7 Recommended Free and Best SEO Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools are tools used to find relevant keywords in SEO strategies.

A SEO keyword research tool will help identify keywords that best suit a particular topic or niche by providing information on volume, level of competition, search trends, and other related data.

Using the right SEO keyword research tool will make it easier for you to do an in-depth analysis of the targeted keywords.

This will be very helpful for optimizing SEO strategies, creating more relevant content, and increasing page rankings on the SERPs.

So, what are the keyword research tools that can be used?

Before knowing it, first understand keyword research, starting with the urgency of its use and benefits in the following guide.

The Importance of Keyword Research for SEO

Keyword research is an important step in an SEO strategy. This stage requires an effective SEO keyword research tool to identify keywords that are relevant and in accordance with the topic of the content.

This information can be used to develop the right content strategy, produce relevant content, and respond to user questions or needs.

The right SEO strategy will have an impact on increasing visibility in search engines. SEO will help websites appear in the top search results when users search for targeted keywords.

This can increase the chances of getting organic traffic.

This traffic can bring other opportunities, one of which is conversion.

The right SEO strategy will ensure that users who come to the website have relevant interests or needs, thereby increasing the chances of conversion.

The Benefits of Keyword Research

Keyword research has significant benefits for SEO and online marketing strategies, such as:

1. Finding Information Searched By Users

Through keyword research, some information can be found, one of which is the keywords that are often searched for by users.

This information is very important because it provides content feedback that must be made to meet user needs.

2. Understand the Competition Landscape

Another benefit of keyword research is that it provides an overview of the keywords competitors use in their strategies.

These keywords can be studied to better understand how they achieve top rankings on search pages.

3. Identify Opportunities With Low Competition

Content can appear easily at the top of the SERP if it has keywords with a low level of competition.

However, finding these keywords is not easy.

For this reason, keyword research is needed to identify low- or medium-competition keywords that still have decent search volume.

These keywords provide a greater chance of achieving the highest ranking on search pages and getting relevant organic traffic.

On the other hand, keyword research will also provide information on which keywords to avoid.

Usually, keywords that are already used by websites at the top of the rankings are very difficult to compete with.

4. Understand Search Intent

Search engines like Google are on a mission to serve up the most relevant results for every search query from users.

Google will recommend the most relevant content that aligns with search intent.

Keyword research can help you understand the keywords that users are searching for. That way, the content strategy created will be in accordance with user intentions.

5. Generate New Content Ideas

Sometimes, coming up with new content ideas for websites is not easy. Fortunately, keyword research can help overcome these problems by:

• Displays trending keywords
• Frequently asked questions by users
• Topics that have not been widely discussed by the same competitors in your business industry

Why Should You Use a SEO Keyword Research Tool?

Doing keyword research manually can be time-consuming and difficult to obtain accurate data. Therefore, the use of a SEO keyword research tool is highly recommended. In addition, this tool also has several other benefits, namely:

1. Develop Organic SEO

This tool not only helps find relevant keywords but also provides insight to maximize the use of keywords in SEO strategies.

The right SEO keyword research tool will help decipher keyword trends and find relevant long-tail keywords.

This data can be used in content creation. By targeting the right keywords, content will be well optimized and have the opportunity to rank at the top of the search results page (SERP).

2. Track Metrics

In content marketing, it is important to know the performance of the keywords targeted in the content. Fortunately, some keyword research tools have features for tracking keywords.

This feature will provide information about keywords that drive traffic, competition with competitors, and the number of visitors who interact with the content and become potential customers.

3. Staying Competitive

A SEO keyword research tool can provide information about trends and keyword strategies used by competitors.

This tool can help carry out competitive analysis regarding targeted keywords, optimize content, and exploit opportunities to improve website rankings.

4. Finding High-Quality Keywords

Long-tail keywords with low search volume and competition are ideal keywords to use.

Using these keywords can help get traffic that has the potential to generate conversions.

The best free tools for keyword research can find the right keywords you need easily.

5. Helps Create an SEO Plan

SEO keyword research tools have data on volume, level of competition, and search trends for keywords.

This data can be optimized to identify keywords to target, set content creation priorities, and optimize websites. This will help in planning a more targeted and efficient SEO strategy.

Best Free Tools for Keyword Research

Currently, there are many choices of SEO keyword research tools that can be used. Most of these tools implement a paid system so that you can use the features optimally.

No need to worry; there are several free tools for keyword research that you can use. Here are some of them:

1. Google Search

One of the best tools for doing keyword research is Google search. Besides being simple and easy to use, this tool can also present keyword recommendations related to searches directly.

For example, when looking for the keyword "SEO" on the search page. Then, Google Search will display a dropdown of several derived keywords.

From these keywords, there is information taken in the form of the most needed keywords searched by users.

So that search results are not affected by previous search history, use Google Search in a guest window or in incognito mode.

2. Google Trends

This tool has access to data from Google search results in real time. Therefore, Google Trends is very suitable for finding search trends at certain times and keywords that are currently popular.

In addition, this tool also has several advantages, such as:

• Displays a list of trending topics
• Has a search filter by region
• Presents the development of the topic
• Provide relevant keyword recommendations
• Has easy-to-use features and navigation

3. Google Keyword Planner

This tool is provided by Google Ads to find keywords, view monthly search volume, and estimate keyword competition.

In addition, this tool can also be used by businesses with keyword ads that can drive conversion rates.

How to research keywords with Keyword Planner can be done using two features, namely:

1. Discover New Keywords: This feature can search for up to 10 relevant keywords. In addition, Discover New Keywords also provides information regarding search rate and keyword competition.
2. Get Search Volume and Forecast: The use of this feature is very suitable for mapping keyword ad strategies. This is because Get Search Volume and Forecast can display specific information about keyword performance and paid search.

Although intended for advertisers, you can take advantage of this tool for organic keyword research.

4. Google Search Console

This free tool from Google is perfect for conducting keyword research and monitoring website performance.

Google Search Console will display keyword performance reports for each piece of content. On top of that, this tool can also be integrated with WordPress.

Using Google Search Console is also quite easy. There are only two main parts that need attention: performance to see the overall content performance report and queries to do keyword research.

In the queries section, there is a list of keywords used along with some information such as CTR, impressions, clicks, and the website's average position in search results.

5. SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool

Keyword research for SEO can be done using this tool. SEMrush offers the Keyword Magic Tool feature.

These features can display information such as relevant keywords, monthly search volume, level of competition for organic search, and level of competition for ads.

This tool also has a sorting feature, which can be very useful for filtering keyword recommendations based on certain metrics.

6. Ubersuggest

Even though this tool is still relatively new when compared to other tools, Ubersuggest offers features that are no less interesting.

Neil Patel's tool is highly recommended for finding new content ideas. This is because this tool offers a variety of keyword research features.

Ubersuggest can display some important information, such as keyword trends, content title recommendations, organic competition level, CPC, ad competition level, and search volume.

7. MOZ Keyword Explorer

This SEO keyword research tool has an easy-to-understand and attractive appearance. This tool can also display some information related to keywords, such as competition difficulty, organic content CTR, priority score, and monthly search volume.

MOZ Keyword Explorer has a metric that cannot be found in other tools, namely a priority score. This metric measures a keyword's search volume, difficulty, and competitive opportunity.

This means that the priority score metric can be used to measure the keywords that have the highest percentage of success. 

That was an explanation of SEO keyword research tools, complete with a discussion of keyword research.

The right SEO keyword research tool can help you develop the optimal SEO strategies. 

Creating this strategy is an important step for a website to increase visibility, drive quality traffic, and build customer trust.

However, all of these goals will be in vain if you cannot carry out the SEO strategy properly.

If you cannot handle your website optimization on your own, then use SEO services from cmlabs to help your business implement an optimization strategy for digital and organic marketing.