Best SEO tools for Keyword Research

Let’s get started with keyword research, shall we?
Here are the best tools to do keyword research.
Keyword research forms the basis for any SEO efforts. It often determines the domain of a site, article topics, site structure as well as the keywords inside content.

Since it directly influences traffic, any site’s success greatly hinges on doing proper keyword research. So much so that we wrote an entire article on this topic. Use the following tools to make this process even easier.

1.Google Keyword Planner (free)

Though it has become less accurate over time, Google’s keyword research tool should still be part of every SEO’s toolbox. It allows you to find groups of keywords and related search terms, estimate monthly search volumes, gage the competition and find other important information.

Perhaps the most well-known tool out there. With this Keyword Planner tool, you can not only see how much traffic a particular set of keywords generates but also how much is that traffic worth.

If one of your monetization strategies is Adsense, then you can target the highest CPC keywords in your niche.

2. Google Trends (free)

Another Google tool that allows you to check whether a interest into keywords is increasing or decreasing. Trends can also show you regional interest in your topic, related topics and related search queries. Highly recommended!

Google Trends is essential for your site if you want to write content that will continue to drive traffic later on.

You don’t want to write about fidget spinners after all the hype has died down, for instance.

3.Ubersuggest (free)

A very useful keyword suggestion tool. Type in any seed keyword and it will mine different sources for proposed search terms. The service also lets you save and download your personal keyword list, however, it doesn’t provide any data on traffic or else. A simpler tool that also creates huge amounts of long-tail keywords is Keyword Shitter.

4.Keywordtool.io (freemium)

Similar to Ubersuggest, Keywordtool.io is a great tool to create large lists of (long-tail) keywords. Type in a starter search term and the SEO tool will mine Google’s autocomplete function for recommendations (including commonly asked questions). It also works for YouTube, Bing, Amazon and the App Store. The Pro version provides additional keyword ideas and has valuable data like average monthly searches and a lot more.

5.0AnswerThePublic (free)

“How to do SEO”

“What is Search Engine Optimization”

“How to write a novel”

These are different queries that people type on Google every day.

With Answer the Public you can quickly see which questions people are asking and craft blog posts to answer those queries.

If you write a perfect blog post that answer that question in depth, you might even win the Featured Snippet section on Google, driving you most of the traffic for that query. Considering that only about 12% of the results have a Featured Snippet, you will most likely win that spot.

Speaking of questions that get typed into search engines, this tool generates exactly that. Put in a keyword and will show you all the questions people pose about it to Google. Great source of information and also good to have a giggle every now and then.

6.SEMrush (freemium)

A very comprehensive tool that offers much more than keyword suggestions. SEMrush allows you to see what keywords competitors rank for as well as their landing pages, keyword positions and a whole lot more.
Can’t have a list without SEMRush.
Very similar to Ahrefs, SEMRush allows you to analyze your competitor very well. You can hop in and see their most visited pages and know which keywords are driving the most traffic to them.

7.Ahref’s Site Competitor Analysis and Keyword Explorer

What better place to find keywords than to see what your competitors are ranking for. Simply type a site you want to analyze and it will quickly return the keywords they are targeting.

Also you can use their Keywords Explorer to seed millions of keywords and also get their KD (Keyword Difficulty).

Ahrefs is the main tool I use for 99% of my tasks. I love it. 

8.Google Location Changer
With Local SEO becoming a major part of how Google renders their results, it is imperative that you rank well for the community that you serve.

With the location changer, you can see how the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) look for a particular city. Quite useful.