional research approach, it’s also a reliable option for competitor keyword research.

Semrush

Semrush offers a wealth of information for webmasters. The website offers two tools especially useful for keyword research. With a free account, we are limited to 10 searches a day and limited features.

Semrush’s keyword overview

When we enter a seed keyword into the search box of the the tool, a comprehensive analysis is displayed, complete with all important metrics, including search volume, KD, trends, intent, SERP features, and CPC. We’ll also find related keywords to include in our list. One thing that’s unique to the tool is that it also gives us a list of related questions. Here’s where we can spot some easy-to-rank long-tail keywords with low KDs.

Another uncommon feature we’ll get here is a list of web pages that rank for our entered keyword. When we click on an entry, it takes us to “Organic Research” on Semrush, where we'll find a list of other keywords that the web page ranks for.

Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool

This tool organizes the related keywords into topic-specific subgroups, making it easier to analyze the search volumes, difficulty, and intent of each group. We can expand the groups and subgroups on the left-hand side of the page to recreate the list relevant to our selected subgroup.

Filters may also be applied to narrow down the list and spot less competitive long-tail keywords.

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer

As with most other paid SEO tools, the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer gives an overview of the metrics for each seed keyword and plenty of new keyword ideas related to the entered phrase. What’s different is that it also gives us the parent topic for our keyword, making it possible to rank for both the parent keyword and our chosen keyword by targeting a more general phrase. It also allows us to compare SERPs for target keywords, giving us some useful insights into the ranking strategies of our competitors. We’ll find the tool especially helpful for backlink analysis. Along with the usual KD score, it gives us an estimated number of backlinks we’ll need to rank the page on the top 10 for the keyword.

Moz Keyword Explorer

With Moz Keyword Explorer, we’ll find keyword metrics, new keyword suggestions, and SERP analysis for the ranking pages all in one place. Among the standard metrics important for keyword analysis, it also gives us the keyword priority. This unique measurement gives us the sweet spot of higher organic CTR and search volume and low difficulty. If we want to make a quick decision for a keyword, go for the one with a higher priority.

LongTailPro

LongTailPro is aimed toward helping webmasters locate low-competition long-tails to support their SEO efforts. We can enter multiple seed keywords at a time and discover keyword suggestions, together with their search volume and competition metrics. We can apply filters on metrics to view only those that we want to target.