If you run a website, you are probably aware of the importance of using the right keywords. You need to know which terms and phrases people search for in your subject area, then tweak your content accordingly.
But how do you know which keywords to use? How can you find keywords for a website? And how do you know which are the best keywords? Here are several awesome free keyword tools to check out.
1. Google Ads Keyword Planner
Google Ads Keyword Planner is principally designed to help users create Google ads that will find their target market.
However, because it’s free to open a Google Ads account and you’re under no obligation to buy ad space, the Keyword Planner is also a great free tool to help you optimize your site.
Head to ads.google.com to get started. Once you’ve signed in, click on Tools in the header and go to Planning > Keyword Planner.
Google has divided the tool into two sections: Find new keywords and Get search volume and forecasts. If you want a free keyword generator that’ll provide you with lots of ideas, use the first option.
Just enter a word or phrase and Google will return hundreds of associated keywords, along with their average monthly searches and competition.
2. Keyword Tool [No Longer Available]
SEO is a complex topic. If you’re trying to find the best keywords for your site, you shouldn’t only focus on single words or two/three-word phrases. You also need to think about the long-tail keywords.
You can use long-tail keywords to narrow your focus and target a more specific niche. The best example of long-tail keywords are the autocomplete suggestions you see while using Google Search.
Keyword Tool provides an easy way to search through Google’s autocomplete suggestions. The site also supports autocomplete on YouTube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, Apple App Store, Instagram, and Twitter.
The free version of the tool will provide up to 750 suggestions per search. You can set the Google location and language to find localized results.
3. Soovle
Soovle uses the same approach as Keyword Tool, though the website is not as slick.
It is worth mentioning because of the sites it supports. They differ from the sites on Keyword Tool, so you should use the two tools to complement each other.
Soovle works with Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Answers.com, YouTube, and Amazon.
The tool is entirely free to use.
4. Google Trends
Keywords don’t necessarily maintain the same level of traffic year-round. For example, people are less like to search for beachwear in the middle of winter, while the search volume for fancy dress peaks in the run-up to Halloween.
It doesn’t matter what your site is about; there are always keyword peaks you can uncover. Perhaps they’re related to a conference, an important day, the start of the sports season, the launch of a new product, or something else entirely.
One of the best ways to discover those peaks and troughs is to use Google Trends. To make sure and trends you see are consistent and not a recent blip, set the time frame to five years or longer.
You can also customize the country and whether you want to see results for web searches, news searches, image searches, YouTube searches, or shopping searches.
5. Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a unique long-tail keyword generator. The tool splits its suggestions into categories and sub-categories. They are:
- Questions: When, how, which, will, who, can, where, what, are, why.
- Prepositions: Without, near, to, with, for, is, can.
- Comparisons: Versus, vs., like, and, or.
- Alphabetical: The top 20 keywords for each letter of the alphabet.
If you are looking for a free keyword list generator, Answer the Public is a great tool. If you want to see some data and analyze your keywords, it is not as suitable.
6. Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a free plugin for Chrome and Firefox. It adds search volume, cost per click, and competition data to several websites, right below their search boxes.
The tool is especially useful when used with Google Search; just think how many searches you do in a day. If you can see the volume and competition for every query you enter, you’ll quickly start uncovering some hidden gems.
In addition to Google, the supported sites include YouTube, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and many more. The tool also supports some free keyword generators like Answer the Public, Soovle, and Keyword Shitter.
7. Keyword Shitter
Despite the vulgar name, Keyword Shitter is the best free keyword list generator on the list if you want a bumper-size list of suggestions to trawl through.
You need to enter a seed keyword and hit the Start Job button. The tool will not stop generating keywords until you instruct it to do so. You can download the results when it’s finished.
I let it run for about one minute and it racked up more than 2,000 keyword and long-tail keyword suggestions. Surprisingly, most of the combinations made sense in some context. The longer you let the tool run for, presumably the more likely it is start suggesting rubbish.
Remember, pair Keyword Shitter with Keywords Everywhere to quickly spot the keywords that are worth targeting.
Consider a Paid Option for Keyword Research
The tools we’ve discussed in this article are all free. But there are also plenty of paid options out there.
Naturally, many of the paid options have better and more extensive features than their free counterparts. If you are running a large site with thousands of readers, it may make more sense to test a paid option instead.
Making sure that you find the best keywords is only a tiny part of running a successful website; it can quickly become a full-time job.
If you would like to learn more about running a website, check out our other articles on the best website builders The Best Website Builders to Create a Clean Online Portfolio Which free website builder is best for your portfolio? Here are the best website builders you can pick from! Read More and how to make your website load faster 7 Ways to Make Your Website or Blog Load Faster for Visitors Here are some top tips to speed up your site and make sure your visitors stick around. Read More .
Related topics: Blogging, Google, Keyword Research, SEO.
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Thank you great article
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There is Infinity Google Keywords which is not free but it is awesome in that it pulls 7,8,9 word long tail keyword phrases no other keyword tool I have can do and all of these long keywords phrases show up in google autocomplete which means all the keywords do get searches by people.
I use #1 & #2 of this tutorial tips!
great collection to try.
thanks for sharing.
thanks for this article...
Google Adwords Research Tool was realy useful...
Free keyword suggestion tools can be very handy for beginners.
Good resource guide.
Ur articles is very good. I save this site url and visit again. Thanks.
Nice LIst . Keep it up. Thanks.
yeah really good article, but how about google trends for defining of global trends. I think it's very useful thing.
Great info,, thanks for sharing..!
thanks for the great resources using good strong keywords is definitely the way to go if you want to succeed. and the tools you have shown here will make peoples life so much easier. Thanks.
With the Google Keyword Tool, I often search and there are 1000's of results displayed in the Approx Avg Search Volume column yet the data from the previous month is "Insufficient Data".
This does not make logical senses to me as how can there be no search volume (Insufficient data) during previous months if there are 1000's on an average month.
Do you know why.
Thank you for the list. I've been looking for this all over the web and finally saw your site.
Found this information very usefull
Thank you
Good tools. Google's is the best of all.
How good are tools like clickadequalizer or keywordelite?
Thanks for a great posting its so much helpful for me in my SEO works. All tools are new for me I tried Google, these are things which I waned to know but till now I was...
I have been using wordtracker...will try keyword discovery.
I use Google Keywords. WordTracker is a good alternative too.
Thank you for this. This is really useful stuff
If you ask me, #1 and #4 are the best of the flock :)
Thanks for this article. I wasn't aware of any of them.
Thanks a lot for this article! I wasn't even aware that google had such a useful tool! Most definetly these free tools will be able to boost traffic to my website!
Thanks a bunch!