UPDATED: 6/23/20. One source of keywords are on the search engine results pages (SERPs) themselves: You will often see links to related searches in the SERPs. You can also find keywords from your web site’s own traffic analytics program.
The following list of 14+ keyword research tools to help you understand what people are searching for, and, therefore, what people want. Lucky you!
- Google offers several tools for conducting keyword research
- Google Trends – See what topics are trending in search right now.
- Google Trends Explorer – Compare how various keywords have perfomed over time. Google Trends Explore data reaches back to 2004.
- Google Suggest is the feature of Google search that provides related search queries from a drop-down list as you type. YouTube has the same feature for video-related search terms.
- Google Search Console is a feature of Google Webmasters service that allows you to see keyword impression and click-through data for content on sites you control.
- Google Analytics – While Google has all but eliminated organic keyword data from its Analytics service, you can reverse engineer that data using search landing page reports. Plus, when you tie your Google Ads account to Analytics and Search Console, you can pull that data into Google Analytics for ease of analysis and reporting.
- Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool within Google Ads that provides performance data on keywords that have been bid on for Google’s search ads. Data includes historic performance, average searches per month, cost per click and much more. While you will need a Google Ads account to use this tool, you do not have to pay for ads to use it.
- Moz is a premium tool I use that, in addition to keyword research, also provides an excellent link explorer tool for link building. Moz provides several free SEO tools, as well.
- SEMRush – This is a for-fee tool that I use extensively. They collect their own keyword data, so it’s a great way to fill the void left by Google Analytics’ damn (not provided). While the tool is built on its keyword databse, the tool is much more than that.
- Ubersuggest – Is similar to SEMRush, providing keyword research and content discovery, without the advanced and sophisticated features of SEMRush. Ubersuggest, however, is free.
- Bing Ads Keyword Planner – Bing’s data is based on organic searches, not paid searches and go back six months for historic data.
- WordTracker – Full featured, subscription-based keyword research tool. This is a freemium tool, so you can unlock more data with a paid subscription.
- KeywordDiscovery – Full featured, subscription-based keyword research tool. Free version. Keyword Directory – identify specific search terms that drive traffic to web sites within each industry category.
- Yoast Suggest – Export Google Suggest results in a CSV file. This tool is provided by the popular SEO WordPress plugin.
- KeywordTool.io – In addition to Google, YouTube and Bing suggest keyword data, this tool offers the same data for Amazon, eBay, Google Play Store and trending hashtags for Instagram and Twitter.
- FollowerWonk – Point it at any Twitter account and get word clouds of keywords used most frequently in that account’s Tweets. This is a freemium tool for which you can unlock more data with a paid subscription.
- BuzzSumo is a freemium content marketing tool that you can use to get social sharing data for content based on your keyword search.
- Answer The Public gives you all the questions people are asking related to your keyword search. You can download your research into a CSV file. A Pro version is available.
- KeywordSpy – Similar to other premium tools, KeywordSpy provides data on the search advertising activity of a given domain.
- Alexa is Amazon’s premium digital marketing tool that includes a keyword research function. Pricing starts at $149 a month, with a 14 day free trial.
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