Are you looking for the best keyword research tools for blogging and SEO? If yes, you are in the right place. This article shares some of the best keyword research tools used by experts to grow their websites’ traffic.
I always advise my trainees that it’s a must they use the best keyword research tools if they really want to be successful as bloggers or SEO experts.
Writing articles for your website or blog without doing a keyword research is like going to an examination hall with an empty brain. If your website or blog is aimed at making money, then you should arm yourself with information about keywords that can make you money without too much stress.
As a blogger, why will you go and target keywords with little or no volume or keywords that are far too competitive? A good keyword research tool will show the keywords you can target with good chances of ranking high on Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
What is a Keyword Research Tool?
A keyword research tool is usually a web application or software that shows the type of keywords people are searching for on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo etc.
You can use a keyword tool to know the volume of traffic of a particular keyword. You can also use a keyword research tool to gauge how competitive a keyword is.
With a keyword research tool, you can extract keywords that you can use for your content strategy. Keywords extracted from keyword research tools can be used to write articles for blog posts and landing pages.
You can also steal traffic from your competitors by using keyword research tools to unearth the keywords used by your competitors to get traffic to their websites.
Best keyword Research Tool for SEO
1. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword planner is one of the most popular keyword research tools around. This tool was built by Google to help those willing to advertise through Google Adword.
However, bloggers and other SEO enthusiasts now use Google Keyword planner as a tool to research keywords before writing articles around them.
To access Google Keyword Planner, you’ll need to have a Google Ad Account.
To get a list of keywords from Google Keyword Planner, just type a keyword in the search bar and you’ll see a list of similar keywords with their monthly search volume. The monthly search volume of keywords can be used to pick the right keywords to target.
To some, Google Keyword Planner is the best keyword research tool anybody can think of. This tool is free of charge, though it has some limitations.
2. Long Tail Pro
Long Tail Pro is a web application that can be used to check the volume, difficulty and other competitive data of keywords. This cloud based software is very useful if you want to know how competitive a keyword is.
A competition analysis on Long Tail Pro will show the following:
- List of websites in the top rank in SERPs
- Domain authority of the websites
- Domain keyword competitiveness
- Citation flow
- Domain trust flow
- Number of external backlinks
- Root referring domains
- Number of internal links
- Domain age
With Long Tail Pro, you can know how easy or tough a keyword is when it comes to ranking on search engines. Long Tail Pro is a fantastic SEO tool.
Long Tail Pro has a free trial version.
3. SEMRUSH
Just like Long Tail Pro, SEMRUSH is an SEO tool. It has a 14 day free trial version. With SEMRUSH, you can check the difficulty of a keyword; you can also check the volume of a keyword and see the Google Ad Cost Per Click rate (CPC).
You can analyse any website with SEMRUSH. SEMRUSH shows the organic traffic of a website, the keywords a website is ranking for and the rank of each keyword on SERPs. It also shows the websites competing with a website on SERPs.
With SEMRUSH, you can check the number of PPC Ads a website places on search engines and the social media.
With SEMRUSH, you can easily know what to do to outrank your competitors.
You can use SEMRUSH if you really want to get traffic to your website and target keywords that are not too competitive. Targeting a very competitive keyword is a waste of time and efforts in most cases. SEMRUSH will make you efficient in picking keywords that can swiftly boost your site’s traffic.
SEMRUSH updates its data almost every day. It’s arguably the best keyword research tool around.
4. Ahrefs
Ask 8 out of 10 bloggers, they are likely to tell you that Ahrefs is the best keyword research tool they have ever used.
Ahrefs can do all the analysis SEMRUSH does. Its data are broader than SEMRUSH’. Ahrefs can show the number of organic clicks a website gets. It can also show the competitive data of any keyword.
Ahrefs can also show the competitors of a given website and updates its database much more often than SEMRUSH.
Ahrefs keyword explorer can give you hundreds or thousands of keyword ideas; all you need is just to type a keyword in the search box.
For example, if you type the keyword ‘digital marketing’ in the search box of Ahrefs’ keyword explorer, you will get hundreds of keyword ideas relating to the keyword ‘digital marketing’
You can go further by deeply analyzing each keyword to know the one you’ll use as a target keyword in your blog post, web page or landing page.
Ahrefs can also show you the keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can devise strategy to use these keywords and steal traffic from your competitors.
With Ahrefs, you can disavow any toxic links pointed to your website.
The trail version of Ahrefs is $7.
5. KWFinder
KWFinder is a keyword research tool which can do a thorough analysis of any given keyword. KWFinder can show the volume of a keyword and how competitive the keyword is on SERP.
KWFinder has similar functions like Long Tail Pro. It’s also a cloud based software like Long Tail Pro.
You can do a deep analysis of any keyword on KWFinder. All you need to do is to type a keyword on the search bar and you’ll get a lot of data showing you various indicators of the keyword.
KWFinder can also provide keyword ideas for you if you are in need of keywords relating to your main keyword. You can also get a list of long tail keywords from a single keyword.
Long tail keywords are easier to rank, KWFinder can go a long way in helping you to unearth less competitive long tail keywords that you can rank easily.
Your first three searches every day on KWFinder is free charge.
6. SpyFU
SpyFU is one of the SEO tools you can use to do keywords research. SpyFU shows the below data:
- Keyword rank
- Cost per click
- Ranking Difficulty
- Search Volume
- Estimated clicks per month
- Estimated click value per month
With SpyFu, you can see how your website is performing on SERPs. SpyFu will show you how your website ranks for keywords.
It has a vast database that updates every day. SpyFu can also show you how your website increase and decrease in keyword ranks on SERPs. The monthly traffic to your website can also be shown on SpyFu’s portal.
SpyFu has a free trial plan and the good thing is that you do not need to register before you can use the trial plan.
The cost of the basic plan for SpyFU is $33 per month.
7. Keyword Revealer
Keyword Revealer is also arguably the best keyword research app for SEO. This cloud based application can be used to ascertain the volume, difficulty and CPC of any given keyword.
You can use Keyword Revealer before you create any keyword targeted article on your blog. It’ll show you the right keywords to target for your blog. It can also significantly improve your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) results.
Keyword Revealer can show you various keyword ideas, monthly volume of keywords, volume trends in charts, Cost Per Click (CPC), difficulty of keywords and number of words in keywords.
The data generated from Keyword Revealer can be downloaded into a spreadsheet for further analysis if you wish.
8. AnswerthePublic
This is a free keyword research tool that extracts hundreds and thousands of keyword ideas from a single keyword.
Keywords suggested by AnswerthePublic are generated from Google and Bing’s auto-suggest and autocomplete features.
9. Uber Suggest
Would you not rather appreciate Neil Patel for this free keyword research tool? Uber Suggest is a keyword research tool you can use to get hundreds and thousands of keyword ideas.
Uber Suggest shows how difficult a keyword is to rank. The keyword difficulty indicator of Uber Suggest can help a great deal in picking the right keyword to target.
Uber Suggest also shows number of backlinks to a website, domain score of websites and the social signals to a website.
Conclusion
There are a lot of keyword research tools. Some are very expensive while some are cheap.
You need to look at your purse before investing in any keyword tool. You also need to look at the functionalities of the keyword research tools before you choose any of them.
I have tried several keyword research tools and for me, Ahrefs remains the best keyword research tool for SEO and blogging. If you can afford it, buy it.
If you want a free keyword research tool, AnswerthePublic will be the best for me as it can generate hundreds and thousands of keyword ideas from a single keyword.