Top 10 Keyword research tools

Here is a great list of keyword research tools, which I often use.

In my experience, keyword research is one of the most important things in SEO. At least it can save you a lot of budget – instead of creating all kinds of topics and hope they will rank, you focus on specific topic clusters, which will work for you.

With these you will be able to:

1. Find keyword ideas, based on your industry, monthly searches, buyer personas, competitors, etc.
2. Find more long-tail keywords;
3. “Steal” keywords from your top competitors and outrank them;
4. Analyze your current content and double-down on what ranks best;
5. Get more traffic and leads 🙂

1. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword planner is a free tool, which you can access in your Google ads account.

It’s a great tool for a start.

Here is how to access Google Keyword Planner:

1. Go to https://ads.google.com
2. Click on Tools -> Keyword Planner.

After that you can choose between two options – find new keywords or get search volume and forecasts.

To find new keyword ideas, you will need to enter some seed keywords – all other keyword ideas and suggestions will be based on these.

In my case, I’ve entered “digital marketing”, “seo”, “online marketing”.

And after that Keyword Planner gave me a nice list of suggested keywords.

Along with keyword list, you will find:

• Average monthly searches;
• Competition;
• Suggested bid (if you plan to use Google Ads)

Of course, you can sort and filter by all of these metrics – to find the best possible ideas.

Overall, it’s a great free keyword research tool, plus it’s an original Google product – so it has more trust, than many third party tools.

2. Google suggest

Sometimes, you don’t need fancy and expensive tools for keyword research. Especially, if you are just starting with SEO.

Just type your keyword in Google and you will see Suggested keywords.

Also, you can go to the bottom of the page and see “Searches related to …“.

It works the same way in Youtube.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs – is one of the best tools to explore your backlink profile.

But, they also have a module, dedicated to keyword research – Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.

Same as with Google Keyword Planner, you need to enter your seed keywords first.

And you will get A LOT OF DATA.

My favorites: keyword difficulty, clicks, return rate.

In a lot of other tools with keyword difficulty you will see – easy, hard or medium. But, Ahrefs shows exactly how many referring domains you need in order to rank high for this keyword. REALLY COOL.

Another feature I like – is number of clicks with number of searches. For some keywords, featured snippet in Google is enough, and users won’t click trough to your site. So, take that into consideration when creating your keyword plan.

Return rate shows if users search for this keyword again.

I also really like newly discovered keywords. Sometimes, it’s easier to rank for new keywords – it’s a great opportunity.

There are many other SEO hacks you can try with Ahrefs, if you want to dive deeper, check out my Keyword research guide.

Bottom line: Ahrefs is among those fancy and expensive SEO tools. But, if you are serious about your SEO – it’s a must have.

4. Keywordtool.io

Keywordtool.io – simple and fast tool for keyword research.

It’s one of my favorites.

You can easily get a lot of keyword suggestions, not only for Google, but also Youtube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, App Store. Not bad.

Also, you can find results by location, language, search network, currency.

It’s easy to filter your keywords by Search Volume, Trend, Competition, etc.

You can also exclude Negative Keywords from your research.

My favorite feature – you can find fresh trending keywords, for which it’s much easier to rank. It works great for me.

Also, great feature about Keywordtool.io – you can easily export all or selected keywords – either copy to clipboard or save in CSV.

Overall, I ❤️ keywordtool.io.

5. KWFinder

KWfinder – another go-to keyword research tool. It has all functionality, but it’s also easy to use.

You can also get a keyword difficulty metric here.

Overall, it’s a great value for $25 per month.

6. Semrush

Semrush – one of the best keyword tools for competitors research.

Sometimes, it’s just easier and more effective to steal keywords from your competitors. 🕵️‍♀️

In fact, recently competitor keyword research is one of my preferred methods.

In this case, you don’t need any seed keywords – just an url.

Just enter a specific domain and you will get all kinds of data.

Click on top organic keywords and you will see all organic for this exact domain.

You will see:

• Position
• Volume
• Difficulty
• Traffic % (from whole traffic)
• Competitive density
• Nr of results

So, now it’s your turn to create better content for these keywords 🙂

7. Ubersuggest

Great free keyword tool to find long tail keywords.

Recently, Ubersuggest was acquired by Neil Patel and is now hosted on NeilPatel.com/ubersuggest

Overall, this tool has great interface and is easy to use.

8. Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz Keyword Explorer is a great addition to Moz SEO tools.

It’s easy to use and can offer really great “lateral” keyword ideas – i.e. not only with similar phrases, but also with synonyms, etc.

Also, you can get an overview of a particular SERP (search engine results page).

Similar to Ahrefs, Moz calculates click-through rate for a particular keyword.

What I really like, is that Moz estimates keyword priority for you – it takes into account all keyword metrics and shows if it’s worth to go after this certain keyword.

9. Google Search Console (former Google Webmaster)

Google Search Console isn’t a traditional keyword research tool – where you enter your seed keyword and get suggestions.

But, it’s a great tool to find “Opportunity Keywords” – where you rank in #4-#30 positions.

Or keywords, where you get thousands of impressions, but just a few clicks.

Find them in Search Console Performance report.

With help of Search Console, you can identify these keywords, then do on-page SEO for relevant pages and start ranking higher and getting more traffic.

For example, on one of my sites an average rank for “best Christmas destinations Europe” is ~ 9.7.

I receive 12 clicks from 565 impressions with CTR (click-through-rate) 2.1%. This is a great opportunity keyword!

With some on-page SEO – adding more content (at least 2000 words), keyword stuffing, including this keyword in H-tags, alt-tags, meta description, first parts of title and url and so on – i can easily get this keyword higher in rank and receive more traffic.

You can also find opportunity keywords by sorting by CTR or Impressions (many impressions – low clicks).

Another great thing about Search Console is that you can combine it with Google Analytics.

It’s very helpful and you can see in-depth data about your top keywords.

10. Google Trends

Google trends can be a perfect tool to find out new trends and quickly execute on them.

In my experience, it’s much easier to rank for newly discovered keywords and trends, than old ones. if Google ranked your site first for this keywords, you become an original source and then even sites with extremely high domain ranking can’t outrank you.

You can search for a specific keyword.

And go to related queries section. Here you can sort by top keyword or rising keywords.

Top keywords are most searched keywords overtime and rising keywords – which started trending recently (I would focus my efforts on latter).

Also, you can see if interest for this keyword is growing over time.

Overall, Google Trends is an essential tool if you want to create evergreen content – which you expect to rank in years to come.

11. Spy Fu

It’s an interesting SEO hack, but it works.

With Spy Fu, you can spy on competitors paid campaigns.

And you can see for which keywords your competitors are bidding on Google Ads. It can be a great source of fresh keyword ideas.

Rankbrain

Back to you

What are your favorite keyword research tools? Which tools do you use for advanced keyword research and which ones are go-to?

Did I miss some cool tool? Leave suggestions in comments! 👋