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Keyword Research plays a significant role while you are planning to launch your blog. The rich or long form content will be useless if it’s not pitched with the right keywords. We really need to use the best free keyword research tools in order to find the right fits.
Ask me, why?
Because search engines bring those pages at the top against the keywords people search for. May be your article contains the accurate information but due to poor keyword research strategy, you’ll not gain any appearance. Therefore before writing the content, it is very important to find keywords for website with the help of the best free keyword research tools. These keyword tools are free to use but for a beginner and you should use long tail keywords. There are both pros and cons of using long tail keywords with the free keyword research tools. Though the search volume of such keywords is low but one major benefit of use long tail keywords is they are easy to rank in search engines.
How to find keywords for free? Fortunately there are now best tools available for keyword generation. I will discuss all those free keyword generators in this guide.
Let’s dive in!
A. What are Keywords?
Generally, a keyword is a search term that you use in the search bar of a search engine.
“What are keywords?” is a keyword itself and when I searched for it, millions of results popped up in just a fraction of a second. So, we use these keywords to find the stuff we are looking for on the internet. There are over 3.5 billion searches conducted per day on Google— the world’s largest search engine. There are many other search engines, among them Bing, Yahoo, Youtube, DuckDuckGo and Amazon are popular.
In short, a keyword can be a book name, your favorite game, university or collage name, location, country or currency— the list never ends. If you just have started your blogging adventure, please use long-tail keywords to rank quickly on search engines.
B. What are Best Free Keyword Research Tools?
Just before writing a post on your blog, we need to find the most suitable keyword. There are certain metrics we should know before choosing a keyword.
- Average monthly searches
- Keyword Difficulty
- Geo targeting
- No. of backlinks
Now let’s discuss one by one.
Average monthly searches
It is an estimate of the monthly searches for a specific keyword. Let’s search for the highly competitive keyword— “wordpress” and the results are here.
All of the keywords you see on the screen are highly competitive and have thousands of monthly searches. It means, you’ll definitely need a strong backlink profile to compete such keywords and bring your blog post on the first page of SERP(Search Engine Ranking Pages).
What is Keyword Difficulty?
As the name says, keyword difficulty means how difficult that keyword is to rank on search engines. Higher the difficulty, harder to rank on SERPs. Therefore, make sure to choose a keyword with difficulty ranging from 0 to 10.
Geo Targeting
It can help you to rank quickly. You can set the target location in your keyword based on the users geographic locations. For instance, “best web hosting websites in Latin America”, use it if you are targeting only Latin America’s users.
No. of backlinks
With the help of Ahref’s keyword explorer, we’ll have an idea about number of backlinks needed to rank. If the keyword has a lower difficulty, it means, a few backlinks from authority sites can bring up your blog post of the first page.
Did you see that? We just need backlinks from approximately 2 websites to rank in the top 10. So, the key takeaway is— choose your keywords wisely.
Now let’s check out the best free keyword research tools.
1. Google KeyWord Planner
I start my keyword research with Google’s Keyword Planner which is the best free keyword research tool. We can search new keywords with their average monthly search volumes. There are thousands of keyword ideas available with high, medium and low competitions info on each keyword. Furthermore, select the competitor site that is similar to your niche and find the high ranking keywords for that domain or any specific page.
You must have a Google account to use the keyword planner. Login to the Google Keyword Planner and there will be 2 boxes in the front.
- Discover New Keywords
- Get Search Volume and forecasts
There are arrows under each box to begin the search. Let’s explore the new keywords feature by keyword planner.
In the next step you’ll see two more options.
- Start With Keywords
- Start With a Website
For instance, if you are writing about WordPress, you just need to type wordpress and start exploring. There will be thousands of keywords with their monthly search volumes. Scroll down to go through all the keyword suggestions.
In the start with a web site, paste the competitor’ domain or a specific page URL and you’ll see all the keywords for that domain or page. This is highly recommended keyword research strategy and using this, you will find the exact keywords used by the similar niche site. Just at the upper right corner, click on the download keyword ideas to download in a CSV file. Additionally, you can expand the search by adding more suggested keywords and finally save the file to use those keywords in your content.
2. Keyword.io
In order to find long tail keywords, keyword.io is my favorite and free keyword analysis tool. It’s a very powerful and one of the best free keyword research tools that gives the most relevant and long tail keywords. Those are the actual keywords that people use to search in order to find the product or information. Not only that, there is a long tail keyword finder for each search engine separately. It has around 11 popular long tail auto suggest search tools for each search engine like Google, Bing, Yandex, Youtube, WikiPedia and eBay. For instance, if your targeted audience uses Bing as a search engine, select Bing and type the keyword and it will bring the most relevant keywords searched on Bing. All of that is for free, isn’t it awesome!
Additionally, it has Google Playstore Auto suggest long tail keywords tool to find the keyword ideas for mobile apps. Keyword.io also helps for image SEO and it has two image specific tools to find the keywords for images like Stock Photo and Fotolia.
Here in this example, I have searched for web hosting and look, got 778 long tail keywords. In the similar way, you can search the keyword separately for each search engine and at the end, you’ll have thousands of best long tail keywords. In short, keyword.io is an online free keyword software.
3. WordTracker
It is a freemium keyword tool that allows only 10 keyword searches for free in a single day. Still not bad right? Wordtracker also shares the volume and competition of the keywords just like Google Keyword Planner, so we can compare the number of searches for a single keyword on both platforms.
Wordtracker has a database of 3.5 billion keywords
It has a great offer for users, just sign up and use it completely free for 7 days without paying anything. However, afterwards, it’s $17 per month [Billed Annually] for 1000 keywords for each keyword search. We can search keywords for Google, Amazong, Youtube and eBay.
4. UberSuggest
Neil Patel, a very popular name when we talk about search engine optimization. SEO is a very popular keyword with over a million searches per month and Neil’s site ranks in the first page of Google. I just shared a little bio of Neil Patel because he owns Ubersuggest, a leading best free keyword research tool. Ubersuggest was started to provide keyword suggestion with the help of Google suggest which means it was scrapping the Google’s search terms.
But after acquiring it, Neil Patel has expanded it a lot and introduced more advanced features. Now you can generate around 1 million keyword suggestion using Ubersuggest with a number of search metrics like search volumes, SEO difficulty, Paid difficulty and cost per click. There are paid tools in the market to find SEO Difficulty and Ubersuggest gives us that information for free.
The keywords database contains over a Billion keywords
There are different keywords suggestions for each related tab. You can see the top ranking keywords for any URL of any blog and they can be easily exported to a CSV file[Note: It needs a Google account login]. I would like to share that tip with you to copy the link of any popular blog and paste it in Ubersuggest, you will get all the keywords, backlinks and the volume of traffic. It works like a charm just like other paid search tools.
5. Keywordtool.io
It is an online keyword research tool to get long tail keywords absolutely for free without creating an account. For every keyword you will search, it will show up to 750 long tail keyword suggestions. It is considered as an alternative for Google’s keyword planner because it uses Google Auto complete and generates hundreds of long tail keywords that are relevant to the search topic.
As we all know, whenever we type on Google search bar, it shows many suggestions. But for a blogger, extracting those keywords is a time consuming job that Keyword Tool does quickly. While we type any keyword in Keyword Tool, it appends that search term and places in to the Google search box to fetch all the suggestions. All of that is going on behind the curtain and we can have hundreds of long tail keywords in a couple of seconds.
There are 7 other search engines for you can find the keywords. Those search engines are Youtube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, Google Play Store and Twitter.
6. WordStream
Google’s Premier Partner and USA’s Innovator Award Winner, WordStream is probably one of the best SEO keyword research tool to find the latest and most trending keywords. While searching for keywords, Wordstream offers an option to set the primary interest as SEO or PPC. Select the SEO button to find the SEO optimized keywords to boost the organic traffic.
It is the quickest and fastest tool that generates free keyword list without signing up or installing any software. Like the name says, there is no better way to manage the streams of keywords using Wordstream. It’s my recommended free keyword suggestion tool for website that shares actionable information like competition level and cost per click details.
Wordstream works in a simple way, you need to put the keyword, select industry and country as optional and search. It will show the top 10 keywords, however for all the keywords, enter the email address and Wordstream will send the complete list in your mail box.
7. Keyworddit— The Reddit Keyword Research Tool
It’s a free keyword research tool by the largest social discussion giant Reddit. This tool works by typing the name of a subreddit and it pulls off all the keywords used in that sub. There is a huge volume of discussions going on in a sub and people write a lot of relevant keywords related to that sub. We get a list of all the hundreds of free keywords in seconds.
For instance, I am following a subreddit on Reddit known as /r/bigseo, so I just searched this sub to get the list of the keywords.
After clicking on Get Keywords, here is a long list of the free keywords that the Reddit keyword research tool gives away for free.
The little experience I gained while searching on Google, there are keywords to search on Reddit. So you must check out this tool to get the free keywords.
8. Keyword Sheeter— Best Free Keyword Research Tool for Bulk Keywords
It is a bulk keyword online tool that fetches hundreds of keywords in a single click. It is a bit different to use where you can put one keyword per line at the same time. Then click on the Sheet Keywords button and it starts generating a very long sheet of the best keywords Keyword sheeter also helps to analyze the keyword difficulty.
In the above example, I am trying to get a massive keywords sheet for podcast keyword. You can type multiple keywords on each line for different results. Now let’s sheet the keywords to fetch and you can stop sheeting anytime.
Export the data after the sheeting is complete and literally you will find thousands of keywords in the CSV file.
9. QuestionDB— Best for Question Keywords
Long tail keywords are normally questions or How Tos, for instance, “How to get free backlinks”. We can use it as a search keyword to search the helping articles for building backlinks. The QuestionDB is short for Question Data Base and contains more than 48 Million keywords in it’s database. QuestionDB is a compiled questions database that people search for.
I regretfully say that people don’t use QuestionDB like other popular research tools and want to target the same keywords like everyone else does. That’s how competition grows and keyword difficulty becomes more and more powerful. It is specifically designed for SEO specialists and content marketers.
QuestionDB uses Reddit questions & each keyword has the source link to the sub
Click on the Source and it will open the Reddit link from where the question keyword was extracted. Also, just above the source links, there is popularity drop down to sort by new and popular keywords. Finally the bottom line is, if you are looking for free keywords checker, QuestionDB is the best free keywords research tool to find long tail keywords.
10. Soovle— Classy and Stylish Free Keyword Research Tool
I bet you will never find such a wonderful free keyword analysis tool anywhere over the internet. Its so different and works in a very unique way generating new keywords as long as we keep modifying the main keyword. Just beneath the search bar, there are 6 big search engine icons, click on any icon and it will update the keywords relevant to that search engine.
Each keyword is linked to a page, a video or an answer from where the keyword has been taken. For instance, I am trying to search for “blogging” keywords on Youtube, all the generated keywords are linked to Youtube videos which is amazing. You must try it as there is a lot to learn and know about keyword research.
We can download all the keywords in a single CSV file. Not only that, just at the top left, you can see a star which generates the top keywords on the internet. I have counted and there are 16 search engines you can get the keywords from. At the top right corner, there is engines link, click on it and drag the search engine of your choice and move it to the center of the page and start searching via this engine. The bottom line is I found Soovle as an amazing keyword research tool and I would recommend everyone to give it a try, you’ll love it.
C. Best Free Keyword Research Tools: FAQ's
What is the best free keyword research tool?
Personally, I love Ahref’s Keyword Generator, you can try it for free anytime and there are no limits. You just need to verify that you are a human and not a spamming bot. Though it does not show the whole keywords list in it’s free tier, still you can get the most out of it.
How do I choose keywords?
Take it seriously! Do not choose highly competitive keywords if you are a beginner. See the keywords that your competitors are using in the same niche. Create a list of keywords using the above free keyword research tools. Now narrow down the keywords that are easy and have low difficulty. Finally, choose one after deep research and use it in your post.
What are good SEO keywords?
The keywords that have a low difficulty, moderate search volume and consist of 3 or 4 words are considered to be good keywords from SEO point of view.
How do I do keyword research for free?
The good news is, all the above keyword research tools generate keywords for free. I’d not recommend you to upgrade if you’re on budget. You’ll still get hundreds of keywords to choose from.
How do you find keywords?
Pretend yourself looking for something online. Focus on a single word— for instance, I am looking for “digital watches”. Use it to find more relevant and targeted keywords. In the next step, you need to be more specific targeting only men’s digital watches. The keyword will be “digital watches for men”. You can use the brand name as well in a certain keyword like for example, “casio digital watches for men”. That’s how you find and choose good keywords.
D. Best Free Keyword Research Tools Summary
The beauty of a great content is associated with inserting the right keywords. I consider it is the most important phase for blogging newbies to deeply research the keywords of the similar niches and make their appropriate use. Gladly we have the Top 10 best free keyword research tools that help us to get and download thousands of free keywords. I must recommend you to put at least 2 to 3 hours to find the most suitable keywords.
Most of these keywords tools generate long tail keywords with low difficulty levels. For every newbie blogger like me, using long tail keywords is highly recommended. Their search volume is low but easy to rank in SERPs. Using a hard keyword buries the site on the search engines and we can’t get even a single click from the organic search. It’s better to get some clicks by using a low search volume keyword rather to use a popular one. As long as the site starts to rank, keep updating the keywords with high volumes and difficulty gradually using these top 10 best free keyword research tools.
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36 Comments
Shruti
Wow… this is a very valuable resource.. Thanks
shelby
This is a good resource! Thanks for putting this together and sharing it!
Candice
This article was actually perfect time for me!!!! I had no idea all the resources available!
Brandi-Leigh
Wow! These are some great tools and resources! I am a newer blogger and can definitely benefit from these! Thank you for sharing.
Faisal Rehman
you are welcome
Rebecca
Thank you for the list and the explanations of each. I have tried and used some of these in the past and often use more than one tool just to compare the results as they can vary quite a lot. It is always good to see what is new,
Faisal Rehman
yeah the results are different, try Soovle, its so beautiful and different.
Maysz
Nice I love this I will pinned this post for my one of my blogging tools Thanks for sharing!
Faisal Rehman
that is so nice of you
Vasundhra
Oh wow! I had no idea there were so many keyword research options. Gotta get exploring! Thanks for putting this together 🙂
Faisal Rehman
Yeah writing content without keyword research is useless
Jessica F. Walker | Quirks and Sass Home Decor
I am so glad to see this list, because the keyword tool that I use I think is an a good one. I noticed recently that it was showing me results for keywords that couldn’t possibly be ranking as high as it says they are, because they were specifically for Christmas, and Christmas is now over. People aren’t still searching for it. But it shows that the keywords are in high demand right now. And I’ve been looking for a different key word tools to use but haven’t had time to really research them. So this is very helpful for me, thank you.
Serena
I’m really slack at this and need to get better! Thanks for the kick up the bum!
Anja
wow – super informative post. Thank you for sharing.
Michele
I am saving this for later. Thank you so much!
aisasami
I really liked Keywords Everywhere until they became a paid service. Now I have to search for a new keyword tool. Thanks for some suggestions.
Faisal Rehman
all of these are free tools, you must try all of them
Magen
I’m going to have to save this for later. I’ve been trying to work on learning keywords and SEO and this had a ton of great information and programs I want to look further into. Thank you
Faisal Rehman
You are welcome Megan, if you want to get ranked, do keyword research before writing content.
Amanda Croaff
This post is super informative! I had no idea that there were so many resources out there to help. Thank you for sharing.
Faisal Rehman
Thank you Amanda!
farragio
Great information! I’m bookmarking this as a reference.
Faisal Rehman
Cool, keep visiting for updated articles.
Bindu Thomas
Very useful post. I use some of them in my work, will definitley check out the others.
Faisal Rehman
Did you try Soovle? It’s magical!
Andrionika
Thanks for sharing. I will be pinning this for my future reference.
Heather Ritchie
Thanks for this helpful list of tools. I use a few of them and KeySearch. I love KeySearch and it has some amazing features. UbberSuggest is also awesome.
Faisal Rehman
You should give a try to Soovle, its awesome!
Taylor
Very useful resource material. I have bookmarked this post.
Faisal Rehman
Thanks!
Natalie
Great post. This is such a useful list to have. Will have to save it so I can refer back. Thanks for sharing.
Faisal Rehman
yeah sure, my pleasure
Robyn
Wow, this is so thorough you should turn this into a class or an ebook. Very helpful!!!
Faisal Rehman
Yep, I’ve a plan to update it more and turn it into a short course.
Marjorie
Woooww this is so useful. Many thanks for the tips!
Faisal Rehman
You’re welcome!