Keyword research is the heart of content marketing. Without the right keywords, you can not make your appearance at the top of the search engine. But paid keyword research tools are very expensive. So, if you are just starting your career as a blogger, how do you start? Don’t worry; here is the list of the best free Keyword research tool.
What are the benefits of using free keyword research tools?
You can do keyword research with both paid and free tools. Ahref keyword research tool is the most popular. But this tool is very expensive for bloggers. Let’s see the price plan of Ahref;
There has no excuse for the benefits you will receive from this powerful keyword research tool. But the price is high.
Most beginner bloggers don’t show interest in using paid tools at the beginning of their blogging career. When I first started my blogging career, I would use this keyword tool by sharing. Now, it has been tough to use a shared account because of its limit.
Don’t worry. There are lots of free keyword research tools that you can use while doing keyword research. Obviously, there are some extra benefits that you need to sacrifice while using free keyword research tools. Let’s see the benefits first:
Cost-effectiveness: Keyword research is one part of SEO or other marketing tasks. You need to do a lot of things when you are running a business or blogging. In case of your limited budget, you can take advantage of using the free keyword research tool.
Discover Ideas: There have limits to free keyword research tools. Yet, you can discover keyword ideas from these tools. Paid tools give more accurate search volume and keyword difficulty, but you will get many keyword and content ideas from free and paid tools.
Optimize Content: Sometimes, we need lots of keywords and LSI for optimizing content. You can use free keyword research tools to find more keywords and LSI for the main keywords.
Though paid tools have some limits in using also, so, you can find LSI and some keywords with free keyword research tools.
What Is The Accuracy Of Using Free Keyword Research Tools?
Both paid, and free keyword research tools use third-party data to show search volume, keyword difficulty, and other metrics data( Except Google Keyword planner) . Let’s first know the process of collecting data from these keyword research tools to clarify this matter.
API Access:
Only search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDukGo other search engines have accurate data about users’ activities.
Paid keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush have access to the API of Google, Bing, and other search engines. This is the best way to collect data from one source to another. Check the ahref’s data collection method called big data.
Web Scraping
Web scraping is another way to collect user data from Search engine result pages and other online sources. Free keyword research tools sometimes use this type of way to collect data.
Clickstream Data
Some keyword research collects users’ data from different software, browser extensions, and apps. Based on these users’ behavior and search data, keyword research tools provide keywords difficulty and search volume.
Top Free keyword Research tools available in the market.
There are lots of keyword research tools available in the market. Depending on the popularity and accuracy of the data, I have selected some top keyword research tools here. Let’s know the details about them.
Google Keyword Planner
Google keyword planner is my first keyword research tool. When I first learned keyword research, I used this tool. It was a matter of excitement when I first used this tool. But now, I use Ahref for keyword research.
Data Collection Method:
As it is Google’s own tool, they use first-hand data to provide the best result. Actually, it is a sub-tool of the Google ads service tool, Google Adword. This tool is specially made for advertisers to discover new keywords, research keywords, get bid estimates, and make their plans. Check how Google Keyword planner works in detail.
Pros
- Access to the Largest Search Engine Database: As Google is the largest search engine in the world and capture 90% search market, you will get more insight data from this tool.
- Fully Free: Some free keyword research tools give limited data for free. Then we need to upgrade for further information. But you can use Google keyword planner at no cost. Just create a Google ads account and use them as required.
- Give search volume and competition data: For blogging or doing SEO, we need search volume and Keyword difficulty data, and this tool gives these two metrics accurately.
- Provide Keyword suggestions: You will not only get matrics of different keywords, but also you will get different keyword suggestions. That will help you to work with more ideas.
Cons
- Limited Access to Data: Though it has large data, it provides limited data about keywords’ search volume, competitions, CPC, or historical data. You will get a range of search volume and competition. So, it becomes tough to take precise data and accurate plans. In the above picture, you can see the lowers average search volume is 1,000, and the highest average search volume is 10,000. So, we don’t know whether the actual search volume is 2,000 or 8,000 per month. So, it becomes tough to make a decision in this huge data gap.
- Focus on Paid Advertising: I have already said this is the sub tool of Google. It has been developed to give insight to advertisers. So, bloggers and SEO experts don’t get their expected metrics from this tool. You will not get organic search result reports or competition reports from this tool.
My opinion: It is a great tool for keyword research for Search engine advertisers. But if you are blogger or SEO expert, you need to do lots of manual work to make a better plan for your goal.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is another great tool for advertisers, SEO experts, and bloggers. You can add your project, find keywords, check keyword search volume, Keyword difficulty, and many other metrics.
Data Collection Method:
Ubersuggest collects data monthly basis from Google API. So, you will get almost accurate data from this tool.
Pros
- Free Use: With the free option of ubersuggest keyword research tool, you will get lots of SEO metrics. So, it is very helpful for beginners who have a very tight budget for their projects.
- Good user-Interface: Some keyword research tools are not user-friendly but you can easily use ubersuggest. You will get all the important data in one click. The data download process is also easy.
Cons
- Limited Access to the Free users: Though you will get some data in the free version, you need to upgrade for more details data. There has also limited number of daily searches.
- Low Accuracy of Data: Though ubersuggest collects data through Google API, they don’t update real-time data. So, some data can be outdated. Again, after taking data from Google, they represent those data in different methods. Btw, Although they don’t give 100% accuracy, their data is not a scam. You will get a valuable insight into data and can make a deliberate decision for your SEO, advertising, and blogging.
MOZ Keyword Research Tool
It’s both a free and pro keyword research tool. You will get great ideas about keywords and competitors but limited ones. You will get the most important data from this tool.
You can check site overview, ranking keywords, SERP analysis, spam score and so on.
Data Collection Method:
Moz claims that they crawl and index data by crawling and indexing links by themself. I have not found clear information about it.
Pros
- Free for some data: If you need a very low amount of data and use it two to five times per month, you can use this tool. Every month, Moz will give you some credit to check keywords and some metrics.
- Helpful information to take decision: It gives the most relevant information for SEO experts, content marketers, and bloggers. You can easily discover lots of keywords and check ranking keywords.
- User-Friendly: Moz keyword research tool is very user-friendly to beginners. It uses the most relevant terms of SEO in its keyword research tool.
Cons
- Limited Access to data: With its free version, you will get a limited number of usages and limited data. You can search only 10 times per month with free version. Besides, it only give limited location data. You can only get search information of the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. So, if you target other countries, you will not get accurate information.
AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is another great free keyword search volume tool. But you can search a limited number of times with a free account. You can use it for SEO, content marketing, paid media, consumer research, and public relations. By registering on this tool, you can do 3 free searches per day.
Data Collection Method
This tool collects search data from Google’s autosuggest feature. Previously it would only give lots of questions and ideas. It claims that it runs all queries through its own servers to collect question data. Now, it gives search volume data and CPC.
Pros
- Long-tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are very popular for their low search volume and easy ranking possibility. It gives lots of long-tail keywords that people search on search engines.
- User-Friendliness: You can easily find all options and use data in your own way.
Cons
- Limited Functionality: By registering on this platform, you can search 3 times per day. So, you can’t do huge keyword research with this tool.
- Low accuracy: As it doesn’t update data regularly, some claim about its low accuracy of search volume and competition.
ChatGPT
I think you have wondered about hearing ChatGPT as a keyword research tool. Stay back and try this as a keyword research tool. I think you will be more wondered. Let’s see how I use ChatGPT as a keyword research tool.
Data Collection Method
Pros
- Free of cost: You will get many keyword ideas from chatGPT without any cost. Just give an instruction, and it will give lots of keywords within the blink of an eye.
Cons
- No specific data: Though ChatGPT is helpful in finding some awesome keyword ideas, you will not get exact search metrics from it. You need to use other tools to check search volume, competition, or CPC for that keyword.
- Can’t capture update: As ChatGPT is a language model, it only gives based on what is imputed on it. So it can’t capture the most recent data.
The Effective Ways of Doing Keyword Research
When you start doing keyword research, there are many factors that you should take into account. It also depends on your SEO plan. But there are some facts that are relevant to any type of research. I will discuss that in this section:
Keyword Intend / Relevance
According to Google, this is the most important aspect behind a keyword. For example, if you landed on this page from a Google search, what was your intent? To learn about “Free Keyword research tools,” – right?
What if this blog was about only paid keyword research tools, and my intention was to sell them to you? You would have left this page already.Because I was trying to trick you. Therefore, before you start writing any articles, you must understand the intent behind the keyword.
To learn more about this, we should know the types of keywords. There are mainly 4 types of keywords. They are:
Informational: Most people look for information on the internet. All of these fall into this category. How will you recognize them? Well, if that starts with a W/H question such as “How to do keyword research.” Sometimes it could be a descriptive line, but the intent behind the line is to learn something, not to buy. Be careful about this.
Navigational: This type of keyword is used to navigate some websites. For example, “Facebook login”. “Gmail Login.” People are finding the login page here. You don’t want to write an article on this topic.
Commercial: These are mainly product reviews. For example, you have learned about Ubbersuggest from this page. Now, if you want to know more about this tool, you can do a search, “Ubbersuggest review.” This is an example of a commercial keyword.
Transactional: These keywords have a straight buying intent. For example, “Buy iPhone 11.” The person knows everything about iPhone 11 and wants to buy it. Therefore, writing content on this topic won’t help you. Because the search engine won’t let your content up in the SERP. Why? Because you don’t sell iPhones.
I hope this was informative to you. Now you can understand the intent or relevance behind keyword research. In most paid tools, you can filter keywords according to the intent. And again, the intent is the main cause of why a website is at the top of the search engine. So, don’t waste your time picking a wrong intent keyword and working on it.
Search Volume
You can understand this topic from the heading. It is about how many people are searching for this keyword. Most tools will tell you about the search volume. You can use free Chrome extensions like Surfer to know the search volume of the keyword you are looking for.
One thing you should consider, this metric can change according to different tools as nobody knows the exact data for real. But you will get an overall idea.
One important tip, don’t always go for high search volume keywords. If you are a new blogger, you should not target a keyword with over 200 monthly search volume for your website. Because you will not get ranked for those keywords. High search volume comes with high difficulty, also.
Difficulty
This is the most important factor from a blogger’s perspective. The first thing you should consider is the difficulty of the keyword. So, how do tools tell the difficulty? There are several metrics involved here, such as Domain Authority, Domain Ratings, Backlink profiles, etc.
The difficulty level also becomes different with different tools. It depends on how that tool calculates the level.
Another thing you can do is do a Google search and look at how many articles are there on SERP. How big are those sites that are showing at the top? If all of the sites are big sites with lots of traffic, you should not work on that keyword at the beginning.
So, to check the difficulty, don’t just rely on the tools; you should also check manually.
There are some other factors, but these three are the most important ones. So, next time before you start doing keyword research, don’t forget to check all these metrics. Don’t work on that keyword if something doesn’t go in your favor.
Final Words
Free keyword research tool is great for beginners who need a low volume of data for daily work. If you provide SEO services, professionals in blogging, or other sectors, you need to use paid keyword research tool later.
