The SEO market is now becoming more competitive due to its generalized understanding and extensive use of online business setups. Everyone wants to be #1 on Google and in order to achieve that you need to be more cautious about your keyword research strategies. 

There is a huge list of tools that offer Free SEO features based on user requirements and needs. However, they don’t guarantee you rankings or anything similar but they ensure you to extract the best out of it.

Best Free Keyword Research tools

Here, we are looking at the best free keyword research tools and how to use them to power your keyword research. With free keyword research tools, you may not get the top-notch features that come up with premium tools, but you can get quite a bit of value when you can get used-to of it. In this post, you will learn how you can use them for a solid keyword research process that won’t cost you a penny.

Why Keyword Research is So Important?

Did you ever realize! What’s the difference between a headline that goes viral on any social media platform either on Twitter or Facebook and one that’s ignored? The right words or we can say the right keywords.

Before writing content on your website it’s very important to research keyword that people enter into the search engines to find information. Search engines will find your content based on the keywords contains within it. If that keyword receives a large number of search counts each month then your webpage ranks on the first page of Google.

Keyword research allows us as a marketer to invest in small and big businesses to identify what people are searching for on the internet. If we don’t understand what exactly our potential customers are looking for then it would be more challenging to sell products and services to them. As a keyword analyst, you can search for questions, problems and other topics that your customers may be typing into Google.

Primary and Secondary Keywords

There are two different keyword research formats primary keyword and the secondary keywords. As shown by the name, primary keywords are the keywords on which your site holistically depends. These keywords depict details like who you are, what you sell and the services you offer.

If you are offering car wash services in Istanbul, then your focus keyword will be like “car wash services Istanbul” or it can be “Easy Car-Wash service Istanbul” these are the most common phrases that people might search for as a (business-like) car wash services.

Whereas on the other side, your secondary keywords are the alternate phrases that typically relate your primary phrase but with some modifications to generate more reach. Such as if we’ll continue our previous example then it’s secondary keyword would be “self car wash services Istanbul”. In terms of secondary keyword, your phrase is so closely related to your primary keyword with slight modification.

Keyword Types Breakdown

Keyword research terminology is divided into 4 different categories:

  1. Short tail keywords: these keywords are between one to two words long.
  2. Long-tail keywords. these are anything from 3 plus words long and these are the keywords that you want to target to rank easily on Google. The reason is short-tail keywords are too competitive although they may have a lot of search volume).
  3. Body keywords (Keywords that are placed inside the content body, in body keyword approach the words are blend into the content to body in order to create an impact. ).
  4. Head keywords (refer to as the keywords that are placed inside the post meta title, meta description including the page title.)

If your website is not in any kind of authority or you just starting out at a moment then what you want to do is to go for long-tail keywords strategy. They are very easy to rank and this way you’ll start to generate traffic very quickly. So, it’s better if you have low authority site then you need to stick with a long-tail keyword approach.

10 Best Free Keyword Research Tools in 2019

If you want a really easy way to find the right keywords to be found on Google for your business, then try free Keyword research tools. Here is a list of 10 Best keyword research tools that you might be looking for

#1 Google Correlate

Google correlate find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. So, if we type in the word “lose weight” in Google correlate then you will see the results in related queries section that people are also interested in exercises, fattening and other similar keywords. 

Free KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS

It offers all the similar, closely match keywords that people are searching for on Google with the exclude terms filter. You can export the related keywords list to CSV format without much effort.

Pros of Google Correlate Tool

  1. You can find subtopics. (This will help you maximize coverage on the topics, that you can impossibly get rankings on that keyword.)
  2. Find Hidden Gems (All the results that correlate tool shows are relational and not necessarily bound by phrase match or keyword matching as many premium tools do.)

Cons of Google Correlate Tool

  1. Google Correlate does not provide any search metrics that accompany these keywords.
  2. Irrelevant terms (You will often find keywords that apparently have a low correlation such as mentioned in an example given below for keyword “losing weight”.)

TOP Free keyword research tool

#2 Keyword Shitter

This tool mines google auto suggest keywords based on the seed keywords. If I type in “Lose weight” in Keyword Shitter tool then it starts mining data from google auto-suggest. It’s simple and easy to use keyword research tool with limited search filters.

Pros of Keyword Shitter Tool

You can generate lots of related keywords (The main advantage here is you can generate thousands and thousands of related and long-tail keywords. They also have a nice positive and negative filter that you can use it to narrow down your list).

For Example: If I wanted to find modifier keywords then I can type in as best top 10 and 2018. This narrows down our results quite amazingly.

keyword shitter free seo tool

Cons of Keyword shitter tool

There a couple of major cons to this tool some of them are listed below:

  1. It can take quite a long time to find keywords that are actually meaningful.
  2. There is no search metrics.

#3 Keyword Everywhere

Keyword everywhere is a Google Chrome browser extension that aids inline view of search metrics on popular websites. All you have to do is to install the extension in your google chrome browser and sign-up for a free account and then enter in your API key into the settings. 

Now when you go to any of these sites you will get instant keyword metrics. The screenshot is mention below. 

free keyword explore

So, if I go to Google search and type in a keyword phrase then it will show the various metrics right beside your target query and auto-suggestions as well. You’ll also see the related keywords and other keywords that people search for on the right side of the Google search results page.

Pros of Keyword Everywhere

The most obvious pro for this tool is that it offers you the search matrices for free that includes search volume and other prospects that we want to observe for our keyword.

Cons of Keyword Everywhere

Despite its matrices, there is one serious issue with it. They source their data from Google Keyword planner alone. That usually shows inaccurate search volumes extracted from google keyword planner. 

#4 Search Engine Auto Suggest

You might think I am talking about Google, No! I’m not. There are numerous other search engines that you and I use every single day like Amazon, Pinterest, youtube and many more. If you are searching for the best gym in the USA. Then you will see all sorts of Great ideas that search engine generate for you as a long-tail query. Honestly speaking!

The query generated from these search engines provides better results than using just google search suggestions.  

Pros Of Search Engine Auto Suggestions

These search engines offer more specific and more appropriate long-tail quires with the amazing list of modifiers you might be looking for with a number of variations.

Cons of Search Engine Auto Suggestions

One of the major disadvantage of using this strategy is it will require a lot of time and effort to compile data. There is a Lack of filters in search engine autosuggestions.

#5 Google Trends

This is one of the amazing tools that I personally use it for keyword research. Using these trends you can see the past and present popularity of keywords or topics. 

For Example:

If you will search for a selfie stick keyword then you will see that trends are pretty stable over the past 12 months and on the same phrase keyword everywhere show the monthly search volume of 200,000 searches. But that was totally incorrect.

Google trends free keyword research toolThe thing is search volumes in keyword planner are rounded annual averages. So, if we change the trends to the past 5 years you’ll see the popularity of keyword from the last 5 years. This way we can get a great idea that when and which keywords to target.

Google Trends Pro’s

A solid pro to google trend is that you can do market research on a niche, product or topic and get an understanding that it’s worth your time and effort to pursue or not. It offers user-friendliness along with data visualization. One can download its visual reports in order to make more prominent strategies.

Cons of Google Trends

Since google trends are based on popularity among all keywords and all topics you won’t know anything about search volume or how much organic traffic this term can generate for you. It’s difficult to find localized search data and actual search volumes that other free tools offer. There is only data for popular terms.

#6 Answer the Public

You just have to type in a seed keyword in it and run the search, you will see that it has hundreds of questions, comparisons, and prepositions. If we move to the question section and switch to the data view. You can see search volume since we have the keywords everywhere extension installed.

So, a solid benefit of using it is that you can find some amazing long-tail keyword phrases here. It also offers some great keyword ideas and low competition keywords. As for cons, the data is actually quite limited as compared to other keyword research tools available.

#7 Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an astonishing yet, most popular search engine that doesn’t need any intro. It’s the most popular among all and everyone knows it well, due to its diverse and vast data resources. Despite its data strength, Wikipedia also provides contextual keywords that might be useful for your site research ideas.

Just search for the Term you want to rank for, there you’ll find out the list of related terms that might suit you in your Secondary keyword research ideas. Wikipedia allows brainstorming your idea in order to cover all the details with more precision.

Wikipedia Free keyword Research Tool

List down the terms that are most common to your primary key phrase, compile the keyword ideas in an excel sheet to analyze the keywords and phrases well.  Wikipedia allows researchers to find more related more summarised prospects, one might be looking for to get more understanding.

Another interesting way to do keyword research on Wikipedia is, just type in the key phrase with the alphabetic variation starting from a to z in order to find the best match Wiki auto-suggestion will show you great long-tail ideas that are related to your niche including every detail that you might be looking for as long-tail keyword.

Pros of Wikipedia

One can find a root keyword in the hierarchical term, with all its prospects listed in a structural ordering, containing a wide variety of different keyword ideas. Wikipedia search engine allows you to hyphenate your keyword research strategy to make it more powerful. You can use Wikipedia filters in order to generate more specific results with its variation in different regions across the Globe.

Cons Of Wikipedia

Aside from all, Wikipedia doesn’t offer search matrices that most of the keyword research tools offer.

#8 Google Keyword Planner

Google keyword planner comes eighth among the most rated free keyword research tools, offering one of the huge keyword databases to experts worldwide. The consensus made on google keyword planner in 2015, made him the best free tool that offers pay-per-click along with keyword research option.  It’s more logical, that if we use Google’s own tool to conquer more keyword opportunities.

Pro’s Of Google Keyword Planner

Here is the list of Benefits that Google Keyword planner offers.

  1. It offers a diverse set of database, as it’s the Googles own tool.
  2. One can save their keywords on the keyword planner.
  3. It provides a wide variety of filters to make your work more convenient.
  4. Great User Experience with easy to use the menu.
  5. One can have access to historical data.

Con’s of Google Keyword Planner

  • Incorrect search volume.
  • There is a very limited suggestion that keyword planner offer.

#9 Soovle Keyword Research

Basically, it’s going to be a very useful tool for you if you want to look at keywords ideas across different platforms. You just need to type in the keyword that you want to rank for it will automatically extract all the data at once from all the six platforms just like autosuggest.

Soovle offers you a single platform to search for the queries on different search engines with both short and long-tail variations. Soovle allows you to prioritize your engine first in order to make it a user-oriented look.

Pros of Soovle Tool

  1. Easy to understand User Interface.
  2. All search engines auto-suggest ideas in one place.
  3. User customization
  4. If you’ll click on any of the keyword ideas, it will bring you to that specific search engine page with that keywords variation typed in for you.

Cons of Soovle Tool

  • It won’t offer Search volume and other matrices
  • It doesn’t have any proper exporting data option to your desired location.

#10 Wordtracker scout

Wordtracker scout is a Google Chrome extension similar to keyword everywhere. Despite it’s easy to understand navigation, word tracker offers you to extract metadata along with keyword difficulty and the targeted keywords. There are some easy to use filters as well in order to generate results based on the specified location.

Pros of Wordtracker Scout

  • Easy to understand navigation.
  • Custom filters.
  • Data Easy to extract on just one click.

Cons of Wordtracker Scout

  • The limited number of results shown.
  • Sometimes it shows irrelevant keywords.
  • Search volume matrices are not available.

User’s Intent Types

There are several concepts that should be brought into consideration while doing keyword research, amongst them “keyword research Intent” is the most crucial one. You can take it as an ultimate keyword research guide. This will include three steps process:

  1. Navigational: In the navigational stage the intent is to provide reach to a particular site etc. “Linkedin”, “Citibank login” or “white house website”.
  2. Informational: In the second phase the aim is to acquire information that is assumed to be available on one or more website pages. etc. “Signs of fever”, “Rent prices in Dubai”, “Sony TV reviews”
  3. Transactional: In this phase, one needs to perform web-mediate activities. etc. “Get insurance quotes”, “Subscribe to Zipcodezoo”.

While doing keyword research you don’t need to use all of these tools. You have to set your own keyword research pattern, that will include finding out trending queries, long-tail words support including search volume and a series of matrices. Once you identify how you will sequence these search tools to create your own query you are ready to go.