Choose the most effective keywords with these keyword research tools to make your website SEO-friendly and get noticed.
When you write content for your website, you want to make sure that content is optimized for search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) uses techniques that help get your website indexed and ranked higher in search engines. When your website has an optimal SEO ranking, it will show on the first page of a search engine results page (SERP) where it will be found by users who are searching for matching content. By being on the first page of a SERP, you will get more views, more clicks, more traffic, and more chances of a successful sale.
One of the easiest and most effective SEO best practices for making your content SEO friendly is to include the correct keywords in your content. As search engine robots (programs that scan the words in your web content) crawl over your website, they “see” these keywords and index them. Using complex algorithms, the search engine uses the robots’ data to evaluate your web page’s relevancy, authority, importance, interest, etc. These factors help the search engine determine the significance, or ranking, of your page based on the keywords that people are searching for.
Therefore, it’s important that you choose relevant, common keywords to be included in your content. You can determine those ideal keywords by using these top keyword research tools.
1. Google Keyword Planner
- Website: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
- Cost: Free!
- Best Feature: Finding competitive keywords
Google has the biggest keyword database in the Internet, and Keyword Planner allows you to find the most competitive keywords for your business or industry. The data from Google’s Keyword Planner comes straight from Google searches, so you can be sure that you’re using keywords that have consistent traffic and will help you rank higher in SERPs.
One of the coolest things about Keyword Planner is seeing how much advertisers are bidding on a keyword. The higher the bid, the more competitive the keyword is, and the more commercial intent a bidder has.
2. Google Trends
- Website: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US
- Cost: Free
- Cool Feature: Find a keyword’s popularity in YouTube
With Google Trends, you can find trending keywords as well as search trends. Simply enter a keyword and look at the “related queries” section where you can find trending search terms related to that keyword. You can also determine just how popular that keyword is during a certain period of time.
Pro Tip - You can also check whether a certain keyword is popular on YouTube, the 2nd most popular “search engine”.
3. Google Search Console
- Website: https://search.google.com/search-console/
- Cost: Free
- Best Feature: Finding “opportunity keywords”
This is an effective tool that allows you to find “opportunity keywords”. These are keywords that enable you to rank between #8 to #20 in a specific keyword search.
Furthermore, Google Search Console has a The Performance Report. This report shows you which pages on your website are getting the most clicks from Google as well as which of your keywords brought users to that web page.
Best of all, you can combine Google Analytics and Google Search Console to get an even more in-depth keyword report.
Besides the Google suite of products, there are other useful independent keyword services.
4. SEMRush
- Website: https://www.semrush.com/
- Cost: $99 - $399 per month
- Best Feature: Identify your competitor’s ranking keywords
SEMRush shows you keywords that your competition already ranks for rather than showing you a list of possible keywords to rank for. When you enter a website’s URL, SEMRush shows you where the site ranks in its database, the estimated number of organic visitors from Google, and the value of the website’s traffic.
SEMRush also shows you “organic keywords” information, which displays a list of keywords that the website ranks for.
5. Moz Keyword Explorer
- Website: https://moz.com/
- Cost: Free - $599 per month
- Best Feature: Provides smart keyword suggestions
Using this tool helps you find keywords that will give you more traffic. Its defining feature, is one that predict how many clicks you can likely get from that target keyword. This is called organic click-through-rate (CTR), or the number of clicks you can expect if you can get to the top 10 positions on a SERP. Your keyword’s CTR score allows you to determine whether or not you should use or target a certain keyword.
6. Jaaxy
- Website: https://www.jaaxy.com/
- Cost: Free - $99 per month
- Best Feature: Find out how many other websites are trying to rank for a keyword
With Jaxxy, you can generate thousands of keywords ideas. This powerful tool provides helpful information around each keyword it generates. This information may include search volume, potential traffic, and more.
Jaxxy also has a feature called “quoted search result” (QSR), which enables you to determine how many websites are attempting to rank for a specific term.
7. Soovle
- Website: https://soovle.com/
- Cost: Free
- Best Feature: Save your favorite keyword ideas
Soovle scrapes and displays effective, competitive, and highly suggested keywords from multiple sources. Sources include Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, and other popular sites. You may be able to find a really great keyword that your competition is unaware of!
Pro Tip - You can save your favorite keyword ideas so you can use them to optimize future content.
8. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
- Website: https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
- Cost: $99 to $999 per month
- Best Feature: Shows you how many backlinks you need to rank on the 1st page of Google
This tool gives you in-depth information on a specific keyword---search volume, number of people who actually click on a result, data on first-page competition, and more.
Ahrefs also tells you the number of backlinks you need to have in order to rank on the first page of a Google SERP.
9. SECockpit
- Website: https://secockpit.com/
- Cost: $25 to $75 per month
- Best Feature: Keyword filters
SECockpit has a useful set of keyword tools; you get a list of results after inputting a keyword.
But more than that, SECockpit also provides you in-depth information on search trends, traffic estimates, search volumes, and organic competition.
You can also use a filter function to find the keywords you want. For example, you can filter for keywords that get searched around 5,000 times a month. The tool is largely designed for SEO professionals.
10. Keyword Tool.io
- Website: https://keywordtool.io/
- Cost: Free
- Best Feature: generates a keyword list based on the content of the web page that you enter
This tool gives you a whole bunch of keyword suggestions and ideas. In addition, it allows you to analyze your competitor’s SEO. Simply enter a competitor’s URL, and Keyword Tool will give you a list of keyword ideas that are based on that website’s content.
11. Keywords Everywhere
- Website: https://keywordseverywhere.com/
- Cost: $10 - $1000 worth of credits that you can use
- Best Feature: Generate a list of keywords related to your business
Keywords Everywhere can be installed as an extension, which enables the keyword data to show on your browser. No need to copy & paste keywords to Google Keyword Planner.
It also has a feature that lists down keywords that are related to your search terms. That means, you can find keywords that your target audience uses to search for your product/service or something similar.
12. KWFinder
- Website: https://kwfinder.com/
- Cost: $29 - $79 per month
- Best Feature: Creating a Keyword Difficulty Score
An easy-to-use, intuitive keyword research tool, KWFinder shows you how hard it is to rank for a keyword that you select. It does this by assigning a Keyword Difficulty Score to the keyword.
With these keyword research tools, you can use the right keywords to optimize your content as you build your website. A properly optimized website will help bring you closer to your business goals and hopefully have you ranking on Google’s first page in no time!