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As part 2 of our keyword research blog series, I’d like to dive right into the topic of free keyword research tools. One of the first things I think of when someone says keyword research is all the free keyword research tools that are available. From the number of searches, to the number of potential clicks per month, clicks per day, to average cost-per-click and ad position, and demographics, keyword research tools can give you a plethora of information concerning a particular keyword or set of keywords you’re researching. These tools are very helpful when beginning a search marketing campaign because they can give you an estimate of how much traffic you’re going to receive from these keywords, therefore allowing you to pick the keywords that will drive the most targeted/qualified traffic to your site. In other words, they help you get more bang for your buck! In the pay-per-click world, they are a must!
Below are the 6 most helpful free keyword research tools I could find. I’ve described what information each tool provides.
With Wordtracker you type in one keyword and can get up to 100 top keyword variations and approximately how many searches each one receives. They also have an ‘adult filter’ you can use to eliminate any adult orientated search terms that might be related to your keyword.
The Google Adwords keyword tool is great! You can type in as many keywords as you like to start with, and Google will literally give you hundreds of keywords to choose from including different variations of your keyword to misspellings. They also give you much more information than just keyword variations. They can show you advertiser competition, search volume per month, average search volume total, average CPC , ad position and much more.
The SEO Book Keyword Research Tool is very cool for many reasons. Mainly, it shows the estimated number of daily searches for each Google, Yahoo and MSN. They’ve also recently added an export to CSV feature, so you can now export the entire list of keywords into a spreadsheet to share with others or to use for future references.
The free Keyword Discovery tool is great for giving many different variations of keywords and their estimated number of searches performed. The great thing about Keyword Discovery is thatthey collect data from all major search engines. I do feel however that on some keywords they estimate a very low number of searches .
Spyfu is pretty cool in the fact that they give you more than just variations of keywords you are searching for. Spyfu gives you such information like, an average cost-per- click, cost/day, clicks/day, the number of advertisers also bidding on a particular keyword and the number of search results listed. In addition, they will list out top related terms, related concepts and keywords that competitors bought. What’s even more cool, they will also list out the top 5 (although you can view more) advertisers who are advertising for this keyword, their domain and ad text, both in paid search and organic. Now that’s a lot of info!
This tool doesn’t necessarily give you variations of a keyword you type in, but it gives you traffic forecasting information as well as demographic information. For Example, for the keyword ‘catheter’ I found that that majority of people tying in this keyword are women ages 50+. This will help me understand my target audience better as well as allow me to set up correct demographic settings within my accounts. It also gives me an estimate of when searches on this keyword are highest and lowest so I know when to expect more traffic and when to expect a drop in traffic.
So there you have it! 6 incredibly helpful keyword research tools that are completely free. Now you won’t have an excuse next time to not perform your keyword research. Remember, the more research you can do in the beginning, the better off your results can be in the end!
